Really cheesy marketing messages

You can easily tell when a web company’s marketing department is built out and bloated: you are receiving cute notifications and reminders. They use lame metaphors and softer language to make the messaging more human. A popular practice is to pretend that the web service *is* human by using first person and sometimes even a name. And then of course the assurance that *everyone* is on the case to fix this a s a p and you as a consumer should not try to contact customer care (too costly). Just sit back and relax cause someone down in the dungeon is fixing the “glitch”.

Example 1: “Can’t talk now. System’s down. Sorry for the holdup. Looks like a temporary glitch in our network has part of Yahoo! mail down, so you’re briefly without service. Rest assured the alarms are blaring in the basement and our team is working frantically to get you up and running ASAP. Again, the snag is on our end — so there’s no need for you to do a thing.”

Below is probably the most lame activation email I’ve received during my +13 years in the internet industry. By trying to make it human and personal it feels fake and unreal. I’d rather just get a message from Joe-Blow, junior marketing manager, saying that there is a new release out that I should check out with a few new cool features. Or even better, just an email from one of the engineers letting the world know what they been working 24/7 on and why.

Example 2: “Spock.com misses you. I really thought we had something going when you signed up for the Spock Beta. Even though you moved on, I haven’t. I’ve been working on several new features hoping you might join Spock, including Picture and Tag Voting Wizard, News, and Spock Power.

Hopefully I’ll be good enough for you this time, but if not, I can take a hint. You won’t be hearing from me anymore. (Sigh.)”