Alex Reid

I was a bit surprised when I learned that I reached a limit on my YouTube account’s ‘favourites’ (a collection of both witty, funny and/or tasteless videos). I was surprised that you could have a million subscribers in, but you couldn’t give props out to over 500 by way of linkage.

One more reason to have one’s own web site; I’ll just bookmark my favourites here.

According the CBC, a marketing company owner in Vancouver has started a web site alerting people about a little known policy of Canada Post. It’s called the Red Dot Campaign and it offers very clear steps on how to stop junk mail.

Apparently for ten years now, Canada Post has offered an option to not receive junk mail by way of placing a red dot on your mail box. Since Canada Post hasn’t really advertised that they do this, only 2% of Canadians opt-out. Their PR rep claims that this actually means that 98% of Canadians want to receive junk mail.

“From our studies, 98 per cent of people want to receive unaddressed ad mail because we are delivering important information — government information, information about their community,” Canada Post spokeswoman Lillian Au told CBC News.

This reminds me of how some politicians and business will twist the availability of information to justify a poor response rate or otherwise favourable evidence of what the marketing team wants to hear. It’s manipulation, but this is just sad. Even the idea of trying to call junk mail “unaddressed mail” that may include community information, as if “To all members of our Community” didn’t indicate enough that’s “addressed”.

Last January, Canada Post’s Manager for National Media Relations François Legault wrote a rather strange Letter to the Editor to the Brampton Guardian in response to a citizen’s previous Letter to the Editor complaining about junk mail. I call it strange because it’s the worst spin. It comes off condescending like “I’ll have you know, sir” but without any actual information.

Let’s break Legault’s words on the subject down:

Canada Post always respects a consumer’s choice not to receive unaddressed material. Anyone who does not wish to receive admail can simply affix a clear notice on the outside of their mail receptacle. This allows Canada Post to better serve its customers and ensures unaddressed material reaches those who value it.

Where’s the mention of the red dot, or how to get information about it?

I’ve already affixed a clear notice that I don’t want junk mail, yet I still get junk mail.

Contrary to what Mr. Last seems to suggest, many Canadians actually value admail. In fact, research demonstrates that over 60 per cent of Canadians look through unaddressed advertising mail while more than 80 per cent of them read advertising mail directly addressed to them.

I found lately that just throwing my mail up in the air sorts the real mail from admail, but I might still be included in the 60% who “look” at my mail when I withdraw it.

Mr. Last also argues that advertising mail does not constitute mail. Actually, postal administrations have been delivering mail for over a century. Advertising mail is one of Canada Post’s most important products.

I think this one stands out for itself.

I’m pleasantly surprised that one company, Pepsi, took a minute during the busiest rush of American television to pay homage to what is truly golden: silence.

Pepsi paid upwards of $5 million to show this silent and closed captioned 60-second ad during the Super Bowl show on Fox this past Sunday.

The ad replays an old joke in the deaf community in which two guys try to find the home of their friend Bob so they can watch the game together. It’s dark in the street and they can’t remember which number Bob lives at. The problem is solved by laying on the car horn. Bob, their deaf friend, can not hear the horn and so he’s the only one in the street to not turn his lights on in response.

This isn’t just the most expensive PSA ever, all three guys in the commercial are all Pepsi employees. Lost guys Brian Dowling and Darren Therriault work for Frito-Lay in Arizona and for Pepsi in Chicago, respectively. Bob is played by Clay Broussard, another Pepsi employee who proposed the ad idea. BBDO worked on the ad pro bono.

Bravo to Pepsi for enlightening 100 million Americans in one minute.

In this simple and soft-voiced flash video, the Canadian Privacy Commissioner addresses exactly what people are signing up for when they use social networking sites such as Facebook or MySpace.

From Facebook.com’s terms of use:

“By posting user content to any part of the site, you automatically grant … an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide licence … to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such user content for any purpose, commercial, advertising, or otherwise. … (yet) Facebook does not assert any ownership over your user content.”

Software giant Microsoft made an unsolicited takeover offer to Yahoo Inc. for $44.6 billion. Yahoo has responded it will take the weekend to consider the offer.

This might be the only way for Microsoft to compete with Google.