Advertising

From: Halford, Ben (ben.halford@pera.com)
Date: Fri Jul 02 1999 - 12:07:54 EEST


I'm going to make a general point here which is directed at an increasingly
high number of people / companies who blatantly use the rp-ml as a bill
board. Where I come from these messages (I've seen two this week at least)
might be called propaganda. They are certainly NOT news releases as news is
gathered by independent (we hope) journalists. They ARE press releases, and
as such are designed to convey a new development, process or service offered
by a company. They are therefore very close, if not indistinguishable from
being adverts. Now I have no problem being informed of the latest and
greatest technology / information systems in the world of RP, after all this
is why I subscribe to the rp-ml. What I do mind is the tone of this type of
message which both contain quotes from the people who send them (!!!!!!) and
pricing information. If the product or service is really worthy of further
investigation then all we have to do is hit the Reply button or pick up the
phone. It's that simple. There can be no justification for blatantly
including costings in e-mails purporting to be informative. Of far more use
would be quotes from customers (well known if possible) who have used the
service and can offer an end user perspective. There I've said my piece.
Before I go I would make one further point. That is that this may just be a
cultural issue and that while this might be the norm in certain regions of
the world others view it as totally unconstructive (want to guess what my
interpretation is ? ).

For more information about the rp-ml, see http://ltk.hut.fi/rp-ml/



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