Advertising Is Good For You

Email stalking -- oh, what a feeling

Here's the tale of Amber Duick.

She's a Los Angeles woman who for five days received emails from someone she didn't know, a man named Sebastian Bowler. Sebastian told Amber he knew where she lived and told her he'd be coming to her home to hide from the police.

Amber says she feared she was being stalked and had trouble eating, sleeping and her job performance suffered.

When she found out the emails were part of a guerrilla advertising campaign for Toyota, she decided to sue Toyota for $10 million.

Of course advertising shouldn't be masquerading as a guy who's wanted by the police and is on his way to hide out at your house.

But what about a series of tongue-in-cheek emails from a guy who says he's wanted by the police and is on his way to hide out at your house?

I don't have access to all the emails, but here are two snippets from the emails sent by the fictitious Sebastian:

Amber mate! Coming 2 Los Angeles. Gonna lay low at your place for a bit till it all blows over.

Amber, ran into a little problem at the hotel. After I'm done visiting you, I'm going to go back and sort out that front desk Muppet. (this email included a bill for damages from a hotel)

THIS is the kind of thing that "terrified" Amber Duick? Seems to me the copywriter did a great job of injecting just enough cornball into the copy to clue in the reader that this is some kind of joke.

Read more about Amber Duick and her suit against Toyota.

Ever since I first read this story, in my mind's eye the role of Sebastian Bowler has been played by Terry Thomas.

94% of all email messages are spam

Visit Switched for 12 tips for fighting spam on your PC and cell phone.

The week's most interesting spam headline

Direct from my mailbox:

Power up your meat cigar

Sent by tended3980@savarveiculos.com.br.

Not everyone is worried about looking ostentatious during the recession

I signed up for regular emails from Bergdorf Goodman a while back. I'm no more likely to shop at Bergdorf's than I'm likely to dress up like the models in the editorial pages of Vogue. But luxury store emails and fashion magazines provide me with the same thing: a little fashion news and a healthy dose of fantasy.

Today's email looked liked this.

These are $2,875 Christian Louboutin shoes.

*****************************

The shoes are made of "natural python." Pythons would probably be more accurate. I wonder how many snakes it takes to make just one pair of these shoes? And what do they do with the snake parts that aren't used for the shoes? Is there a market for Mongoose Chow?

Timberland knows what it's doing

North of Boston, we got at least a foot of snow over the last 24 hours. There was no school today. Many people stayed home from work.

I bet a lot of people sat in front of their computers much of the day. Timberland figured as much, too. So they sent their customers an email with the subject line, Snow today. $20 offer ends Tuesday.

Some customers may have remembered that they had received a similar email last week at the start of the promotion. Others probably assumed this was something special Timberland was doing just to take advantage of the snow day.

Either way, it was a timely email that I'm sure was well received.

By the way, the email says I can pass the offer on to a friend, so here you go: spend $100 at a Timberland store or Timberland.com and save $20, plus get free shipping, when you use promo code BUNDLE20.

22% of the world's spam comes from Russia

Source: The Consumerist        Image: Colour Lovers

One man's revenge on a spammer

Yesterday's Boston Globe Magazine recounts an exchange in which writer Mark Pothier cons a spammer. It's very funny.

CLICK HERE to read The Spam Victim Strikes Back!

How to be a good Samaritan who doesn't get scammed

The FBI last week released a list of tips to help avoid getting scammed when making charitable donations online -- especially useful information considering the many natural disasters of recent weeks.

Do not respond to unsolicited (spam) e-mail.

Be skeptical of individuals representing themselves as officials soliciting via e-mail for donations.

Do not click on links contained within an unsolicited e-mail.

Be cautious of e-mail claiming to contain pictures in attached files, as the files may contain viruses. Only open attachments from known senders.

To ensure contributions are received and used for intended purposes, make contributions directly to recognized organizations rather than relying on others to make the donation on your behalf.

Validate the legitimacy of the organization by directly accessing the recognized charity or aid organization's website rather than following an alleged link to the site.

Attempt to verify the legitimacy of the nonprofit status of the organization by using various Internet-based resources, which also may assist in confirming the actual existence of the organization.

Do not provide personal or financial information to anyone who solicits contributions: providing such information may compromise your identity and expose you to identity theft.

Source: Switched

93.2% of all email in first quarter 2008 was spam.

-- According to research conducted by online threat and security experts, Sophos

Image: sean dreilinger

Happy 30th Birthday, Spam Email

According to Wired, as of 1 May 1978, Spam was no longer just a suspicious lunch meat. On that day, the first spam message was written -- although it wasn't sent until two days later via email to 400 unsuspecting poor bastards people. That particular spam was a promotional message sent by Gary Thuerk of Digital Equipment Corporation.

Don't you wish you had Gary's email address so you could send him a spam message of your own?

Image: Liesel Elliott

"Online coupons of all kinds represent less than 1% of the overall coupon market."

That's according to Peter Meyers, ICOM marketing vice president.

I can tell you -- both as an advertising/
marketing geek and a consumer -- if you shop on the Internet, online coupons are a great reason to put yourself on e-retailers' email lists. It's only April and my e-mailbox is already full of 30% and 40% off coupons from some of my favorite online retailers pushing summer fashions.

The drawback is that your mailbox fills up pretty quickly with sales messages. But so what? Typically, the offers are in the subject line, so you don't have to open the email to know if it's something that interests you. Personally, I find the savings are more than worth the time it takes me to delete the unwanted emails.

Just in case you didn't know (and a lot of people don't), if you hold down the Control button, you can click all the emails you want to delete and then get rid of all of them at once by hitting the Delete button.

Image: Ann Taylor
Source: Media Post's Center for Media Research

Better hope the network security geeks at your company are aware of this

The Consumerist has a fascinating post about the fellow who owns the domain, DoNotReply.com, and all the emails he receives inadvertently. Some of the stuff that ends up in his e-mailbox is very private and sometimes even classified, like locations for troops in Iraq sent by a former subsidiary of Halliburton. To read the article, CLICK HERE.

Image: FreaksAnon

The only good thing to come out of spam advertising

Linzie Hunter has created a series of paintings she describes as, "Experiments with hand lettering... An ongoing series based on spam subject lines found in my mailbox."

She's turned spam subject lines from dreadful to delightful. Go look at the rest of the rest of her paintings.