For the first time in the history of marketing, business and other organizations have recognized their customers are actually people.
Not only that, they have taken this realization into account. It is called the automated phone call (or, “all call”).
Consider how we respond to marketing phone calls. We hate them. We curse them. Often, we scream and rage and toss hitherto unknown profanities at our human caller — if we answer the call to begin with.
Before the automated call, many of us felt badly afterward. We know our raging has no impact. We know the people responsible never hear from us. We know that the human at the other end of the phone is some poor schmuck who has accepted the damnation of a “marketing representative” who places phone calls because he or she can’t find a decent job.
We know that person is making calls she doesn’t want to make. We know he spends hours with unanswered calls or, worse, answered calls that produce nothing more than streams of abuse. And we know he or she is faced with long lists of calls to be made and, in the worst cases, a commission scenario that effectively means they’ll make enough to buy a hamburger deal at a fast food chain — if they are lucky.
So while we get some relief in venting our anger, we end up feeling guilty and ashamed for having abused some poor sod who has no choice.
Now, we have the automated phone call! Marketing is now allowing us to rage and scream and be as profane as we like — without the guilt! There is no shame in abusing an automated call. There are no human feelings to be hurt!
Consider the brilliance of it: marketing has responded to their late recognition that we are actually people by creating a system that is less human in order to accommodate our humanity.
That, my friend, is the genius of marketing.
Related:
- The inefficiency of the all call (Seth’s Blog)
- Cannibalism and spam (Seth’s Blog)
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