It is no surprise that more ad dollars are being invested in pull media, such as search, as the alternative is down right annoying. This became very clear to me today when I received no less than 7 calls from the same telemarketer about these great "free" gifts that I have been randomly chosen to receive, but of course didn't request.

This situation was both annoying and a little scary, as they knew the last 4 digits of my credit card and claimed to be affiliated with my credit card. The seven calls gave me a chance to do some probing and I quickly learned that they were not with my credit card company at all. As usual, I declined their "free" offer because to be honest, I know these things are never free and I don't think my wife would be all that excited if I started to build a collection of "Girls Gone Wild" videos at the house.

Had the conversation ended there, I would have been more than happy to chalk this up as another mildly annoying telemarketing call. But each caller said that I had to go through a recorded description of the offer during which I was to respond OK twice and at the end I would be given the opportunity to decline the offer. The problem was, that I never made it to the end because their statements were worded in such a way that an "OK" response would have resulted in a recording of me agreeing to receive the offer. After explaining why I had a problem with this I was hung up on by a couple of the callers and the others said that I absolutely couldn't be removed from the list without going through the process as the system was automated. So I guess I just have to keep an eye on my credit card statement and keep fielding these calls.

While I filed a complaint with the BBB, I doubt anything will come of it. The only way to stop this is for the budgets to dry up. Hopefully advertisers will become more aware that there are better options, where you can draw your customers in by giving them what they want, rather than jamming what you want them to have down their throat.

Labels: pull marketing, push marketing