As the owner of a somewhat popular blog, I get many email from folks with questions about Illustrator. But that isn't all the email I get. Apparently, people see a popular blog as a market that they can target. And so I get press releases from many many companies (several each day actually), informing me of the Next Biggest Thing. An EXTREMELY small percentage of these solicitations are actually for a product or service that I believe you (aka, my readers) would be interested in. For example, Pantone reached out to me with some advanced information about their new GOE system, which enabled me to talk about it at the time it was announced. But that was an example of something I think you folks would be interested in.
But just to give you a taste of the absurd requests I get, check THIS email I got today:
My name is ****** and I work for *********. I've just taken a look at your
website and I think your customers would find our Car insurance product really
interesting.
OK, first, it's quite OBVIOUS that you DIDN'T just take a look at my website. If you did, you'd quickly figure out that folks who read my blog are probably interested in Illustrator, as well as things revolving around the life of a designer, or someone who uses Adobe products. But Car Insurance?
But I really feel bad about how it's obvious this person put a tremendous amount of effort into reaching out to me. I get the feeling he really wants me to advertise his product for him and he promises to pay me for referral clicks frm ad banners that I'd place on my site. I feel obligated to do SOMETHING, you know? But at the same time, I am really fed up with these constant solicitations that have no relevance to my readers. If you're a PR person, or a marketing person from a company, you should at least have the courtesy to not waste my time with things that aren't relevant to me or my devoted readers.
And so I've decided to do the following: I'm going to endorse this fellow's competition.
I personally use All State car insurance. I think they are wonderful. The agent I use is the same person that my father uses, and so he's been with the family for quite some time. The one time that I was unfortunate enough to get into an accident (someone ran a red light and broadsided me), they were extremely helpful and I received a check to cover the damage before I even got the bill from the body shop.
I'd also like to endorse the folks at eSurance only because their TV ads are done in vector illustration style, and I assume there's a good chance they use Illustrator for some parts of their production process.
And now, back to our regularly-scheduled program...