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Internet Advertising Under the Fingernails

Just received my first targeted “Purchase Me” email in regards to Blurried Musings, thanks in part to the advertiser’s windfall it must represent. It was targeted in the sense the sender took enough time to dig up an appropriate address to post it to, and refers to the site directly. It’s been up since late February, so they’ve been a bit slow in getting around to me. Then again, they’re hoping to sell their particular genius at submitting things to search engines and directories (over 500,000 of them!), so that may go a way in explaining why they haven’t come across this page sooner. Really should check up on that Google submission…

Though I know this type of unending, unsolicited bare-breasted marketing attack works enough of the time to make it worth their while, I often question it’s long term effects. Not for the company foisting it upon us, as this is apparently the only way they know how to locate a profit margin. I mean its psychological results on us. There’s a Chinese water torture feel to the constant drip drip drip of the Internet advertisement blitzkrieg. They want us to be taken in by the propaganda machine and buy buy buy. Sad they prefer to build a customer base constructed entirely of indoctrinated prisoners of war. These tactics may get them to where there’s lots of our money in their bank accounts, but they also end up with a clientele no more loyal than a whipped dog on a spiked leash, and you never know when that angry mutt might turn around and bite them in the ass.

So it’s more important to bombard us until we give up and give in then for them to sell their products or services based on simple issues of quality or merit. Or even need. And what a merry bunch of weary consumers we have become due to this attitude. Just try to avoid screaming when you lose it on the rack.

Anyway, I’ll admit the email advert they’ve sent me is impressive, and goes to some lengths to prop up a very pretty screen shot of my page in the lingering HTML attachment. If I had read it with interest I may have been taken in. Must be a sad thing for ad wizards to hear I only gloss over Webified content in email messages — when I look at it at all — before pounding the Delete key. Think of all the man-minutes they’ve got in this, as well as the time spent going over placement of images and content with their focus group (no doubt a few less than perceptive employees from Sales). And the software suite they used to cobble this beautiful email billboard together must have cost marketing a good percentage of their budget for the year. Yes, you’ve done some nice work here guys.

* Delete *

It’s always a relief when you fix the drip.