UK Government's New PR Plan: Spam

from the run-with-it dept

Thu, Oct 27th 2005 12:17pm — Carlo Longino

The British "Permanent Secretary of Government Communications" has been working on a new government communications plan in the wake of some scandals there, and he's come up with a new idea for the government to get its message to the people: spam -- or rather, "direct marketing". This would include sending anti-drug text messages to kids (another sterling example of adults communicating with kids, surely), and what the BBC calls "targeting messages directly to companies' own internal communications". It's not all that clear exactly what that means, but it sounds like they want to spam companies' internal email systems or somehow post news on their intranets. This sounds great, because if there's anything people like better than government spin, it's being spammed with it. While the British government may try to act tough on spam, this seems like another example of a government hating spam -- except when they use it.

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Stoned4Life, 27 Oct 2005 @ 5:49pm

Spam
It's bad enough we have to precautions to avoid spam through malicious bots, etc, but when we have to work against the government to avoid spam?? Wow... that's a turn for the worst- no doubt.
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Jared Anderson, 27 Oct 2005 @ 6:53pm

Re: Spam
Hay mommy Tony Blair wants me to never smoke, cool!!NOT.
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giafly, 28 Oct 2005 @ 2:35am

The BBC doesn't mention email
..see TFA and Carlo's piece is based on a single paragraph: This could include "limited" text messages, such as promoting anti-drugs events to young people, and targeting messages directly to companies' own internal communications. In my personal experience the Labour Party and UK government are well aware how people feel about spam and they try hard to be good guys.
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