Overly Friendly Emails and other marketing pet peeves

The Indicator from Planet Money

NPR

Business

4.7 • 9.2K Ratings

🗓️ 31 March 2025

⏱️ 11 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Brands trying to be your best bud. Generational labels. Gendered double standards.

Today on the show: three advertising experts bring their three pet peeves in advertisements.

Related episodes:
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J. Screwed
The Gender Gap Series: The Problem With The Pink Tax

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This podcast discusses Google and Meadow, which are financial supporters of NPR.
0:05.1	NPR.
0:06.0	NPR.
0:10.6	So the other day, Adrian, I bought some extremely ordinary pants.
0:21.2	There were plain Navy chinos from J.Crew.
0:24.0	As opposed to unusual pants?
0:26.2	They were not going to win any awards for novelty.
0:28.7	Okay, so you were in the market for some classic, you know, preppy American clothes at reasonable prices.
0:34.1	Yeah, J. Crew's slogan is Heritage Made Modern.
0:37.3	And so it surprised me that when my order
0:40.0	arrived, I got this email. Subject line, best news ever, your order has arrived.
0:46.9	Pst, check your mailbox, doorstep, wherever. And there were three exclamation marks here.
0:52.5	We hope you really, really love it.
0:55.1	Wow, that's like an uncomfortably personal tone to take from like a marketing email.
1:02.2	It would make sense if it was like selling ice cream or something.
1:04.7	But it was just kind of incongruous to what I thought the brand was about.
1:09.2	This is something that I've been calling your cool friend, TM.
1:13.6	So brand strategist Joe Burns thinks J-Crew is part of a wider plague.
1:19.3	It's a tone of voice, a type of personality that more and more brands are adopting.
1:24.6	They're trying to make it feel that, you know, they're just relatable.
1:27.7	They're your friend, but slightly cooler. The coolest one of your friends is what they want to be.
1:32.6	Your cool friend, TM. Well, this is the indicator from Planet Money. We're your cool friends.
	...

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