Q. How do you avoid unwanted marketing?
A. You can’t. No matter what you do.
Times are tough all around, and many companies have responded to difficult times by tripling their efforts to recruit new customers—by force, if necessary.
I’ve been getting countless robo‑calls, despite being on the no‑call list. I immediately hang up on any recording, but by that time I’ve already put down whatever I was doing, muted the music or television, and answered the phone. The sound of the recorded voice makes me thoroughly annoyed, but I’m only left with the impotent act of slamming down the receiver.
Sigh.
It’s almost a given: the more important the robo‑voice says a call is, the less important it really is. Can you imagine a really important call being delivered in such a fashion? “I’m sorry to report that your biopsy was positive for melanoma. For surgery, press 1. For chemotherapy, press 2. For hospice, press 3.” Absurd.
And it’s not just the robo‑calls. The spam machines are working overtime. The fundraising phone banks hum with activity. I’m getting calls from companies I’ve never done business with, companies I’ve never heard of. I’ve even begun to get door-to-door salespeople. How many decades has it been since anyone rang your doorbell and tried to sell you something other than youth fundraising merchandise?
One of the few blogs I read on a regular basis is Seth Godin’s. His articles are of general interest, but his focus is on marketing. The good kind of marketing. The smart kind of marketing. He recently had an interesting item on this mad frenzy of pointless marketing. Read it here. Unfortunately, his ideas are too reasonable to appeal to the masses, and that’s a shame. If more people like Godin were running the marketing machines of the world, life would be a lot less aggravating. And I would be able to get through my dinner without yet another rude and pointless call from someone (or something) I wouldn’t do business with in a thousand years.