Marketing Spam of the Day

So I just got an email from a company that allegedly produces 3D animation music videos. It was pretty obviously a mass email that I just so happened to end up on their special list for, but usually I’m okay with stuff like this. That’s how I somehow ended up on Whistler’s snow report email list, and a few blog email lists that I’ve actually really enjoyed reading, so usually it’s no big deal.

Generally the filters that get you hooked up with something like Whistler’s snow report are pretty good at sending these to appropriate contacts. As a musician, once you release something, you are inundated with emails for musician-related services. The initial wave takes a while to die down, but eventually the targeting gets better and it’s less crap and more services that you could maybe see yourself using.

Now I’m not thrilled with my life being analyzed for ways to sell me things – I don’t want to give that impression – but it’s much better than being targeted blindly for everything; advertising has come a long way, sneaky and questionable as most of their practices may be.

But in this age of directed advertisement, sometimes the advertisers’ filters aren’t good enough. Music videos? Sounds intriguing; I’m a musician. They even call me out as an instrumental artist, so it would appear as though they’re on board with that sort of thing. Because most people are not; I’ve gotten similar emails in the past for rap video production ...not my forte.

So they hook me in with their opener that actually sounds like they’ve done their homework.

Then they proceed to tell me about their lyric video services. You know, the ones where the lyrics scroll down the page while the song is playing… And they keep repeating the word “instrumental,” like somehow it makes sense that an instrumental act would want a lyric video.

Sometimes you just gotta scratch your head.

In the immortal words of Inigo Montoya: “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”