THE 21ST CENTURY'S MOST LOATHSOME MAILING PIECE (SO FAR)

THE 21ST CENTURY'S MOST LOATHSOME MAILING PIECE (SO FAR)

James R. Rosenfield

October 2000

The most loathsome mailing piece I have seen thus far in the 21st Century hails not from egregious England, nor from obnoxious America, nor even from adolescent Australia. No, surprise of surprises, it was created in erstwhile clean, green, and socially responsible New Zealand.

It promotes a conference called "Capturing Kids and Teens." Stupidity and greed, rather than evil intent, are probably the culprits here, but the only adequate term for this piece of junk is economic pedophilia.

Start with the title, "Capturing Kids and Teens." "Capturing?" What on earth does that conjure up? Cages? Putting them on display? Hunting? Prey? Kidnapping? Every image is less savory than the one before.

Here's a quick thematic tour, each theme expressing attitudes that make one's flesh crawl:

· Contempt: "The Most Recent Pester Power Research…"

· Inappropriate sexualization: "Humour - especially darker, edgier, more irreverent forms of humour!"

· Obsession: "How Sanitarium have made 700 attempts to capture during its history and it still keeps changing!" For non-Kiwis, let me point out that Sanitarium makes cereals, and is a big brand in New Zealand despite having the worst single name in the history of business. For everyone who speaks English, I need not point out the execrable grammar, which includes a transitive verb without an object ("capture") and indecision about whether "Sanitarium" is a singular or plural noun.

· Manipulation: "How much influence do kids actually have? At what age…what is the degree? How to determine influence and how to increase it…How to capitalize on it in product, media, packaging and more." This bit of jaw-dropping barbarism is followed by a note in italics: "This presentation is subject to government approval of television advertising to children in the future. Should this session be made redundant it will be replaced by a session focusing on other media."

· Sloppiness: "How New Zealand children are embracing new medias (sic)" gives us momentary amusement, especially when we see that the fellow pluralizing an already plural noun is a Senior Lecturer at the "Universty (sic) Waikato (sic)," presumably the bastard step-sibling of the "University of Waikato."

· Sloppiness and sex: "Exploring the opportunities for the future: integrating TV and Internet mediums." I'm getting real confused by media, medias, and mediums, aren't you? This session, by the way, led by the Managing Director of e-innovatus, which sounds like an unpleasantly contagious disease, will cover "Utilising appropriate content angles to teenagers: there is more to life than sex."

Speaking of sex, here's the pedophiliac thing itself, thinly disguised: The first day - September 27, 2000, if this atrocity was actually put on - ends with entertainment from "special guest dancers from Boyzdance2 (aged 6 -14)." Nothing more need be said about that, I guess.

· More sloppiness: "Outlining the attitudes and beliefs of youth with regards to drink (sic) driving…"

· Poisoning Kiwi kids with American junk food, thanks to Burger King: "Understanding the emotive needs of children and catering to them."

· Subterfuge and sloppiness (again): "…the case for underground marketing and it's (sic) relationship to traditional forms of media."

The piece is illustrated with kid pictures of the speakers, which I guess someone figured was a neat idea. In reality, because of the sepia, 1960's quality, the photos subliminally communicate an unwholesome quality, as if candidly shot by Uncle Harry, who proceeded to use them in dark, unconventional ways. The whole thing just absolutely gives me the creeps.

FRIGHTENING, HIDEOUS, AND REALLY, REALLY DEPRESSING!

The really depressing thing about this shameful piece of exploitation is that it's so, so American! One would hope that as the 21st Century progresses, there will be voices crying out against the American hunger to commodify everything and everyone in the world. New Zealand, along with France, is one of the few nations with the conviction and character to do this, and now this garbage crops up right in Godzone itself.

I would ordinarily lay the grammatical errors at the feet of a certain Australasian carelessness about such things. In this case, though, I will posit an approach/avoidance relationship to the queasy material itself - who would want to proofread such smarmy matter?

Well, let's name some names: This conference is being put on by something called "IIR" ("Irresponsible Idiotic Ravings," perhaps?) It's endorsed by something called "smei, The voice of marketing." And its "Official Publication" is Marketing Magazine.

They should all be ashamed of themselves.

WE ARE MARKETING OURSELVES TO DEATH

I've long espoused a customer, rather than a product, orientation, a point of view shared by every other "expert" in the marketing world.

The problem is, where we once flogged products to death, we're now flogging customers to death, particularly in the U.S., although the reprehensible New Zealand piece shows how Americanized the rest of the world is becoming.

We marketers turned people into consumers in the 1950s and 1960s. That was bad enough. In the 1990s, and now in the 21st Century, we are transforming people into consumption machines.

Consumption machines exist only to purchase goods and services. They are in effect robots whose job it is to buy. There is a new kind of dehumanization here that's quite scary, and quite a distance from what we "experts" anticipated when we used to jabber about a "customer focus."
It's a dehumanization that underlies privacy abuses, telemarketing torments, sweepstakes antics, and the whole panoply of insensitive, cement-headed intrusions into people's space and time.

Trade associations, publications, and conferences buy into this completely, routinely and uncritically articulating a view of other human beings that comes close to cannibalistic. We plunder customers to make money to buy food, right? It would speed things up simply to eat our customers, and if we could, we would. That's the message of viral, stealth, guerilla marketing. That's the message of "Capturing Kids."

It's a pretty grim message.