Posts tagged “newsletter”

Opposite day?

Today I received a newsletter from some furniture design company. As far as I know, I’ve never heard of them nor asked to receive their newsletter. Isn’t that um spam?

I used the link in the newsletter to unsub:
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Press the button and I get this:
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which I don’t read carefully, presuming that in fact it is removing me from their list, until moments later I get this email:

Subject: You’re on my list!

Hi

Thanks so much for joining our list, your subscription was a success. If you have any questions about our emails or have any feedback of your own, please don’t hesitate to reply to this email. We’d love to hear from you.

Also, We’ll be including a removal link in every email we send you, so you can leave our list any time that suits you

Ohhhhhhh. The unsubscribe link takes you to an unsubscribe page which then asks you to confirm your SUBSCRIPTION. Nice inescapable loop, folks.

Snapshots of Cultural Phenomena, a blast from the past

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If you recognize this little guy, you probably saw Turn Signals back when we put it out at GVO, at random times between 1995 to 2000.

I just acquired a missing issue and have updated the compilation/archive here (PDF link). Check it out! Last-century references to Grant McCracken, the inventor of ramen noodles, Don Norman, and gorillas…among others.

Turn Signals…in a time before blogging, we used to take interesting articles from the paper and photocopy ’em, highlight interesting parts and put them in each other’s mailboxes. Someone suggested we turn this into something for our clients, and so we (in conjunction with a graphic design firm) created the brand, name, identity and so on. We took stories from the press, but rewrote them in a pithy/wry voice.

In its earliest days, Turn Signals was sent out by fax. We used a fax-merge program on a Mac and it would sit and dial and redial for days upon end. We didn’t have the greatest database, ended up calling people at home in the middle of the night with a fax tone. It was not a good system, but there was something about the push, the paper version. We heard stories back bout it being posted in the bathroom or left on coffee tables. Or people would fax us back with a scribbled note, or a request to be added to the distribution. We probably had a stronger identity, visually and voice, than the company did, overall. I don’t think we ever fully leveraged that, though.

Eventually we went to PDF as an email attachment. It was opt-out, which I think went with the times, although maybe we’d want to take a different approach now.

Starck Newsletter

Today I received an email “newsletter” with the subject line Philippe Starck Newsletter – the entire “newsletter” is reproduced below – I think it’s hilarious – new products are available? That’s all they’ve got to tell me? Certainly an interesting and minimal interaction….


De nouveaux produits on t mis en ligne:

New products are available:

Nuovi prodotti sono stati aggiunti in:

Wir haben f’r Sie neue Produkte online:

Nuevos productos han sido puestos en linea:

www.starck.com

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