Why don’t marketing clerks learn from history and stop abusing consumers?

The ability of marketing clerks to ignore marketing history is one of the fascinating weaknesses of the marketing industry. That’s three uses of “marketing” in a single sentence.

They're living proof of the 1905 quote by Spanish Philosopher, George Santayana: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

They actively ignore the lessons of history rather than learn from them. And then repeat the same mistakes, over and over. So-called digital marketers are exemplary performers of this behaviour.

Here in Australia for example, in the last 18 months, Uber, Door Dash, Ticketek, Kmart, the country’s largest bank, the Commonwealth, and others have collectively been fined more than $12.5 million for breaching the Spam Act. This is a law that has been in place for 20+years.

A bit of history for you…

Don’t write to me

When the use of addressed and unaddressed mail grew exponentially, consumers got annoyed at the volume of advertising mail in their mailboxes. Despite placing “No Junk Mail” or “No Advertising Material” stickers on their mailboxes, delivery services often ignored them.

Consequently, the Australian Direct Marketing Association (ADMA) introduced a “Do Not Mail” register. This allowed consumers to have their names removed from mailing lists that were rented for commercial purposes.

Don’t call or fax me

Then as telemarketing grew exponentially, consumers got pissed-off at marketers making unsolicited calls to their homes. This was when landlines were the only form of telephone. Now, of course, marketers make unsolicited calls to mobile phones too.

ACMA, the Australian Communications and Media Authority, introduced the “Do Not Call Register”. This allows consumers to have their phone numbers removed from marketing lists used for telemarketing and fax campaigns. Though there are exclusions to the laws, including charities, political parties, research companies and educational institutions.

Don’t email or SMS me

So, as a result of the ineptitude of marketing clerks in the final 20 years of the 20th century, laws and services had to be established to stop marketers abusing consumers. It beggars belief that you would abuse the people who pay your salary – but nothing was learned.

As the digital age commenced in the new century, did marketers apply the lessons of the analogue world? Of course not. They could now piss-off more consumers in greater volumes at little cost, using unsolicited email. Software was invented that allowed unscrupulous marketers to scrape email addresses from websites so they could build email lists.

The unsolicited emails became so prolific the practice was given a name – SPAM. And as spamming became so bad in such a short period of time, by 2003 the Spam Act was legislated to regulate commercial electronic messages.

This was no longer a service provided by an industry association. Marketers had pissed-off so many consumers and businesses with spam, that the Governments around the world were forced to act. It’s now illegal to send any commercial email or SMS without a functioning unsubscribe link.

But it didn’t stop with email.

Social selling is the new spam

I have written about this previously:

https://www.dhirubhai.net/feed/update/urn:li:linkedInArticle:7044435458172321793/

https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/2022-winner-social-selling-spammer-year-close-call-malcolm-auld/

In simple terms, social selling spam on LinkedIn is a serious problem that is damaging the credibility of the platform. It is frustrating for users who are looking to build genuine connections and find new opportunities. To maintain the integrity of the platform, it is essential for LinkedIn to take action to combat social selling spam and restore trust among its users.

Content marketing comes a close second to social selling

Just last week, a cyber-hustler posted content on how to scrape email addresses and send cold emails on LinkedIn. He had no concerns that what he was recommending – sending unsolicited emails, or illegal emails if you state the obvious – was encouraging criminal behaviour. He ignored comments on his post to stop it.

During COVID I walked away from consulting to a SaaS because they naively believed direct mail was not a B2B media and scraping email addresses from websites and emailing “content” was the best way to generate new business. After I stopped laughing, I sent them the Spam Act and explained that as a consultant to their organisation, I was also liable if they were caught. But they didn’t care, so we parted ways.

And now that AI can create marketing content at the speed of light, we are being spammed by a tsunami of bland, irrelevant content as marketing clerks try to fake their authenticity, in the hope their alleged thought leadership will convince prospects of their credibility. And the more this spam is automated the less engaged the creators are with their spamees.

The use of AI is creating an infobesity epidemic, and the exponential growth in automated content is being matched by a parallel decline in credibility of those creating and distributing it.

But who really cares? After all, if history is anything to go by, marketing clerks don’t study marketing history. It’s new to them so it’s new to the world. And if they can fake it til they make it, rather than ethically just doing the hard yards, they’ll take the lazy route every time.

Digital marketers even paid cash to piss-off consumers

Known as the biggest consumer protest in history, roughly 2 Billion consumers have downloaded advertising blocking software to stop marketing clerks abusing them. That’s about 38% of all internet users, and in some European countries more than half the population uses blocking software.

Think about this for a minute. Digital marketers spent their marketing budgets to create and deliver appalling advertising that pissed-off close to 40% of internet users and 25% of the global population! It’s beyond stupid.

Algorithms spam you more often than not

Again, I’ve written before about how algorithms tend to get it wrong more often than get it right, when it comes to personalising advertising. You can read it here.

https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/how-surveillance-marketing-algorithms-damaging-brands-malcolm-auld/

Remarketing often does more damage than good – it’s one of the reasons consumers use blocking technology. A friend of mine in her early sixties was searching for a baby gift for her niece. She was very thorough and did some comparative shopping on various websites. She rang me to ask how to stop the baby brands chasing her around the web. She said “I know I’m not getting any younger and some of my bits are a tad saggy, but all I keep seeing are advertisements for breast pumps, and I definitely don’t need one of those.”

Even our phones and voice devices spam us

We’ve all experienced that spooky feeling, when after a discussion, we open our phones and the first advertisements that appear are linked to the conversation we just had. I often demonstrate this to my uni students in class. We all discuss a particular category and brands, then check our social media on our mobile phones. Sure enough, the first advertisements that appear are from the brands, or competitive brands, we were just talking about in class.

This makes everyone in the room uncomfortable as they hate the way surveillance marketing invades their privacy. Why do marketing clerks believe this is appropriate behaviour?

Why don’t we learn?

I just don’t get it. 40+ years after the “Do Not Mail” Register was created, marketing clerks continue to abuse consumers through personal marketing media – mail, email, SMS, telephone, social channels and mobile devices.

Is there no ethics training or education within marketing departments? How can brands such as Uber, Door Dash, Ticketek, Kmart, the Commonwealth Bank and others get it so wrong, when they know they shouldn’t do it? Or are they making so much money that fines and reputation damage are just a small cost of doing business?

There is a strong belief among experienced marketers that the quality of marketing clerks has declined rapidly with the growth in so-called digital marketers. And it’s hard to argue when you see the evidence. What other industry has so appallingly abused the people who pay their salary, that laws have been created to stop the industry’s unethical practices?

And we haven’t even discussed the abuse of data and privacy, and the new compliance laws around data capture and storage – it’s going to catch out more brands than most realise.

I’d like to think that the industry will get its act together, but am not confident.

What do you think folks - can or will the industry sort itself out?

Will the quality of marketing clerks improve?

What’s that Siri? No Alexa, be quiet, I wasn’t talking to you…

#marketingethics #spam #socialselling #emailmarketing #remarketing