Sunday, January 16, 2011

HAPPY-BIRTHDAY-PROMO

Hitting a birthday milestone used to be exciting. You'd get all your friends together at the bowling alley or later on at an Irish bar and just rip-it-up. Well 35 years later you wake up feeling hungover even if you didn't drink, tired from always being tired and heavier than you've been in 10 years.
Now you get calls and texts from friends which is nice but you are also bombarded with emails from Facebook that there are wall-posts from people you haven't seen in a decade or heard from since your birthday last year and I gotta figure out if I have to send back 50 thank youse. But even this is manageable cause there was some thought or effort put to it
What is worse there are 5 emails in my inbox from places like Manhattan Volvo, ING Direct, Diapers.com wishing me a happy birthday. It is different when 10 years ago you'd walk into your bank and the teller said hello because their might at least be some genuine feeling behind that and an actual relationship built upon it. There was a time when you knew your butcher in the grocery store, now you get an email from FreshDirect trying to entice you to buy again.
But what we deal with now this is not a genuine but yet another lame promotional attempt which somebody in these marketing departments have come up with the idea that they believe are probably not-offensive. I get so much junk-mail, promotional offers and spam, the last thing I need to hear is a generated message from a car-dealer who I didn't buy a car from wishing me anything. Let me tell you..not only am I offended I'm also annoyed to the point that I will be less likely to buy their product the next time.

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

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