When clever marketing goes wrong

targeting way off

[Tastatura]

My first name is slavic in origin, so I can see how people who don't know me might think that I am Russian. I am not nor do I speak the language (and I live in U.S.)

I just got a promo letter from well known U.S. TV provider, and it's in Russian - perhaps "clever customization" but they completely missed the mark :)

Ironically I am thinking of switching my cable provider, and I would be interested to see what they have to offer if the promo was in English - now the letter is going straight into garbage.

[GaryK]

Hardly a day goes by that I don't get spammed in Russian. My heritage is Russian, but my family name was Westernized back in 1946. I've never spoken Russian. The only thing I can think of, and really it makes little sense, is I host a website for a friend of mine from Irtusk, Siberia. He's lived in the US for ten years now. There is no Russian anywhere in his folder on my server. Go figure! ;)

[taasinge]

There must be loads of databases of all imaginable kinds out there. Including some with people who live in one specific country and may be assumed to speak and read and write one specific language that is not native to that country.

There are of course different attitudes to deciding which people should be added to such a database. One attitude is to add anybody where even just one single known factor suggests that they may actually belong there.

In the electronic age there is very little waste involved in adding too many people to a database.

[wheel]

Seems pretty clever to me. If you're even 5% targetted, that's probably an excellent mailer.

Years ago I had a friend last name of Mai. She routinely got sales calls in Asian languages - and she was definitely not asian. And this was pre-internet, so the techniques not new.

[ceefour]

That's quite hilarious... If all the systems were perfect then us humans would have nothing to do :(

[Essex_boy]

Recall a sales letter to a relative with the surname Porter, the letter was addressed Miss Porker....