A clever email marketing campaign from the folks at MarketingProfs for their upcoming B2B Forum — which makes a larger point about just how much the culture of marketing has changed. I received the following email from “Don Draper” with the subject line, “Why I’m Not Attending MarketingProfs B2B Forum,” and I just had to read it:
Just goes to prove that with email marketing, as with most other kinds of technology-powered marketing, the creative still matters. (Ironically so in this case.)
Several of my colleagues and I received the same email and everyone’s first reaction was “its this legal?”. The line is quite blurry since the sender and message was not true (though it was painfully obvious). What are your thoughts on the legality of it?
Well, I’m no lawyer, so my thoughts on the legality of it are nothing more than uninformed personal opinion. 🙂
I thought it was clever and creative. Whether it falls under the domain of “fair use” or not, I can’t say. My impression is that the Don Draper meme has a pretty wide adoption in marketing circles — I’ve seen many references in blog posts and presentations — and that such usage has probably on the whole been very beneficial to the show.
But at the point when businesses start to leverage it for commercial gain, as is arguably the case here, I can imagine valid objections.
Any qualified legal experts want to weigh in?
While we’ve all been totally immersed in Marketing Technology for the past 10 years and all looking for guidance and best practices to keep up with the latest, this campaign mailer is an excellent (and humorous) reminder that marketing is still about the message. Personally I applaud the marketers that came up with the campaign. Very creative! Would love to hear what the open and click thru rates were.
I’m not a legal expert, but I think it’s creative and funny.