Too many promotional emails?

People often complain about the number of emails they receive. Since I have a home-based copywriting business, I get a decent amount -- business and personal mixed. But, I'm careful. And I block nasty ones regularly. So the e-mail flood is manageable.

However, I'm amazed (and sometimes annoyed) at the number of emails I get from a select group of companies. I remember opting in for some of these companies. But I certainly didn't expect to get almost daily emails from The Cleveland Indians, Epson, Border's, CompUSA, and a few others. A big deal? Maybe not. But add them up and you're talking nearly 1,500 a year from this group alone. Now we're talking big numbers.

Here's a simple suggestion to online marketers: Ask us how many emails we want to receive per year. Or give us a chance to select from among various email frequency levels. For example, I could choose to receive: (1) only critical announcements, or (2) critical, plus important new product/service announcements, or (3) every email the company could possibly dream up. We'd all get exactly what we want. And no one could complain.

I hate to see otherwise fine companies turn themselves into spammers.

The toxic AIG brand

Forty-five days ago, most people hadn't heard of AIG. Today it's perceived as one of the most contemptuous companies on the planet. If you were an ad agency or public relations firm, would you take on AIG as a client? Give it an extreme image makeover? Some might argue that this is the ultimate communications challenge. If you could get people to like AIG and do business with them, you'd likely buy yourself a spot in the communications hall of fame. And you'd make money along the way. Fair enough.

But this is a highly toxic brand. It smells funny. It burns. That's a tough ship to turn around. I read on Yahoo that former AIG CEO Maurice “Hank” Greenberg says the bailout has "failed" and he's proposing a 10-point alternative focused on saving, not breaking apart, the mega-insurer.

Greenberg gets an "A" for effort. But if he and others plan to save AIG, they better plan on burying the AIG name.