Marketing is weird right now, no? Either it feels like it’s from the ancient past — like TV ads for toilet paper — or it’s an email from a sandwich chain you went to five years ago that’s like, “We miss you! We now use bread to build ventilators.”
Both extremes feel wrong. The influx of brand emails definitely feels wrong. The emails! The emails. They have replaced Hillary’s emails, maybe, as the presumed referent when someone shrieks “the emails!”
Twitter is full of good jokes about these emails. This was my favorite:
Also, great idea from a blog post about the emails, by Bijan Stephen:
Let's just agree to only send emails that are meaningful in some way — like, add a cool link, or a joke, or any other semblance of humanity. I can't stand the focus-grouped, produced-for-mass-consumption corporate tone of messages that run hundreds of words but do not have any meaning[.]
Dare to dream.
For work, I talked to some marketers about the emails. They pointed out, rightfully, that not all of the hyper-timely coronavirus emails are ridiculous — some of them are useful, like the email from your favorite restaurant saying it’s open for takeout but closed for dine-in. The rest are flailing attempts to connect to the news, which is nothing new, either — just look at this absolute fever dreamail I screenshotted in 2015. (<— you MUST click through. It’s maybe from a dolphin?)
This phenomenon is called “cultural marketing,” and it’s an alternative to personalized, cookie-driven marketing — less about the reader, more about ~the discourse.~ At its best, cultural marketing is the feminist Gillette Super Bowl ad (ugh… it really did get people talking, though). At its non-best, it’s The Emails.
I thought it would be light and entertaining to interview the marketers about the emails, and what it’s like to be a marketer during the pandemic — a nice, low-stakes break from reading about being a nurse during the pandemic.
I ended up getting very choked up, though!
I asked my sources, among other things, whether they thought brands should be advertising products and experiences people can’t safely have right now. Like, should Disneyworld advertise while it’s closed? Should airlines advertise while they have so few passengers they’re running cargo-only flights to pass the time?
One marketer said, basically, that those type of ads would feel tone-deaf right now, but if travel restrictions and shutdowns go on in the long-term, people will want to see ads for travel and crowded restaurants. It will help them dream about the future.
That hit me right in the heart. I miss the future, and the sensation of planning, so much. I feel like I’m in suspended animation; all my plans except working from home are on hold. I don’t know when I’ll see my dad again or when/if I can move and on and on. I have written already about how freakishly, diseased-ly future-oriented I am, and right now I am oriented towards a hole in my imagination.
(I guess some people would call that “disoriented.”)
I do want ads for the normal future soon! I want to watch an ad set in a bustling Rainforest Cafe, and I want to cry confusing tears. I just don’t really want any more of the coronavirus emails. But it’s a dull time, and I’m checking my Promotions tab. I kind of get why they keep coming.