Real stories vs "messages"

I get alot of messages. Voice mail, email, Facebook Fun Wall comments, Twitter replies, you name it. And I would say that the majority of them are from some organization or marekter pushigng a product or asking for money. I open up my various forms of connection and delete them all. Do I want to be your friend of Plaxo, NO - its just more spam. Do I want to subscribe to this email newsletter, hell no, I don't have time to read the ones I WANT. Do I want to follow you on Twitter -- only if you are damned interesting. I just don't have enough time left on the planet to deal with all this "messaging."  And until marketers realize that "eyeballs" don't count and relatiosnhips do, they'll keep heaving this stuff at us. They'll glory in how many people open an email, even though that's their Outlook auto preview opening it and its relegated to junk mail before I even see the header. They'll claim tens of thousands of readers of a newsletter, even though no one reads a word.
Which is why I find myself so surprised and delighted by a simple email list serve for graduates an friends of Oyster River High School in Durham, NH. It has added to my inbox hundreds of emails that I really don't have time to read, but then I paused. I thought about time as a finite element and realized, if I only had a year to live, I'd much rather read reminiscences of my home town than another marketing newsletter. Who cares, in the grand scheme of things whether I know that precious 10th tip for improving my SEO, I'm fascinating by the stories of shop class for girls and home ec for boys. The only downside of all this is that all these stories are in my in-box and I can't really share them with anyone. Of course if anyone on the Durham Friends List wants to add them as comments here, that would be just ducky with me! 
But for all you marketers out there, think about this. We all only have so much time left on the planet and we'd all much rather be interacting with other humans and reading real stories than having to listen to you guys hawk another product, service or cause. So unless you make those messages as compelling of the story of Tom Beckett and Officer McGowan we're  going to ignore you. 

Comments

[Liza Jones]

This is a great post, Katie. All the things people have been thinking, but didn't have the blog to say. I wish more marketers would realize that our brains are overloaded enough as it is! I don't have time to read the stuff I actually want to read, much less the superfluous material. As a PR person, I try to come up with news announcements, etc. that are newsworthy - but I'm sure I'm guilty of perpetuating this cycle, too.
Thanks for reminding me to keep the content in check.