Being Snarky About Free Stuff
So I'm going to ruin a surprise. About a month and a half ago, I posted about something stupid I had won in a raffle. I had said that anyone who sent me their mailing address would receive some stupid material. Well, the stupid thing I won in a raffle was a set of American Politics Quotable Notables Notecards. It contained two each of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Hillary Clinton. Also included was a set of stickers for each pair of cards. Examples include, for the Bill Clinton card, a cigar sticker and one that says "Good luck on your INTERNSHIP!" (Internship takes up as much space as the entire rest of the text and is in bright blue.)
Dick Cheney's got a pink triangle sticker, and one that says "Just a pretzel away from the presidency!"
Haw!
After writing little notes for the two people who sent me their addresses, I decided to write one to the company, "The Unemployed Philosophers Guild", which is based right here in Brooklyn.
The letter spans three of their ridiculous, stupid cards.
We'll see if they write back. Full text after the jump.
Dear Sirs / Madams,
I recently won a set of the enclosed stationery in a raffle and was dismayed to discover that a person or persons unknown had put time and effort into designing and, inexplicably, publishing cards and stickers which, though intended to be funny, are most likely to induce laughter among people best described as "older relatives."
Perhaps these "older relatives" are your target audience. If that is the case, I'm certain that your cards have been successful. Only among that special group that tirelessly repeats the same bad jokes for years and years without ever failing to laugh at said jokes, sometimes even in the middle of telling them, could your tired collection of cliched jokes and quotes from the oft-lampooned political careers and public lives of Clinton^2, W, & Dick Cheney elicit guffaws, laughter, or even mild chuckles.
As a bonus, the available writing real estate, awkward and minimal as it is, speaks to either your company's poor design sensibility or your target audience's probable lack of anything substantial to say in correspondence. Perhaps you could write back to let me know which.
<3 - Stephen
but hows the new years res going??