I was once (several years ago) having a pint in a pub (I know, shocking news). A young lady approached me wearing a big black felt hat and asked me for my email address. Next thing I knew I was on the Guinness mailing list.

I then decided that I didn’t want to keep getting their emails. This happens, marketers, get over it.

What I saw is probably the worst opt-out in the world.

Who wants to fill THIS out to unsubscribe from an email blast?

It is a minefield of unnecessary information across a range of brands in the Diageo group. It is almost certainly against the rules set out in the UK under the wonderfully named PECR legislation (pronounced ‘pecker’). It is definitely against best practice.

Oh well. Yahoo! mail has a ‘This Is Spam’ button. Just got hit again.

Come on, Diageo, get a grip!

Tags: diageo, email, guinness, opt out

Andrex's 35% market share has put it at No 1 for 40 years

Over at MediaPost’s Email Insider, David Baker (a bit of a guru in the email industry across the pond) has written an interesting piece under the heading ‘Brand Connections’. One question he poses is whether digital marketing should be made to fit all client requirements. In doing so he recalls a colourful anecdote around a brainstorming session to create a digital strategy for toilet paper.

You’ll need to log on to read the story (which I recommend), but his point is that we shouldn’t try too hard to make things fit the medium, and he identifies four ‘values’ of email:

• functional value
• promotional value
• social value
• informational value

I’m not going to argue the toss on these: I broadly agree, particularly as far as email is concerned… while always reinforcing that the value is from the recipient’s perspective rather than the marketer’s.

However, I feel a crucial point has been omitted: in considering how ridiculously difficult it was to successfully brainstorm a digital agenda for toilet paper, the team’s response was to say “OK, let’s skip it.”

Fair enough: I’d rather that than some of the tenuous connections I have seen over the years.

But surely the creative team who came up with the sickeningly successful Andrex Puppies all those years ago (1972!) in old fashioned ad land faced the same problem - and the same tittering responses in their brainstorms. The puppies solved the brand problem at a sweep, leaving competitors with a really tough act to follow.

There are some compelling examples of similar creative genius online - but probably more offline. Not that surprising. But, if you’re interested in building brand connections, the medium you choose is certainly very important… but a big idea is far more the point.

Tags: advertising, andrex, creative, david baker, email

text goes ... er...

The more observant amongst Sandlines’ readership may have noticed that I’ve mentioned a band from Glasgow, called Glasvegas, a couple of times. You may not be amazed to learn, then, that I signed up for their email communications.

I think there must be something about music companies and their approach to email that just misses the point: this email is from Sony subsidiary, Columbia Records, but shows many of the same problems I saw a few years back from one of the other majors (who’ll remain nameless… for now).

In common with a lot of emails from this industry, there is a lot of reliance on images to convey the message of the email. This is fine until you realise that the default for so many email accounts to keep images turned off by default.

Never mind, I turned images on - after all, I want to see what they have to say.

Oh.

They’ve done the old black-text-on-a-black-background trick. I suspect they planned to do white text on black, but of course testing the outcome in the various email clients is just such a lot of work…

As Nate Elliott from JupiterResearch (before being swallowed by Forrester) said at my Advanced Email Strategies conference last year, “… (email marketers)… are Marketers without Images”. Seems Columbia went one better - marketers without images OR words.

Tags: email, glasvegas, images, music