So on one hand you have the misguided matchmaking marketing I've dissected over the past two days, and then you have this...
The ubiquitous Mitch Joel writes gleefully:
"I show up to work and I have an envelope addressed to me. It's from Apple. No one person in specific - just the Apple logo. I open it up and it's a very nice card - nothing written on it - with a $50 iTunes gift card. Nothing else.
I'm talking about it - a lot because I don't know why they sent it to me, who sent it or anything. So, surprise! I'm creating word of mouth just because I have no idea why it was sent... good?"
No, not good. As Tony The Tiger would say...
G R R R E A T !
Look, maybe I'm just reading too much into this (perhaps it was yet another expression of passion from one of Mitch's many secret admirers), but this is Surprise marketing at its core. Giving Apple the benefit of the doubt, let's say that someone there did their homework, identified influential bloggers and/or digeterati, and sent along this token of acceleration. Other than postage and printing, it's only cost is opportunity.
Simple. Powerful. Valuable. There was no:
"Hey Mitch, mention this in your blog, talk it up to friends, stand on one leg and sing Hatikvah in falsetto then send in two box-tops from your favorite organic cereal and we'll send you a gift certificate you can use...but only while crossing the international date line during leap years."
For reasons equally as mysterious, I once got one of these from Chapters. $10 bucks worth of books and I spent hours trying to find out who sent it, and yammering to everyone in my radius about it.
Perhaps the future of marketing is anonymous...