Have your Voice Mail call mine!

During the recent presidential election our home was besieged by an army of robo-callers.  The robo-caller is a computerized auto-dialing machine that calls your phone to deliver a pre-recorded message.  The onslaught of calls overheated our handset and nearly wore out three ringers.

I received personal calls from presidential candidates, their wives, and a host of their famous personal friends.  Like most well educated, intelligent, independent thinking Americans, I welcomed the constant interruption to my day with the warmth of an angry pit viper.

I truly wondered who actually listened and was influenced by the calls and if we should allow folks who DID listen and WERE influenced to vote at all. 

The majority of Americans have opted out of receiving solicitation calls by putting their phones on the national “Do-Not-Call” list.  Yet the folks we selected for public office, who graciously agreed to pass “Do-Not-Call” legislation, had exempted themselves from the law.  What a surprise.

While this is a lesson on what’s broken in America – I received a far more entertaining lesson in what’s broken in American marketing from my local newspaper.

I’m a reasonably bright guy and would prefer to only receive calls from people I want to talk to.  The list does not include sales people or politicians, especially if they aren’t on the other end of the line when I answer the phone.  If I want to buy something, renew my subscription or make a decision to support a political candidate, I certainly don’t need somebody to call me with a recorded message to help me make my decision.  I’ve been able to do it all by myself for more than 50 years.  Hence, I have caller ID, which allows me to decide who I do and don’t want to talk to.

Last week, my local newspaper, called me at 6:20 PM, interrupting my dinner.  I’m on the national “Do-Not-Call” list, so I’m sure they were committing some sort of felony.  However, it turns out they were committing an even greater marketing felony.

We have a great local paper and I always enjoy reading it.  We subscribed for years until one day we realized we only read about a quarter of the papers delivered to us.  The Sunday paper was especially challenging.  Both Donna and I are in good physical condition – healthy and strong.  However, we had to back the pickup truck up the driveway on Sunday in order to haul that puppy down to the garage and into the house. 

I figured that each copy of the Sunday paper represented the death of at least a quarter acre of Peruvian rain forest.  Being environmentally conscience and not wanting to be singularly responsible for South American deforestation and the acceleration of global warming, we decided to cancel our subscription.  This decision also saved us from receiving robo-calls from Al Gore and the associated subscription for Al Jazeera.  

However, the paper continued to be delivered for some time after we cancelled.  Apparently the subscription manager was too busy coming up with marketing strategies to tell the delivery guy we did not want home delivery anymore.   

It took roughly 6 months of intense negotiations with the paper and their collections department to convince them that we really did not want home delivery.  Additionally, we did not feel we should have to pay for the papers they threw at our house after we told them to stop. We agreed not to charge them to carry the paper to our recycle bin if they would stop littering our driveway, yard, hedges and/or gutter - depending on the speed and accuracy of the delivery guy.  They finally went away.

Unfortunately, they remembered our phone number.  As I already said, these guys print a pretty good newspaper, which we frequently buy from those newspaper vending machines.  However, their marketing strategy leaves a little to be desired.

Back to the phone call.  Our caller ID showed “The Greenville News.”  Thinking their collections department was bored and wanted to reignite the argument over their attempted “forced subscription policy”, I answered the phone.  My objective was to restate an emphatic position on our desire not to subscribe.

When I picked it up – it was “The Greenville News” robo-caller.  The robo-caller stated the following – I’m really not kidding:

“This is a sales call from your local newspaper.  We are sorry but all sales representatives are busy at this time.  We will call you at a later date.  We apologize for any inconvenience this call may have caused you.”

That was the absolute Gold Standard of telemarketing.

Let me translate their message:

“Hello potential consumer, I’m calling to sell you something even though you are on a list of people I’m not supposed to call.  I can’t believe you answered your phone.  In fact, I’m so surprised that I simply don’t have anyone to talk to you.  You see, we fired all the humans because nobody answers our unsolicited solicitation calls.  I’ll have to call HR and have their computer place an employment ad for a salesman so we can actually talk to you next time we call.  In the interim, please have your Voice Mail call our Voice Mail and we can do lunch.”

Priceless!