…on smart-alec direct mails

I got an e-mail invitation today that commenced:

Dear Colleague -

OK. I see you still need some convincing that our [event] will be the best use of your most valuable marketing resources-your time and your money.

I don’t know why the people who compose direct marketing e-mails seem to think it’s a good idea to talk to people as if they were complete idiots. This one annoyed me for a number of reasons:

Dear Colleague

I’m not your colleague. I don’t know you. The only thing we have in common is that we work in related fields and I subscribe to one of your company’s newsletters. If it is important to you to create the illusion of a personal relationship then why not start your mail with my name? It’s in your database along with my e-mail address.

I see you still need some convincing…

All you see is that, like 90% of your mailing list, I haven’t registered for your event. Don’t assume that all I need to push me over the edge and sign up is a trite little e-mail implying that there must be something wrong with me for not wanting to attend.

…our [event] will be the best use of your most valuable marketing resources-your time and your money.

Really? If you used your database intelligently you would see that this event would most certainly not be the best use of my time or my money. The event is in Boston. I live in Jakarta. ‘Nuff said.

Note to all the people who write this stuff – treat me like a human being and not like some half wit begging to be shown the error of his ways. And don’t try to persuade me to buy in to your pitch by insulting my intelligence in your opening line.

…on dead horses

My colleague, friend, spiritual guru and mentor David Chard has started a wiki devoted to the study and exploration of human dysfunction. The basis premise (lifted shamelessly from the Introduction page) is that Comanche Indian wisdom says, “When you discover you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount.” In business, government and (sometimes) education often other strategies are tried with dead horses, including the following:

1. Buying a stronger whip.
2. Changing riders.
3. Saying things like, “This is the way we have always ridden dead horses.”
4. Appointing a committee to study the horse.
5. Arranging to visit other sites to see how they ride dead horses.
6. Increasing the standards to ride dead horses.
7. Appointing a tiger team to revive the dead horse.
8. Creating a training session to increase our riding ability.
9. Comparing the state of dead horses in today’s environment vs. in history.
10. Changing the requirements, declaring, “This horse is not actually dead.”
11. Hiring contractors to ride the dead horse.
12. Harnessing several dead horses together for increased speed.
13. Declaring that “No horse is too dead to ride.”
14. Providing additional funding to increase the horse’s performance.
15. Funding a study to see if contractors can ride it cheaper.
16. Purchasing a product to make dead horses run faster.
17. Declaring the horse is “better, faster and cheaper dead.”
18. Forming a quality circle to find uses for dead horses.
19. Reviewing the performance requirements for horses.
20. Saying this horse was procured with cost as an independent variable.
21. Promoting the dead horse to a supervisory position.

The site is just starting and inviting submissions for Dead Horses. If you have a favorite rant, this is the place for it. My own submission (also a work in progress) can be found under “The (End of) The World According to CNN.” I know David would appreciate more submissions.