This has turned into a bit of an opus on my thoughts on marketing, so I’m publishing it in parts.

As part of my job as a product manager at TheLadders.com, I have numerous test accounts on the site, which are treated no differently than real users with respect to email updates. Lately, I find myself reading quite a lot of it. I chalk it up to eating our own dogfood, and it’s that, but with a healthy serving of ‘hey, this is actually useful’, followed by a side of boredom.

We produce a volume of email that some would call spam, but it’s actually pretty content heavy. Marc has a weekly email, with his thoughts. Recent highlights have been his tirade against a disenchanted American Airlines stewardess, and a poem from a member called ‘Twas the Job Before Christmas’. Maybe not the best content on the web, but I think the personal touch is a big part of why almost all of our customer service emails are addressed to him personally.

We also send out an email in the middle of the week with career advice. This is real content we’re sending, not the daily crap I get from retailers advertising the sale du jour. We also include a section called ‘freetime’ at the bottom of the email, with our staff’s pick of the goofy stuff on the web. Last week we had a Mobile Notetaker, new glow in the dark technology, smile recognition technology, and the Wired gift guide.

The best ones, though are the marketing ones. 90% of the content is the same, but they also include an ‘industry buzz’ section of articles specific to marketing. This week, there was an article on what I’m going to call authenticity marketing, focusing on a fake blog supposedly by the creator of a TV show that was ruined by advertiser meddling. The weird thing is, the blog was created for the advertiser that the blog criticises, a new hair gel by Garnier. The ad agency decided the best way to get people’s attention was to fake ruining a fake tv show to advertise a real product. What?

I don’t know about anyone else, but lying to me twice doesn’t give me any warm fuzzy feelings inside. They say they thought of this in the Times article

To allay concerns that the campaign will be dismissed as a flog — the derisive name given to fake blogs that do not identify themselves as sponsored — the Web site is liberally peppered with references that it is “brought to you by” Garnier Fructis Style Bold It.

“If someone was fooled, even for a minute,” Mr. Gunn said, “we hope they’d get a kick out of the fact they were fooled.”

I’m not a moron, and I fell for it hook line and sinker when I saw it last week. And I didn’t know it was fake until I saw the article from TheLadders. And the web site being “liberally peppered with references” is bullcrap. The web site says it in the context of the ruse, as in this quote.

This has been the absolute worst experience of my life; I am financially broke and psychologically broken. But whaddayoucare? You were promised a comedy.

So enjoy the show.

And don’t forget: This is all brought to by Garnier Fructis Style Bold It! Endurance Gel and Power Putty. (I didn’t make up those names. They did.)

Oh, I see. This is a sponsored fake blog about a fake cancelled TV show. That’s definitely what that quote tells me. So this is obviously a bad experience. I don’t think it’ll sell more products. If the viral trend described in the blog of using the hair gel as a sex lubricant had actually happened, maybe. Best case scenario, Avenue A/Razorfish gets some cred for putting together one of the most convoluted marketing campaigns of all time.

So here I am, in some ways a marketing professional, faced with 3 different examples of how you can talk to your customers. You’ve got AARF lying about a lie, Philips Norelco joking with you about second puberty (haven’t written this section yet, but the site is referenced in the NYT article), and TheLadders.com giving me some advice and pointing me to some interesting reading. I’m happy to say that I trust my company the most.

I don’t know when Part II will happen, hopefully Friday. I intend to talk more about these black hat marketing techniques, misguided attempts at user engagement, and other idiocy that marketers think works.