I noticed that sales of Spam have increased http://www.dailyyonder.com/spam-sales-soar-shoppers-look-cut-costs and the reason given is that consumers may be ‘trading down’ to Spam.
I have an alternative hypothesis - Gmail is inadvertently (I assume!!!) marketing Spam. One of my little tasks when I visit my Gmail account is to visit my Spam folder and clear it. I have noticed that whenever I do this I get Gmail (context-sensitive) adverts for Spam (the food) whilst I am deleting Spam (the devil’s spawn ruination of the Internet). So my hypothesis is that Google in particular and the Internet in general are raising the profile of Spam by linking to delicious little recipes for Spam, the luncheon meat product.
So when I am deleting the Spam in my Gmail account, I get links to Spam recipes.
Could this be linked to the increase in Spam sales? All those Gmail account holders tempted by delicious Spam recipes, like Spicy Spam kebobs in the screen shot above.
4 responses so far ↓
1 Meetay Moonay // Jun 20, 2008 at 2:53 am
You gotta admit, Google would not just inadvertently allow this to happen. They are aware! And knowing the mentality of the people at Google, they saw it as an opportunity to do some good. The Hormel Company has been bad-mouthed to death by people calling junk emails “Spam”, and Google has helped them to increase sales. I don’t know whether they have some kind of marketing agreement with Hormel, but I would not be surprised if they just “let” good things happen sometimes without getting anything in return! I do not know any of this from being privy to any inside information, but I get the impression that Google is a company full of wonderful people. And their company motto is something like “Don’t be evil”.
2 Frances // Jun 20, 2008 at 8:29 am
That’s an interesting take - I hadn’t thought of that
3 Nicholas // Aug 23, 2008 at 5:18 am
Actually, the normal function of that space is advertising or news links in your gmail inbox (or any other sent/drafts/etc…) as you obviously already know, but google thought it would be unfair to run adverts in the spam area, as this might cause people to associate the product or link negatively. So they opted for these spam recipes… it’s just one of those coincidences that turned out to be beneficial to someone (Hormel this time). Google has no advertising deal with Hormel, though I bet they’d have no problem getting some free spam over at the Googleplex!! (google HQ)
4 Frances // Aug 25, 2008 at 8:55 pm
Thanks Nicholas, you sound as though you know what you are talking about - I was only surmising.
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