Defining Spam Down

The biggest challenge in using new technology for marketing is stupid marketers. Consider, for example, this example, reported on the Church of the Customer blog: Bluetooth-enabled phone users at Heathrow Airport were bombarded with spam messages asking them to download a commercial.

Virgin Atlantic has been testing this out in their airport lounges for a while. "I think it's done very well because it enables the customers [to choose]. It doesn't force it on them," says Charles Vine, manager of the lounges.

Excuse me? If my cell phone starts demanding my attention, I will probably assume I'm getting a call or a text message from someone I know. If it turns out to be Virgin Atlantic asking me to download a commercial, I am getting an annoying, intrusive messages that I didn't ask for and don't want. Where is the choice there? Simply because I can stop the next step, a video download?

I actually already disable Bluetooth on my phone whenever I enter a place like an airport, because of security issues with the technology. It's fine in my home or driving in my car, but I've got no desire to walk through a crowded airport with the possibility of someone hacking into my phone. Now that's replaced by a more prosaic concern: getting spammed.

Just as "permission email" has come to mean "anything we tricked you into signing up for of you didn't insist five times you don't want," too many marketers are eager to take any opportunity for intrusive marketing that annoys customers. We are our own worst enemy. We find ways to annoy customers (spam, pop ups and pop unders and interstitials) and customers find ways to block us.

Does it occur to the marketers behind this stuff that perhaps annoying your customers is a bad paradigm?