Political Mailers: Effective Marketing or Pointless Evidence of a System Run Amuck?

If you’re anything like me – and let’s be honest, here, who wouldn’t want to be exactly like me? – you come home after a long day at the office, slip into your evening jacket, shake yourself up an ice cold martini, and leisurely peruse the day’s mail while puffing on a pre-dinner pipe in the library.

Ok, so I don’t really do that either.  Usually I have to take out the trash or plunge a toilet as soon as I get home. 

Nothing says Welcome Home quite like, “Oh, hi, honey.  Shitter’s clogged.”

That’s okay, though.  I don’t mind; it’s all part of being the modern Renaissance Man.  Or at least that’s what I tell myself halfway through a six-pack.

Ahem.  Anyway, I do like to check the mail first thing.  You know, just in case Ed McMahon wants to award me a few Publisher’s Clearinghouse millions from beyond the grave or something.  As it turns out, there’s typically nothing but the occasional bill, maybe an ad magazine, or perhaps a form letter from Local Corporate Community College X suggesting I go back to school and get a certificate in Computer Support Services.

Um, thanks, LCCCX, but, just, No.  I think I’ll ride my career out with that silly Bachelor’s in Computer Science and Math I earned from, you know, the accredited university back in 1995.  But, hey, maybe I’ll stick your letter up on the fridge, just in case I decide to call for more information (I won’t).

Of course, in addition to all that very compelling daily correspondence, there’s been this lately:

In case you’re wondering, that’s a picture of all the political fliers/mailer cards we’ve received over the past, I dunno, 10 days.

Look at it there.  All of it.  Tremble before it’s massive glory.

Oh, and I took this picture on Monday.  More, so very much more, has arrived since then.

The most impressive thing is that there’s only about four individual types of card there.  Maybe five.  Whatever, the point is that they’re sending me doubles.  Triples, even.  It’s the very definition of insanity.

I’m stockpiling these in case the winter we didn’t get this year returns doubly pissed off and frigid next year.  In which case I’ll have an ample supply of fuel to burn for warmth.  So, I guess, thanks, candidates for that.

But seriously, candidates, THIS IS STUPID.  Look, not only is your mailer card not going to affect my voting decision, sending me multiple versions of the same thing makes me believe that either:

1. You have been employing the “shotgun” method of direct mailings, which includes all the precision and grace as a 13 year-old hopped up on 2 quarts of “Mt. Dew Code: HEADBUZZ XTreeeeeme” trying to shoot a housefly with a fully-automatic paintball gun.
2. You have no idea who you’ve been sending these things to and probably don’t care as long as you spend your budgeted campaign dollars and some statistic someplace (actually compiled by a guy nicknamed “Slumpy”) demonstrates adequate “regional traction”

Either way, such a display does not lead me to believe you and/or your respective campaign teams have your shit together or could find my house on Google Maps, let alone your own collective backsides.

So, as I’ve explained that all the nonsense photographed above is not going to have any affect on my actual voting methodology, could we stop wasting money on all this crap?  I mean, sure, fine, if you must, send me one (1) mailer card.  Whatever.  But after that?

Here’s an idea: take the money you’d have pissed away sending me six of the same pointless, glossy card and donate that sum to the local school.

Try improving my kids’ education instead of wasting money at futile attempts to promote yourself.

That might change my opinion of who to vote for.

In the meantime, I’ll be waiting here with my rainbows, unicorns, and flying donkeys for word that someone’s done that.

Pud’n