Let me first say that there are no hard feelings towards the canned precooked meat product made by the Hormel Foods Corporation. That kind of Spam is great. The product has gained a peculiar infamy and has even entered into folklore and urban legend. We wish you continued success… 

As far as the electronic version goes - and to reference a famous Mark Twainism - spam is like the weather…everybody talks about it, but nobody does anything about it.

Is it the predictable subject matter? The occasionally offensive content? The ridiculous schemes targeted at the (apparently) extremely gullible? Is it the clumsiness with which this bizarre style of "advertising" is delivered? The bad grammar and misspelling to trick our email filters? I’m not sure, but this is my rant.  

Raise your hand if you routinely see these things in your inbox:

It’s brutal. Wikipedia defines spam as the abuse of electronic messaging systems to send unsolicited bulk messages, which are universally undesired.

Re-read those last two words: universally undesired. Has any one thing ever been more disliked by more people? These deceitful, low cost, no accountability methods drive us all crazy day-in and day-out: fake products, lottery fraud, chain letters, pyramid schemes, Nigerian fortunes that have been left to YOU – all utterly irritating. No, it’s more than irritating. These days it is a drain on business productivity, an increasingly costly waste of time and resources that continually bung up personal accounts as well corporate networks where workers are distracted. Oh yea, then there’s that whole threat of spreading viruses that follows spam like its little brother. What a bonus…

It causes to me to ask: what’s the point? Are people actually falling for these scams and replying to these swindlers with their personal information. I imagine some must, why else would it continue, right? Or better yet, the messages that I receive in foreign languages – these are highly effective – I can’t make out a word even I were to click on your disposable link.

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It's what's in the bag!

The McDonABarfBag story of the week is this one, courtesy of the Bulldog Reporter's Daily'Dog PR Biz Update section dated March 17th. Pardon me McDonald's for being a stickler, but putting pictures of your "users" [diners] on your burger bags doesn't meet (or meat) my standard of user generated content.

No one will dispute that you have content-generated users galore –i.e., lots of large people who got that way while eating the contents of your bags. Putting pictures of these large people brimming with your content doesn't qualify their contribution to your marketing effort as user-generated content.

From the Daily'Dog item: The move by the world's biggest restaurant chain to feature customers on its packaging is the latest proof of the importance marketers are placing on user-generated content like the homemade videos and blogs that rule the Internet… "People are really interested in reality," McDonald's chief marketing officer Mary Dillon told Reuters, pointing to the rise in popularity of reality television shows. "It's about real people connecting with our brand."

Real user-generated content would, for example, be bag notes from real eaters explaining why they continue a practice that some would submit has a direct correlation to their disproportionate girth or which spotlights their amusing answers to questions like:

What does "Cardio Vascular" mean?

Answer:  He's the President of New Mexico.

Look, I ate at McDonald's once. OK, a few times when I had the metabolism of the entire Roman Army. Subsequently, I have used the drive through whenever possible because it helps maintain the illusion I don't or won't look like the average users inside the place. Now if I drive through again, I'll get a bag with pictures of real users working on ingesting more content. Are they really going to put pictures of their average eaters like me on their bags?

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