Want to unsubscribe from common sense? There’s an email for that
I was about to wish you a “good morning” but stopped for sensitivity reasons. I then decided “happy Sunday” might be better but, for sensitivity reasons, I held back. “Sunny greetings” seemed like a good idea too but, for reasons of sensitivity, this wasn’t appropriate either. So here we are at a feelings stand-off because just when we thought it was safe to venture back out into the world and say what you want, we’re being bombarded with the most perverse marketing nonsense to ever be deployed by a send button.
To be fair, this is not a global phenomenon (thank heavens!) but something that has taken hold in the sensitivity departments of companies up and down the UK. If you’re not up to speed on this new form of e-blast, it’s meant to make the recipient feel like their personal history is at the core of a fragrance, fashion or hospitality company’s every concern as you’re asked to opt out of correspondence for Mother’s Day, Easter, Father’s Day and any other day that is important for sales but might somehow cause offence, bring back bad family episodes and demand a week or two off work. What a lot of insincere, stupid nonsense!
For starters, if you’re a brand that is so concerned about the words “Mother’s Day” causing offence, then why bring it up in the first place? If you don’t want to encourage your customers to buy something for their mum then get your clever marketing team to cook up a better idea to flog your new scent or sell your discounted suites – and don’t send out an email that might already cause extreme pain by mentioning “mother” as a starter. Second, what does it say about your marketing department and brand in general when you send out something so half-baked and kneejerk? I received such a drippy email from a company I like(d) very much but I’m now wondering: who on earth is running the show over there? Do they really think that they’re going to win loyalty with such correspondence? And third, where do you draw the line? Do you stop at “good morning” because some customers might have woken up with extreme diarrhea at 07.00 and are forever traumatised because they narrowly missed the toilet bowl? Should a company stop sending email correspondence after sundown because some people might be scared of the dark? And what about seriously offensive words such as “wishing” or “kindest” in a sign off? I might be in therapy because not all of my wishes have so far come true and people haven’t always been at their kindest over the past five decades.
That managers and business owners allow this behaviour to pass, and even flourish, is at the core of the ongoing collapse of common sense and the erosion of resilience. At a time when companies should be concerned with their bottom line and embracing as many customers as possible, the idea that there are sensitivity gains to be made by attempting to be a “feeling brand” is most offensive. We have been through a solid six to seven years of this type of behaviour and it’s not working. UK retail is in crisis and brands are presenting seemingly perfect worlds in their campaigns that are completely removed from the reality of demographic data – they need to get back to running customer-service training programmes that attract talent and retain passionate employees. They must park their politics and focus on selling better products and creating environments where people feel good and want to consume.
So far, I’ve not received any of these opt-out-of-daily-life emails from Sweden, France, Switzerland or the US. Hopefully this is one of those British curiosities that remains on the islands. Wishing you the sunniest, happiest, motherly week ahead.
