In an article in DM News, Tom Rapses, a creative director, divides marketing into two separate categories:

1. Old-school response marketing (although Rapsas does not use the term, this is often referred to as “interruption marketing” because it intrudes into other activities such as watching TV or sorting your mail).

2. “Self-service” marketing — including word of mouth advertising, blogging, podcasts, and social networking sites such as Facebook.

“Self-service marketing is all about putting content where people will find it,” writes Rapsas. “It makes sense to go where the customers are.”

On the surface, the notion of putting content where the customers are looking for it — instead of forcing it upon them when they AREN’T in search mode — seems unbeatable.

However, if it works so well, why is so much more money spent on magazine, newspaper, TV, and radio advertising — which are intrusive — rather than on Yellow Pages ads, which once were the primary medium for self-service marketing?

Rapas suggests that you need multiple channels — a combination of traditional direct response with non-traditional self-service marketing — to capture more attention, traffic, leads, and sales.

Do you agree that both old-school direct response and new school interactive marketing have their place?

Or do you think the continued use of intrusion marketing in the 21st century makes one a dinosaur?

Source: DM News, 4/21/08, p. 10.

“False bonding” refers to advertising that seeks to create a bond with the prospect, but does so in an illogical or insincere — and therefore ineffective — way.

A good example is the recent radio spot for Geico offering homeowner’s insurance to people who rent.

It begins (and I am paraphrasing): “We think renters are cool! Why? Maybe it’s all that cool stuff you own….”

The copy then suggests you need to insure your cool possessions with a Geico homeowner policy even if you rent instead of own.

The insincere notion is that “We think renters are cool!” The illogical notion is that renters own stuff that’s cooler than what homeowners own.

Think of the differences between renters and owners. There are many. But does the word “cool” pop into your mind? I didn’t think so.

And it’s stupid to say renters are cool because they own “cool stuff.” They mostly own the same stuff that homeowners do. What renter-specific possession is “cool”?

I would have taken a different tact: “As a renter, you own a lot of valuable stuff. But if it’s stolen or destroyed, who would pay for it? Not your landlord! That’s why you as a tenant need ‘renter’s insurance’ just like homeowners need ‘homeowner’s insurance.'”

Geico’s “cool renters” radio spot is yet another example of how advertising built around an incorrect premise is doomed to fall flat.

Copy has to make logical sense, so readers may be a bit confused by the direct mail promo I received today from Ode magazine.

The order card gives two choices. You can select either “payment enclosed” or “bill me.”

But in all-cap red letters, the copy says “DON’T SEND MONEY.”

If I am not supposed to send money, why are they telling me I can enclose payment?

I think what they MEANT to say was something like “You need not send money now. We’ll bill you later, if you like.”

Right?

Or do you see absolutely no disconnect between “payment enclosed” and “don’t send money”?

“Spelling is overrated,” said a caller to my favorite NYC morning radio show today. “As long as you get the point across, who cares how it’s spelled?”

The host replied, “Because the point you get across when you misspell words is that you’re stupid.”

One reason for poor spelling is increased reliance on spell-check software, which as we all know, is far from infallible.

The other is texting, where one types “cu” instead of “see you.”

Spelling skills are declining, but do you agree that readers readily accept this decline and are no longer bothered by spelling errors?

Or do you agree with Marilyn vos Savant, arguably one of the world’s smartest people, who says spelling errors “nearly always cause the reader to form a negative view about the writer’s inherent abilities, and they certainly cast an unflattering light on the written piece as a whole.”

Lots of pompous pseudo-intellectual new media advocates talk almost daily about the rise of YouTube, Facebook, blogging, podcasting, RSS, and other electronic social media — and the demise of what they derisively call “intrusion marketing” — mostly direct mail, commercials, ads, and the like.

So to these young geniuses, I pose a question.

If social media and other forms of electronic two-way communication are making traditional “dead tree” media obsolete, why hasn’t direct mail — perhaps the most intrusive of the paper-based marketing media — disappeared?

According to the Winterberry Group, total U.S. direct mail spending in 2007 was $58.4 billion, an increase of 18.2% over the $49.4 billion spent in 2004.

What gives?

If “no one reads direct mail anymore” as one blogging consultant told me recently, why are advertisers spending more than $58 billion a year on it?

Are they insane? Do they love to throw away money?

Or is someone in this electronic era actually (gasp) opening, reading, and responding to advertising (intrusion marketing) sent through the U.S. Postal Service (an archaic, old-fashioned channel)?

Source: DM News, 3/31/08, p. 8.

In the old days, sales reps for drug companies were invariably middle-aged men, known in the trade as “detail men.”

The average detail man wore a downtrodden appearance and demeanor, no doubt from years of shabby treatment by the M.D.s who were his prospects — and treated him as a second-class citizen.

The detail man is a vanishing breed, largely replaced today by the “detail woman.”

Increasingly, these drug reps are bright, ambitious, well-dressed, highly educated, and usually drop-dead-gorgeous women — mostly in their 20s and early 30s.

Is this merely a sexist observation on my part?

Or is it a deliberately sexist sales management strategy carried out by drug company executives to get middle-age male physicians to prescribe with their gonads instead of their brains?

I have, by the way, noticed that male doctors are MUCH nicer to these pretty young women today than they were years ago to the detail MEN — worn-out salesmen who haunted their waiting rooms, waiting sometimes hours for a chance to peddle their wares.

Will I burn in the underworld for saying this out loud? Or am I right on the money?

GM, a reader of this blog, posed a question to me recently.

“Bob, you say that the freelance life has a large number of pros ? and probably an equal number of cons. What would you say is the #1 drawback of being a freelance writer?”

I think there are as many answers to that question as there are freelance writers on the planet.

I talk with a LOT of freelancers. Among their most common complaints are clients who: don?t like your copy ? ask for endless revisions ? haggle over fees ? rewrite everything ? want copy written overnight ? never return calls ? or don?t pay their bills on time.

For me, the biggest drawback to self-employmentn is the outrageous expense of paying for private health insurance. The annual premiums for our family are now equal to the annual salary I earned in my first writing job out of college, as incredible as that sounds.

Every month I write that huge premium check, and it makes me sick. Then, when we file medical bills for reimbursement, they send them back again and again for verification or more information — improving their cash flow by delaying our check.

The freelance life isn’t all beers and skittles. What bugs YOU about being a freelancer? What’s YOUR biggest headache in your freelance writing business? I’d love to know!

Decades ago, there was a terrific restaurant in NYC with no waiters: the Horn & Hardart Automat.

All the food was displayed behind glass windows. To order, you inserted your bills and coins in a slot, pushed a button, removed your sandwich or pie, and put it on your tray — no waiting, no being ignored by busy wait staff, no tipping.

Now, automation and self-service are returning with a vengeance:

** In LA, you can buy medical marijuana from a vending machine if you have a magnetic card authorizing you to do so.

** Expensive consumer electronics, including cell phones and iPods, can also be purchased from vending machines, eliminating the need to go to Best Buy or Radio Shack.

** At my local supermarket, there is now a self-service line with no cashier or clerk to ring up your items or pack your groceries.

“Are we coming to a day and age when we will never have to interact with another person ever again?” asks NYC radio personality Elvis Duran.

Of course, there are cons as well as pros to automation and self service. When buying consumer electronics, you can’t haggle over the price with a vending machine or robot.

Presumably, you get less service with self service (inherent in the term “self service”).

You also deny yourself the expert advice and help of knowledgeable salespeople, such as the do-it-yourself tips you might get from the older clerk in a good neighborhood hardware store.

But even that kind of expert advice may soon be computerized: in France, they are developing a PC software program that can substitute for a live psychotherapist.

Beta versions have received high marks from both patients and professionals alike.

Is there any of us who isn’t at risk of becoming obsolete and replaced by a machine sooner or later?