Distractions Add Up

Writer Marta Vogel tells us that early man examined his food to ensure it 1) was dead and 2) had no insects. 21st century man barely looks at his food; he's fixated on the package. Corporate giants figured out that consumers could become thoroughly hooked on "package literature."

Recognizing our craving for information, advertisers offer alluring product packaging. The average cereal box contains about 2,000 words, equal to eight pages of a book. Generic products, at the same basic quality as mid-level brands, were once sold by vendors who knew that people might not buy "wordless" cardboard and risk incurring "package deprivation."

Package deprivation? It's no surprise today that most of our population -- not just kids -- wears clothes or accessories with slogans and messages on them. Attraction to labeling and package copy robs you of breathing space. Minute bits of extraneous data have a cumulative impact.

Other symptoms of information overload abound. Do you attempt to think, converse, study, or even make love with distractions? Do you go through the motions of attempting to concentrate with office noise? Do you attempt to converse while on the Web or watching TV? Do you "need" to wind down before bed in front of a screen? You deserve a break today. Eat healthy food, with people in message-free clothing, and no reading material or screens in sight.

Same Rainbow, no Gold

Six or seven times a day, for at least the last six years, I have received various ridiculous "help me move my fortune from my third-world country" email letters. How can the same transparent tactics be employed more than 12,000 times unless there are legions of moron recipients who actually respond to such letters? How difficult can it be for full-faculty recipients to figure out that these bogus claims are perpetrated by career criminals in the world's cyber cafes where their thievery is largely untraceable? Did I miss an important announcement -- is the general level of intelligence dropping to new lows?

Opt Out of Unwanted Mail, Calls

Here is a fabulous article from Consumer Reports on a message featured by the World Privacy Forum titled,

"How to Opt Out of Unwanted Mail and Calls."

"Tired of having your mailbox invaded and dinner interrupted? The World Privacy Forum has listed 10 "opt outs" to help consumers get their names and contact information off marketing lists. The nonprofit group's website explains how the opt-outs work and includes links and phone numbers." Here are options that are especially useful:

* The National Do Not Call Registry - Put your name on this list to stop most telemarketing calls. (You can't stop calls from charities, politicians, or companies you've done business with in the past 18 months.) Call 888-382-1222. Your number stays in the registry for five years. The first registrations will start expiring next year.

* www.optoutprescreen.com offers help to stop "preapproved" credit-card offers. Call 888-567-8688.

* Direct Marketing Association Mail Preference Service - The 3,600 plus DMA member companies (catalog marketers and nonprofits) must purge their mailing lists of people who register with this service, which costs $1.

* Once a year, financial institutions are required to send you their privacy policies, including how you can opt out if they share such information as your account balances. The Forum's site provides opt-out links for several of the largest banks in the U.S.

* Consumers Union mails subscription offers for Consumer Reports and its other publications. Because CU publications take no ads, subscriptions are their main revenue source. "We are advocates of opt-out options for consumers," says Meta Brophy, CU's director of publishing operations. "It's in the consumer's interest and our interest to send mail they want."

Ending Lawn Litter

Writing in the New York Times, Sewall Chan offers a wonderful article about local efforts to Halt Unwanted Paper Deliveries. Excerpted, he says:

"In an era of spam, telemarketing, moving billboards and other forms of aggressive commercial solicitation, an old-fashioned form of advertising is surprisingly - many say irritatingly - resilient: fliers, restaurant menus and business cards slipped under the doors, wedged in door jambs or left on the stoops of houses and apartment buildings in New York City."

"Until now, homeowners have had no recourse to block the unwanted paper, often called 'lawn litter' because in neighborhoods with yards much of the paper ends up on the lawn." Now however, the city is "enforcing a recent state law that prohibits the placement of 'unsolicited papers, fliers, pamphlets, handbills, circulars or other materials advertising a business or soliciting business" at homes in New York City if the property owner has posted a sign saying such materials are not wanted." Bravo!

"Advertisers who violate the law face fines from $250 for a first offense to $1,000 for repeat violations... Under the new law, the property owner's sign must be at least five inches tall and seven inches wide, and display the following language in legible letters at least one inch high: "Do Not Place Unsolicited Advertising Materials on This Property."

"...property owners who receive unwanted advertisements will be able to fill out a citizen complaint form and mail it, along with the unwanted ads, to the Sanitation Department's enforcement office in Brooklyn."

Advantages for Deviance?

Here are some notes I took from a book with an interesting perspective:

Deviance Advantage: How Fringe Ideas Create Mass Markets
by Mathews, Wenty and Wacker (Crown Books)

* Over the past 3 decades deviance, not reasoning, began to drive the social and commercial agenda. The result? Things that we found pungent only yesterday we lionize today.

* Deviance migrates from the fringe to the social convention, rapidly creating markets, and changing the rules of the social and commercial game.

* The pace of change has picked up to the point where the functional distance between the fringe and social convention is all but disappeared.

* Markets form and dissolve in unanticipated places and in record rates. Yesterday's pariah is tomorrow's market darling, and what was once beyond the social pale is suddenly a hot commodity.

* The pace of deviant change is so intense and so relentless that we are beginning to witness compound deviance. The rules of the game keep changing before we have a chance to write them down.

Jeff comments: It all seems kind of sad, doesn't it? Deviance rules, whereas goodness, purity, and wholesomeness are on the fringe. Gosh, I hope society, and the popular media in particular, wakes up soon.

Junk Mail Beyond the Pale

This story in Newsweek, “Dear Junk Mailers: Leave My Son Alone,” speaks volumes about the junk mail industry in our society. Thirteen years after the death of a seven year old boy, advertisers still target him with offers of tuxedos and snack cakes. Repulsive and sad.

Parent Gary Wiener, writing in Newsweek: “When his 18th birthday arrived, my son, Jacob, became awfully popular. The U.S. Navy wanted him. "Before you find your place in the world, maybe you should see it first," it urged. A local menswear shop offered him 50 percent off a tuxedo package for high-school graduation. And a razor company sent him a free razor, hoping, I suppose, to make a lifelong customer out of him. Their only miscalculation was that Jacob didn't shave. Nor was it likely that any of the armed forces would gain Jacob's services. And he certainly wouldn't graduate from high school. Jacob, you see, died in 1993. He was only 7 years old when a cancerous brain tumor stole him from us.”

“As much as we loved Jacob, that period of our lives is still incredibly painful to remember. Yet, years after his death, letters addressed to Jacob find their way into our mailbox. Early on, I was driven almost to tears by these inducements for our son to attend a ritzy local private school or to sample a particular snack cake. I knew my wife would be devastated by such mail, and I tried to get to the mailbox first so that she would never be affronted by envelopes addressed to her dead first child. Much later, I realized she had been doing the same thing, hastily throwing out mail addressed to Jake so I wouldn't have to endure the epistolary abuse.”

The Catalog Blizzard

In any given year, catalog companies in the U.S. mail more than 19 billion catalogs, consuming almost four million tons of paper, despite wide-spread adoption and use of the Internet. Although the quality as well as availability of recycled paper has improved, the majority of catalogers, among them J. Crew, J.C. Penney, and L.L. Bean, continue to use solely virgin paper. What a waste, for everyone and everything.

Bad taste all Around

This appeared in today’s news and is either an indication of capitalism run amok or simply the inability of management to contribute to passengers’ sense of breathing space.:

“US Airways to place ads on barf bags”

PHOENIX, Arizona (AP) -- US Airways wants to make the most out of a nauseating situation. The Tempe, Arizona-based airline plans to sell advertisements on its air-sickness bags -- those pint-sized expandable envelopes tucked between the in-flight magazines and safety cards.

"They're in every back seat pocket," said spokesman Phil Gee. "We figure while it's there, why don't we make it multipurpose?

– what’s next? Toilet paper rolls with ads on each sheet?

When Deviance is an Advantage

Here are some notes and observations I've made based on the book "Deviance Advantage: How Fringe Ideas Create Mass Markets," by Mathews, Wenty, and Wacker (Crown Books, 2002)
* Over the past 3 decades deviance, not reasoning, began to drive the social and commercial agenda. The result? Things that we found putrid only yesterday we lionize today.
* Deviance migrates from the fringe to the social convention, rapidly creating markets, and changing the rules of the social and commercial game.
* The pace of change has picked up to the point where the functional distance between the fringe and social convention is all but disappeared.
* Markets form and dissolve in unanticipated places and in record rates. Yesterday's pariah is tomorrow's market darling, and what was once beyond the social pale is suddenly a hot commodity, ie. NY executives marketing gangsta rap and convicted criminals for huge profits
* The pace of deviant change is so intense and so relentless that we are beginning to witness compound deviance. The rules of the game keep changing before we have a chance to write them down.

What to Tell the Junk Mailers

Please remove my name, and all its variations, and remove all of my contact information from any and all of your databanks, mailing lists, shared files, etc.

I do not want any mail, including solicitations, flyers, brochures, catalogs, announcements, circulars, postcards, promotions, faxes, or email at any time, ever, from you or any of your associates, affilitates, subsidiaries, vendors, or clients.

Thank you

Tired of Receiving Junk Faxes?

Here’s a letter you can use…

YOUR UNSOLICITED FAXES ARE NOT WELCOME HERE. READ THIS AND IMMEDIATELY CEASE AND DESIST SENDING THEM TO [your fax number]

Under U.S. Code Title 47, section 227 (b) (1) (c): It shall be unlawful for any person within the United States to use any telephone facsimile machine, computer, or other device to send an unsolicited advertisement to a telephone facsimile machine.

"A telephone facsimile machine is defined in Sec. 227 (a) (2) (B) as: "equipment which has the capacity to transcribe text or images (or both) from an electronic signal received over a regular telephone line onto paper."

Under this definition, an e-mail account, modem, computer and printer together constitute a fax machine. The rights of action are as follows: Under Sec. 227 (b)(3)(B):

"A person or entity may, if otherwise permitted by the laws or rules of a court of a State, bring in an appropriate court of that State:

(A) an action based on a violation of this subsection or the regulations prescribed under this subsection to enjoin such violation,

(B) an action to recover for actual monetary loss from such a violation, or to receive $500 in damages for each such violation, whichever is greater, or

(C) both such actions. If the court finds that the defendant willfully or knowingly violated this subsection or the regulations prescribed under this subsection, the court may, in its discretion increase the amount of the award to an amount equal to not more than 3 times the amount available under subparagraph (B) of this paragraph."