Not so Gr8, Permission Marketing Foul on JetBlue

I love JetBlue. Good prices, good service, good technology. Basically everything American Airlines isn’t. Plus, JetBlue is basically the only discount airline that will get me to Syracuse, NY from any Bay Area airport with only one connection. I’m a member of the JetBlue TrueBlue program and have a JetBlue American Express credit card. As a result, I’m on the JetBlue promotional mailing list. It’s cool, I agreed to it, I gave them my permission. No problems there.

But a few weeks ago they sent me a promotional offer via said mailing list. Enter their “All-You-Can-8″ sweepstakes and “you could win a flight for yourself and up to seven friends.” “Wow, that’s Gr8!” I thought. So I checked it out. Turns out they require you to provide the email addresses and phone numbers of your seven friends in order to enter. This is essentially a sneaky way for JetBlue to grow their mailing list with people that DID NOT grant permission to receive promotional offerings. If Seth Godin saw this, he’d have a fit!…and would then plug his book, Permission Marketing. As much as I would love a free flight for me and seven of my friends, I’m a good enough friend to NOT cause their inboxes to be filled with unsolicited email offers. Needless to say, I chose not to enter the “All-You-Can-8″ sweepstakes.

Your personal email address is a precious commodity. I’m not talking about one of your crappy decoy email addresses. I’m talking about your REAL personal email address. The email address you use to stay in touch with friends and family, read your bank notices, etc. How many people, when presented with this offer, would hand over the REAL personal email addresses of seven of their closest friends without thinking twice? I’m guessing a lot would. Now they’ll have random, un-targeted email offers intermixed with those baby pictures from cousin Steve. Ugh.

JetBlue, I still love your product, but shame on you.

4 Comments / Posted in: Marketing

Robots, dogs, monsters, etc…

I’m a big fan of explodingdog. I have been for about six years, on and off. “Sam’s” style is pretty dynamic, although grounded by a few common themes. He’ll go through some style phases that cause me to lose interest, but typically comes back with some amazing stuff. Personally, I prefer his darker and more abstract work.

He’s posted some pretty amazing stuff over the past two or three weeks. Just a couple examples:

02.22.08 – they’ll never really know

02.25.08 – none of this makes sense

Now go subscribe to his RSS feed! Do it!!

4 Comments / Posted in: Cool, Design

“PS Dog Muppet”

I was digging through my laptop bag earlier today and found an old sticky note I wrote to myself stuffed way in the bottom. The only words written on it were “PS Dog Muppet.” I have absolutely no idea what I was trying to tell myself. I can only speculate it involved Rowlf from the Muppet Show.

It’s quite possible I wanted to PhotoShop something involving Rowlf. But that’s only a guess. Of course PS could refer to a lot of things. Here’s a list of my theories:

1. Picante salsa dog muppet
2. Purple, sasquash-dog muppet
3. Pregnant, sassy dog muppet
4. Patience Simba, dog muppet
5. Practice singing dog muppet!
6. Patrick Swayze dog muppet?

This is the worst blog post ever. I apologize to the 3 people that will read this.

8 Comments / Posted in: pointless