IT’S baffling: why marketing people spend so much on campaigns doomed to miss the target.

So much time, brainpower, effort and materials wasted.

To say nothing of the waste incurred in printing and distribution.

Plus the waste of so much money. Wasted not only by the marketers themselves but also by the poor sods who pay for these useless campaigns.

Mountains of junk mail, so much of which ends up as litter. Discarded as unwanted and unread.

Maybe the mere act of designing and printing this multi-coloured mass of pleas to buy (or sell) is considered sufficient.

It’s akin to the fashion houses cutting and sewing rolls of material to produce outfits to be paraded in Paris, New York, Milan and London. And never to be seen clothing an ordinary human being.

It apparently matters not to the creatives whether their productions ever reach what one would consider to be the final goal – the consumer.

The creation in itself is considered sufficient – as long as they receive their inflated fees.

Proof?

The offers of pergolas and gardening accessories to occupants of multi-storey flats. Who are also offered deals on solar panelling.

A quick glance at these buildings immediately shows the foolishness of such offers.

Likewise, how many hot prospects for home extensions are likely to be found in those tiers of tiny homes packed tight along inner-city terraces?  You wish.

Everest-high piles of useless promotions pushed through the nation’s letterboxes to be immediately dumped.

Among them this week was a colourful leaflet promoting the distribution of, yes, leaflets!  Go figure,

Among its several dubious claims was that they generate sales leads and enquiries. Maybe, but not when it is clearer than the Northern Lights that this just ain’t going to happen when trying to sell a conservatory extension to dwellers in multi-storey apartments.

Equally debateable is the claim that a letterbox drop will “significantly raise your business profile”.  Eh? How? Answers please on the back of a postcard.

And how will this instantly disposable junk “drive potential customers to your website or social media”?

Surely a website or social media reference is now the natural first port of call for anyone searching for products or services. Which they would have found and used long before giving the merest of glances to this letterbox literature.

And the internet itself has long since spawned its own breed of junk mail – from Nigerians seeking help in disposing of their enormous inheritance to a pharmacopoeia of dodgy cures and potions for all that ails us. Blindfolded shots in the dark that sadly still manage to trap the unwary and ignorant.

Each sector of business and commerce seems to have bred its collective of optimists under the marketing label.

In the book world countless opportunists promise authors – especially the newbies and self-publishers – stupendous success. Yet the “marketing” they offer consists of nothing more than flooding the ether with mass mailouts to addresses culled from those who farm internet addresses.

It’s another trap for the gullible based on spurious evidence from the marketers.  No research – simply recycling of addresses ad infinitum.

Although it tries to set itself above the common herd, LinkedIn has become a hot source of such goings-on. Not a day goes by without a total stranger wanting to “connect”. Why, when they operate in a sphere of commerce, technology or industry a zillion miles from my own area of interest – which can easily  be checked before pestering me with a totally unwanted invitation.

Ironically, many of these pointless and bothersome approaches come from unknowns offering marketing “expertise”. Yay!

Such as this week’s offer to “help you improve your writing skills, guide you through your writing project, and keep you on track”.  Just what one needs after an entire lifetime spent across the gamut of the writing and publishing business.

One can do nothing other than laugh and press Delete.

If only it was that simple to dispose of those bearing the marketing tag.

At least until they have honed their shooting skills and can be relied on to hit the target more times than they miss.