There was a time when I would have paid good money for a device that made kids become thoughtful and quiet when you pressed a smiley face button and zapped their brains with red laser beams. That’d be worth the money for sure.

It’s an ad for a $100 no-touch thermometer. I’m not sure why this is supposed to be better than any normal infrared thermometer that costs half as much.

It’s Italian. Maybe laser lobotomy is the “in thing” these days in Italy. I wonder if it works on seven year old girls.

The best part about the press release I received was the claim that “it will make parenting a delight!” I’ve got news for you, you baby zapping maniacs: I love my kids and I love being a dad but no thermometer in the world is going to make me suddenly think that parenting is some garden paradise.

Even carrots, milk and apple juice tasted better to the kids when they were wrapped in the familiar packaging of the Golden Arches… Study author Dr. Tom Robinson said the kids’ perception of taste was “physically altered by the branding.”

Study: Food in McDonald’s wrapper tastes better to kids – CNN.com

Listen, I know you don’t really believe in what you’re saying. I appreciate that you’ve been hired by a client to spread the word about their amazing product. I appreciate that there are eleventy billion blogs in the world that you view as potential free billboard advertising space. And I appreciate that you view bloggers as “trusted influencers” who you think you can lead sheep-like to a new product or service that they will gush over on their blog because…

Well, wait a minute. I don’t know. Why do you think that?

Should I be flattered that a PR firm has contacted me personally? (It’s not spam if the form letter was written and sent by a person, right?) Am I supposed to think that the product is great because you said so? You weren’t paid you for your opinion, were you?

Since you don’t seem to get it, here are ten reasons why your blog-exploiting buzz campaign will fail and one reason it might succeed:

1. You want something for nothing.
2. My opinion is not influenced by the number of exclamation points or sly, parenthesized asides in your message.
3. I don’t know you and you don’t know me. Why should I respect your opinion?
4. You must think I’m incredibly naive to believe your paid-for opinion of the product is genuine or impartial.
5. You have obviously not read my blog. If you had, you wouldn’t have emailed me.
6. You have absolutely no clue why people read me.
7. You view blogs as free billboard space.
8. Your message is written for an insulting, cartoony stereotype who does not exist.
9. I am not fooled by your faux-casual turn of phrase. You are not my friend.
10. You forgot to delete the instructions from your boss from the top of your form letter. (That one was hilarious. I got a follow-up email from them apologizing profusely for, essentially, not adequately hiding their true intent.)
11. Bonus. Your attempt to exploit the trust of my readers is shameful.

And the only reason it might work? If the product or service you are pimping is actually great. And if it is, you don’t need to be so coy about it.

Here’s the letter I received this morning:

Hi John -

Have you ever been driving in traffic with a car full of hungry kids that are all screaming for a McDonald’s happy meal and wondered how you could safely use your phone to find the nearest one (anything to get them to be quiet!!!)? Parents are starting to catch on (not to mention love) Tellme, a service that gives you business listings for FREE by category or business search. With Tellme, you simply dial 1 800 555 TELL, say “business search” and then either the category you’re looking for i.e. “pizza” or the name of the business i.e. “McDonald’s” and Tellme will either text you the listings with directions and a map or say them to you (it will even walk you step by step through the driving directions which I personally LOVE). Need your wife to meet you somewhere with the kids? Have Tellme forward her the listing as well all in the same phone call.

Try it out for yourself – I have a feeling you’ll be hooked!

Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any questions.

Best,

Jamie

Jamie Walker| Associate
Sparkpr |( 415.321.1887 | C 510.502.2981| * jamie@sparkpr.com

Finally, in the spirit of the “no publicity is bad publicity” credo:

I despise McDonald’s. I know how to parent and will not do “anything to get them to be quiet.” And the Tellme service, in my opinion, doesn’t work very well anyway. I tried it just now and, for review purposes, I asked both of my children (aged 5 and 7) to scream loudly in the background during the call—you know, to simulate your vision of my pathetic suburban family lifestyle. It failed to list either of the two In-N-Out hamburger restaurants within 2 miles of my home; instead, after three tries, it provided helpful directions to an In-N-Out Smog Check, In-N-Out Lube, and an EZ Burger. I am not hooked.

Who is this for? People who can’t find a McDonald’s? Seriously? Maybe others will have better luck, but I could only recommend Tellme jokingly.

With love,

John

Gotta run. I’m closing a deal that will net me 10% of $9.8 million and all I have to do is transfer some money to a charity for a British guy dying of cancer in Dubai.

I LOVE the internets.

I thought about writing back with all of the reasons I think SPA is an awful product but the email was just a polite request so I politely declined. I wrote back, “No, thanks.”

And then today I got another email from Joyce asking me to sign up and to “let me know what you think.”

As if the service itself wasn’t annoying enough, spreading like some kind of raging venereal pandemic across the hoo-ha of the internet, now I’m getting spam from them, too.

Well, Joyce, here’s what I think.

SPA previews are an awful fad that will not go away soon enough. The real reason “half a million” publishers have signed up since November 2006 is because it’s shiny and new—and if there’s one thing the internet loves, it’s shiny and new. Half a million publishers signed up to run popup ads, too. Remember popup ads? Yah, no one uses them anymore because they were so universally hated they spawned an entire cottage industry of popup blocking software and plugins.

Popup ads sucked. They obstructed what you were reading. They were distracting. Guess what Snap previews are. They’re popup ads all over again. I feel like I’m taking crazy pills!

Here’s the thing. I like hyperlinks. Links are what make the internet the internet. I don’t want people to stay on this site and click ads (there are none) or take part in the “Incremental Monetization through the Found Real Estate” of flagrantdisregard.com. When I link someplace, I actually want people to go there. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have linked to it! SPA is possibly only useful in certain niche contexts—mainly large indexes like search engines or directories.

Fortunately, unlike herpes, there is a cure for SPA and it doesn’t involve their temporary, cookie-based opt-out.

Open your hosts file and add this line:

127.0.0.1 spa.snap.com

On Windows your hosts file is in C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts. On OS X and Linux it’s in /etc/hosts. Save the changes and restart your browser.

Snap won’t bother you again (unless you start getting spam from them). In fact, you may even notice that those pages you visit that use Snap load a little faster because your browser isn’t downloading a bunch of junk that you don’t want.

The phrase “crimes against humanity” springs to mind almost instantly.