“Oh you’re the people who send me Spam…”

I recently had a tweet conversation on the surprisingly effective and rapidly viral MoonFruit Twitter promotion. It went like this:

@bestofjess Am I the only one who thinks the #moonfruit promo is uber spammy? http://www.moonfruit.com/macbook-pro.html
@[otherperson] Aren’t most promos spammy?
@bestofjess No! This promo has no relevance; mentions just for the sake of mentions.
@[otherperson] Sounds like all contest promos to me

Who among us email marketers has never heard themselves labeled as a Spammer? But is that really all marketing and promotion is? Unwanted, irrelevant, clutter-some content for the sake of mentions?

I won’t bother reemphasizing that this is my own opinion and not fact or even prominent reality, but I will acknowledge that I’m about to choose a side publicly. And I say, of course not.

This isn’t a new question: Marketing and Advertising have been doubted by an entire generation of consumers as Mind Control’s sneakier or at least subtler brethren. And so their next of kin: social media and online promotion are similarly guilty until proven worthy.

But email marketing, online contesting and viral promotions aren’t all Spam. Just like all advertising isn’t one-directional propaganda. Good marketing offers information about a company/product so that when Joe Customer needs something, he’s got options. I’m not just a pusher. I don’t sell ice to Eskimos (those who don’t need it) or ice cream to diabetics (those who shouldn’t have it). I offer information to the consumer about my product. If it’s something you want/need, you’ll come to me to buy it – or go to the grocery store, ticket booth, etc.

But I digress. MoonFruit challenged Twitter users to tweet frantically using their designated hashtag and a link back to their promotional site. The purpose? Inevitably to drive traffic. The real effect? Tens – maybe hundreds – of thousands of tweeple dropping the hashtag into their tweets. Sometimes the tweets are about MoonFruit, sometimes they’re not. Sometimes they’re positive comments, sometimes they’re not (a CMO’s nightmare whether s/he likes to admit it or not). The only common thread for the participants? They want the MacBook Pro.

These tweeple may not even know what moonfruit is. They may never try it, or might hate it and never really recommend it. That is Spam. Mentions for the sake of mentions. Content without relevance. Twitter feeds everywhere are rolling through the daily grind and hitting little #moonfruit speed bumps. The twitterer and twitteree – I think I’m making up tweet vernacular – neither one may care about MoonFruit.

I believe in the power of fun contests to draw in users to learn more about your brand. I believe in having your name out there - sponsorships, branding - for top of mind awareness. But like the guy in legal says: without the intent to harm. Overloading inboxes with pharmaceutical promotions in Russian and contributing to the ever-increasing speed of my twitterfeed with bunk messages are cumbersome, bothersome and dilute the nature of email and Twitter respectively which is for me (User) to delve into the things I'm most interested in by opting in and/or following.

The worst part is that MoonFruit's Twitter Trick will probably be seen as a raging success, further adding fuel to the fire against promotions and adding eager Spammers to the ranks of those trying it out. It’ll fizzle in success as Spammers jump on board, as every good idea does. And anti-ad-ers will point and lump these guys in with the rest of “us marketers.” And it’s too bad. Because marketing and advertising is a valuable part of the communication food chain.

My job isn’t “Spam”. If it were, I wouldn’t do it.