{"id":303,"date":"2013-12-04T00:45:01","date_gmt":"2013-12-04T00:45:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/deadreal.com.au\/ephemera\/?p=303"},"modified":"2020-11-12T11:48:11","modified_gmt":"2020-11-12T00:48:11","slug":"the-fake-certificate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deadreal.com.au\/dead_paper\/the-fake-certificate\/","title":{"rendered":"The fake certificate"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

There\u2019s a bank handing out fake Life Membership certificates to its customers, a conceit so confusing and poorly executed it makes me want to hand them a great big trophy for the \u2018Worst Direct Mail of the Year\u2019. A bit of foiling and embossing can\u2019t disguise what a crock this is.<\/p>\n

OK, so it\u2019s just a bit of a laff, a cheesy attempt by a bank to say something nice to its customers, which is not easy when you\u2019re busy out-sourcing operations overseas while making billion dollar profits off poor saps who don’t know what they’ve signed up for. Perhaps that explains why this example is so cack-handed. It takes practice to be friendly in a genuinely human-to-human way. Instead the bank has resorted to forced fakery, taking a punt that the customer will receive the communication in the right spirit, a hope based on nothing more than guesswork and a deluded belief in the hilarity of its own marketing.<\/p>\n

Putting the goofiness aside, let\u2019s just look at it seriously for a moment on its own terms, because a lot of money has been spent on creating this fakery and sending it out. It must mean something, must have something to say for itself.<\/p>\n

So, as far as I understand it, this is a certificate sent to the recipient \u2013 let\u2019s pretend the blurred bit says Harry Knobbleknees \u2013 to inform Harry Knobbleknees that he has been granted life membership of the Harry Knobbleknees Appreciation Society by the bank. It\u2019s said to be a \u201csymbolic\u201d membership and has been granted \u201cin honour of your special character\u201d.<\/p>\n

Some questions readily spring to mind, most pressingly as to why Harry Knobbleknees would want to be a member of his own<\/i> Appreciation Society? Isn\u2019t that just a trifle narcissistic? Who formed this society anyway and why has it been left to the bank to hand out memberships? How many other members are there? Is it just Harry Knobbleknees and the bank? How sad is that.<\/p>\n

What the hell is a \u201csymbolic membership\u201d anyway? Presumably it gives Harry Knobbleknees symbolic entry to the Society\u2019s symbolic meeting room and a symbolic vote at the AGM. For life.<\/p>\n

And why is Harry Knobbleknees being given life membership of his own appreciation society in recognition of his \u201cbanking relationship\u201d with the said bank? Does that mean he would be denied membership if he didn\u2019t have such a relationship? That\u2019s a bit cruel. Just who the hell put the bank in charge anyway? I bet Harry Knobbleknees didn\u2019t vote for them.<\/p>\n

Also, how come the bank is so sure that Harry Knobbleknees has a \u201cspecial\u201d character? Are they spying on him? For all they know, he might be very ordinary indeed. And proud of it. And if they don\u2019t know, does that mean the bank is lying when it says it is honouring his character? Would you give your money to a bank that tells lies?<\/p>\n

Perhaps instead of running the Harry Knobbleknees Appreciation Society, the bank should just get on with doing bank-like things. You know, like making sure there are enough tellers in the bank so that Harry Knobbleknees doesn\u2019t have to queue up every time he visits the bank, or making sure that drug cartels aren’t shovelling billions of dollars through their accounts without anybody noticing.<\/p>\n

It is hard to get people to take notice of direct mail. It can be very irritating. But there\u2019s no point in getting customers to look at stuff if the message is muddled or meaningless; save the money and spend it on something that they might really appreciate, like better customer service.<\/p>\n

\"shredded<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s a bank handing out fake Life Membership certificates to its customers, a conceit so confusing and poorly executed it makes me want to hand them a great big trophy for the \u2018Worst Direct Mail of the Year\u2019. A bit of foiling and embossing can\u2019t disguise what a crock this is. OK, so it\u2019s just […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":304,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-direct_mail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deadreal.com.au\/dead_paper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deadreal.com.au\/dead_paper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deadreal.com.au\/dead_paper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deadreal.com.au\/dead_paper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deadreal.com.au\/dead_paper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=303"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/deadreal.com.au\/dead_paper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1068,"href":"https:\/\/deadreal.com.au\/dead_paper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303\/revisions\/1068"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deadreal.com.au\/dead_paper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deadreal.com.au\/dead_paper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deadreal.com.au\/dead_paper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deadreal.com.au\/dead_paper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}