Poisoning the Well

Seth’s comment on how “selfish short-sighted marketers ruined it for all of us” is a fair statement and personally I think it will get worse as the current forms of communication channels (email, forums, chat, social networking, Twitter) allow for near zero cost in getting in front of people and “spamming” them.

The bigger problem is that a lot of these people are not using the communication tools correctly and end up sending the wrong message or spamming people because the tool was not configured correctly. For example a number of years ago a promotional company set up a fax promotion campaign where they faxed a promotion sheet to businesses in New York. The person who was charged with setting up the fax automation stuffed up configuring the fax machine so each business received the fax 5 times!

Again – cheap communication channels and stupid/careless marketers stuff it up for all of us.

Marketers with lots and lots of money must find new ways to get the message across without being grouped in with the rest of the marketing spam we all now receive.

Poisoning the well by Seth Godin
Judith comments on her frustration in joining a new website, “Sorry I do not provide passwords or birthdate. I would have like to have joined otherwise.” Obviously, there’s a trust problem here.

Frank won’t read the instructions that come in an email from a trusted company, because there’s always so much noise and clutter and legal garbage in the text that it doesn’t pay to read it anyway.

Tim is in a bad mood the moment he arrives at the airport, because every other time he’s been there, a marketer tries to rip him off, a security guard treats him like a criminal or an airline doesn’t keep its promises.

Sarah won’t give money to charity because the last two times she discovered that it was a false front for a high-overhead scam operation.

Emily got the three thousandth automated call giving her a second notice that her factory warranty had just expired… and she doesn’t have a car.

Marketers have spammed, lied, deceived, cluttered and ripped us off for so long, we’re sick of it.

Which means that even if you have a really good reason, no, you can’t call me on the phone. Which means that even if it’s really important, no, I’m not going to read the instructions. Which means that god forbid you try to email me something I didn’t ask for… you’re trashed. It’s so fashionable to be skeptical now that no one believes you if you attempt to do something for the right reasons.

Selfish short-sighted marketers ruined it for all of us. The only way out, I think, is for a few marketers to so overwhelm the market with long-term, generous marketing that we have no choice but to start paying attention again.

Source: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_b…-the-well.html