Tuesday, October 8, 2013

Primum non nocere.

Like Rich Siegel of Round Seventeen renown, I have been ill-served by an e-marketer. As such, I am waging a war of retribution against a company called Vistaprint.

They have been sending me, literally, seven to a dozen emails a day, always with the same asinine message. I have been unable to remove myself from their list, and even a call to Mumbai where their phone center is sited has proved meaningless. So, I have been marking up their Facebook page with posts, calling them, rightfully so, inveterate spammers.

Yesterday, someone from their social media department sent me a note giving me an address to send my complaint to. But their spam continues unabated.

All this brings to my mind some Latin: Primum non nocere. First do no harm.

This notion seems to be missing from so many advertisements and marketing plans. We are inundated and annoyed. We are not informed or entertained. We are bludgeoned.

That is, most advertising, I think, does harm. 

It not only doesn't help the company behind it, through its relentless air time and shrill stupidity, it assaults and annoys the viewer.

It hasn't made the company more likable.

It's harmed the company's reputation.

2 comments:

  1. They're based in Lexington, MA. Don't fire off a letter until you see the whites of their eyes.

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  2. This has everything to do with respect for your audience. If a marketer sends me a text message – even one – I militantly boycott them forever. There are only two on my list at current. The third went gloriously out of business.

    ReplyDelete