As one of the authors of The Cluetrain Manifesto, I thought I’d pass along this outstanding example of “clueful” marketing that arrived in my inbox this morning:

From: Jenny Witherspoon [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Tuesday, June 18, 2002 7:57 PM
To: 100@FREE MEMBERSHIP THIS WEEK!
Subject: hello

Hello this is Jenny Witherspoon I am one of the featured girls on www.amatureacadamys.com We are giving away 100 % FREE memberships for this week to see how people like it. Please check it out and let me know what you think! Hit me up on AOL Instant Messenger My Screen Name is JennyAmature82 If you don’t like watching XXX videos , webcams, and looking at my NUDE pictures you may not want to join.

Regards,
Jenny Witherspoon
www.amatureacadamys.com

She really seems to have read and absorbed our book! This is non-money-focused (“FREE”), acknowledging that connection is more important than shoving coins over the line. It’s all about joining with other people (“memberships”) rather than mass marketing to a faceless crowd. In fact, she even gives out her IM account number so we can make direct contact! She doesn’t put on a phony veneer of perfection — you can really hear her own voice. This doesn’t sound like it was written by a committee and then deloused by lawyers! She signs her own name. And she’s totally upfront about the fact that her product isn’t perfect, acknowledging that we may not even be interested in it. Wow! It’s great to know we’ve had this type of effect!

I’m so proud!

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Well, here’s a briarpatch of postmodern netiquette (= “nettlequette”?). If you’re reading this because AKMA sent you over here because I chided Ms. Witherspoon on her spelling while introducing my own spelling error, you will notice that my blog entry in in fact makes no reference to Ms. Witherspoon’s spelling. I had taken that line out because there is no actual misspelling in her message except of “amateur” in her domain name. But I thought I’d taken out that reference before I posted it. Apparently not. So, AKMA must have read a posting that was up for just a few minutes this morning, and I’ll be damned (actually, I will be damned, but that’s a different story) if I’m going to re-introduce the inaccurate sentence about her spelling just so AKMA’s tweak still makes sense. (I am, however, leaving in my misspelling.) As for AKMA’s main point – that I am an annoying, self-righteous twit who recognizes flaws in everyone except himself – well, yes, I assume that that’s obvious.

Categories: Uncategorized dw