Laura,
I guess you’ll have to tell me about it, won’t you?

Better yet, blog about it!

Jeremy,
I’m sure we’ll meet up at ASW.

Just make sure the guys don’t go too nuts at ASE.

Laura

Thanks for dropping by the site earlier. Wish you were going to ASE, but I’ll be sure to grab my ASW tickets early.

Thanks for mentioning the issue about the Playboy Party on your blog. I can understand why there might be some confusion as to why this has become a big deal. Basically, at least for me anyway, it’s not strictly about the party. If you ask me, if some marketer wanted to privately get together and go to the PM, I’d really have no problem with it. What concerns me is the *marketing* of the event to the IM community at large. The methods used were really distasteful and have cast a pall on the community at large.

First, I was not on the RJ’s list at all. I only need to insulted once to know that I don’t want to be affiliated with someone like that, so upon reading the his pitch a few months ago I knew it wasn’t for me. That’s fine. But what I *didn’t* expect was to be hit over the head with his filthy pitch for the party by MAINSTREAM marketers who I *had* given my opt-in to. I’m sorry, but when you sign up for someone’s list under the guise of marketing information, that doesn’t give the publisher the right to send, what can only be described as a link to a salesletter that had more profanity than anything I had ever read in my ten years in the IM industry. Not to mention, the half-naked pictures inside.

It broke the unwritten code of opt-in mailing: You tell people what you will send them, you honor their trust in you when they gave their email address, you consider who your audience is, and you provide value. All aspects of this were broken by these publishers.

Probably most disturbing is the fact that there are kids who dabble in this business and who subscribe to these newsletters from their mentor. If I had a child who was subscribing for innocent marketing information and found out that links to trash like this were inside I would be livid!

So it’s not just the party, but the people supporting it will attack and argue that some of us should “lighten up” or that it’s not a big deal. If these people want to go to the Playboy Mansion and make fools of themselves for the night, more power to you, but don’t drag other people into it like this.

So that’s my viewpoint on it. The big picture was missed by many of these marketers, and I have already received a very contrite email from one of the endorsees. It’s making a huge impact on their businesses. Number one rule of marketing: Know your market. Whoops, guess they forgot that one!

Thanks Andrew for having your comments open!

Jennifer