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My Chocoholicity Is Hardly a Secret
And if it were, it would nonetheless have been by now divined by a modest collection of fine- and semi-fine chocolate manufacturers. As they say nowadays, "I'm looking at you," Lindt and Godiva.* At least I'm looking at their aggressive, spammy email campaign leading up to Cyber Monday. I occasionally order chocolates from Lindt, and used to order chocolates from Godiva. Lindt is, in my view, reasonably priced. Godiva not so much. Lindt holds a bulk sale a few times per year, when one can order their truffles by the hundreds, often for 30% off with free shipping in cooler weather. Lindt unfailingly sends me at least two identical emails per day touting low prices or other discounts. The vast majority of these are pointless since the price per truffle remains close to constant, revealed with a bit of arithmetic despite Lindt's obfuscation. (One day it's three bags for the price of two, and the next touts 33% off.**) During the frenetic sales period before and after Thanksgiving, they're even more creative, persistent, and tedious. Nonetheless...Yum! If the above sounds grumpy, that's only partly my intention, having been recently whelmed by holiday email.
The Tragedy of Godiva
I discovered grown-up chocolate in Belgium, Godiva's original home. I was on a job*** in Paris and a friend was at med school in Brussels. I rented a car and drove uneventfully—I lived—to visit him. He had Godiva chocolates in his living room. As an American kid brought up on Hershey bars, I never knew such luxury existed!
Or, at least, used to exist. And surely still does in some shops in various corners of the world. But no longer at Godiva, which closed their shops during the pandemic and abandoned luxury in the form of the Open Shell Oyster in favor of daily spam. And not just one daily spam, but up to 3 emails a day reminding me of deadlines, sales, discounts, and prices UP TO 50% off. Each time I was tempted. Each time I checked the ad to find that maybe ONE product was 50% off, the rest had lesser discounts. In the old days, they did have "50% off entire site" sales. Their web site sported large boxes of yummy truffles at half price. Not any more, and the words UP TO have now become anathematic.
Cyber Monday?
Hardly! Now it's "Cyber Week." As with the "Saint Patrick's Day Season" and the "Halloween Season," it seems one needs an excuse for a sale or other commercial activity every day. Which, along with your government in action, suddenly gave me
A Good Idea!
Companies occasionally get in trouble for announcing sales with fraudulent price reductions. E.g., List price $99, now only $76.99. Except the product was never sold for $99, the seller is already making big bux at $76, and just wants you to think it's a bargain. Everything is always on seasonal sale, list price is a fiction, and the seller is open to accusations of violating the law. Get out of jail free! Sell—or at least offer—it at the fictitious list price on my new LIST PRICE DAY! Just as Black Friday or maybe Prime Day is reputedly the best day for retail sales, surely there must be a traditional worst day, no? If you know when that is, tell me and I'll make a declaration.
Nominations: The day after Christmas? Any Tuesday in August? or...? Help me here, Marketing Person!
Speaking of Nominations
Although Lindt and Godiva are daily spammers, there are plenty who are worse. Woot! comes to mind with their five-plus offers per day, but I can't properly fault them because at least the offers are all different, and on rare occasions I buy something from them. Woot! gets a pass. And the "Smart Briefs" from various periodicals appear daily and repetitiously, but they too contain valuable information along with the ads. But there's one major corporation that never fails to send me at least four emails a day hawking their multifarious wares. You'll never guess...Samsung! What are they thinking?
How about spam ordinaire? Of course it's unending, but I have some other nominations:
- Most unnecessary and tedious: CHASE BANK requesting me to get "friends" to sign up for a credit card.
- Goofiest headline (in recent weeks): "Gremsy Integrates Boson Radiometric Thermal into Vio F1 Drone Payload"
- Impossible to unsubscribe: Statewatch
- Most annoying (no single perpetrator): Seemingly legitimate people who want to give us or me a credit line
- Other most annoying: Alleged people selling the names of trade-show attendees
- Dishonorable mention: Any email, spam or not, that begins with "reaching out" or "circling back"
Enough?
Not quite. As I described here, the internet is getting worse. Practically any link one clicks now leads to an article behind a pay wall, an article with multiple clickage required to be able to read it, and almost inevitably one with numerous images and videos touting something for which the advertiser has probably paid to have exposed and ignored. Darwinianly, I have by now developed the ability to ignore the intrusions. I honestly don't see any of this stuff, and I doubt that you do, either.
It has even become an ordeal to get a weather forecast.
Names in the News
Do you know David Cohen? Sounds familiar, doesn't it? What about Steve Katz or Steve Schwartz? I know at least one of each and, remarkably, many of my friends do as well, although they're all different specimens. Do you know all three? What are the odds of an overlap?
No, I don't know John Smith.
"Tomorrow"
As often happens with whiny blogs, they get too long and I don't cover all the important topics I plan to. And what could be more important than politics? I pay so much attention that I even remember who won the recent presidential election! I'm hopeful of presenting an idea that may be even better than List Price Day touted above.
* Since I'm delivering myself of marketing clichés in this blog, I'll add "shout out" to my repertoire. Here's a shout out to See's Chocolate, about which I've written, at least in a financial context. They send a few emails per year, and occasionally they're worth reading. Thanks, Warren Buffet and even Mary See.
** Note that this 30% is a totally different 30% than the apparently larger 33% they offer daily, which applies to their fictitious list price, not their real one.
*** Yes, previous life. Age 24 or so. A job! Imagine that! |
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