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Dear Major Marketers, Minor Marketers and Interested Others,

Hi.

OK, enough of the chirpy chit-chat, let's get down to brass tacks.

Over the years, I have had an uneasy relationship with you. I've not cared one bit for being your prospect. And, as it seems that being your customer is just an extension of a permanent, unrelenting and ever-more-intrusive marketing campaign, I'm not nuts about being your customer, either.

This should not surprise you. Your role, at least as it has been envisioned for quite some time, is to find me and make me less happy than I am.

One example: A couple of years ago there was a Dodge commercial that made fun of a teenager who was working a pizza-delivery job to pay for his car as opposed to partying with kids whose car payments were less. I was troubled by this commercial on several levels. But, I am sure that my feelings were nothing compared with what those kids working those pizza jobs felt. (Is it wrong to work hard? Is being a pizza delivery person really that un-cool or clown-like or of such low status?)

The commercial was shameful, but no hue and cry was heard across the land. It's a pity that a "throw-down" version of Janet Jackson's nipple couldn't have found its way into the spot so as to attract outrage.

David Glen Mick—an acknowledged expert in consumer research and one of America's leading semioticians—delivered a rich, provocative address at St. Clement's in Belfast, Ireland, in September 1997. Its title will, unfortunately, put many of you off, but here goes: "Searching for Byzantium: A Personal Journey into Spiritual Questions that Marketing Researchers Rarely Ask."

Based on the title alone, with its reference to a poem by William Butler Yeats, his remarks, you may think, have little to do with common sense and clear-eyed accounts of life in the real world. Don't think—read:

 

Another set of spiritual questions we seldom ask ourselves concerns the effects of marketing and consumption on human character. By character I do not mean human values, but rather our psychological temperament as we go about our daily activities. What kind of person does marketing and consumption encourage or discourage?

 

Mick's answers include examples of qualities of temperament that are, in his opinion, encouraged by marketing and consumption: impatience, incivility, judgmentalism and distrust.

Under the category "distrust," Mick, as he does throughout the speech, refers to the time he and his wife spent in Denmark:

 

One of the benefits of living abroad is that most of the companies that knew where you were in your domestic marketplace cannot find you anymore. The junk mail does not get forwarded. No more envelopes arrive marked, "Survey Inside #23407" which, when opened, quickly turn into a not-so-subtle pleas for a donation, or an invitation to request more "product information" (also known as direct mail and advertising). Similarly, at dinner time phone calls of solicitation cease. In fact, in our Danish residence the phone rarely rang at all. In Denmark I no longer felt like the hunted prey of hundreds of corporations.

What does this constant chase of cat and mouse do to the bond of trust among human beings? If our days and weeks are filled with the need to be suspicious, on continuous guard against those would like a portion of your bank account, then suspiciousness becomes a salient mental orientation, always at the forefront of our minds, even in contexts that may not call for it....

 

(Read the full text of David Glen Mick's "Searching for Byzantium" here.)

Major advertisers and marketers: you make me unhappy. It's what you do. You invite me to compare myself, unfavorably, with others. This tactic obviously works for you to the tune of billions and billions of sales revenue. It doesn't work for me, though.

It is time for the end of me. You have worn me out. You have contributed to my ill-temperedness, at least a little bit. And, now, I'm like one of those email lists that you've strip-mined. When you think of me from this point forward, hear the words "diminishing returns."

"De-consumer" me, please. I am now ready to hire a stunt double or data avatar or trusted relationship proxy. You have brought us both to the end of me.

I just don't trust you with me anymore

Let's say that I'm a customer of your company's products or services. Here's what I want:

Far less of you: As your customer, I want you to provide me the option of not receiving any more marketing communication, in any form, from you.

Why should you offer such an option?

Because, believe it or not, there are lots of folks just like me who don't ever want to hear from you, so you're wasting time and money. I might even be willing to pay you—though this does smack of a mental-health protection racket—say $10—to be removed from your marketing database. Bottom line: I want those "bits" you have of me—those that you would want to use to market "at" me—obliterated.

Major credit card companies, this one's for you: As long as I keep my end of the credit bargain up, I don't want to ever hear from you with any marketing messages via phone, email, direct mail or any means. (Oh, and that annoying flap that has some sort of offer on it and is attached to the return envelope—you know, the envelope that I pay you with?—lose it.)

Now, if you're going to change the terms of the credit contract, legally speaking, I have to hear from you. Now, I want you to exceed the legal requirements for notification. I want that notification document in 10 or 11-point type—and as a courtesy it should be written in a language that bears some resemblance to the English that one might hear on "Oprah." If I sent you checks that were as hard for your bank to decipher as your financial terms are for me to decipher, let's just say that you wouldn't like it.

Far less of me: There are all kinds of laws, regulations and standards that now—or will soon—apply to how you handle my personally identifiable information and customer records: Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (or HIPAA) for healthcare organizations, Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act for financial services companies, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 for publicly traded companies, just to name a few.

In addition, there's a two-year-old California law that requires that you notify me if my data has been compromised because your security and information systems have been compromised.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Chris Maher is president of Fosforus, an Austin-based, business-to-business marketing, media, and interactive design firm. Reach him at CMaher1997@aol.com