LOL Catz Goes Phishin’

Sep 17 2008

Ok, had to share this. You might laugh, you might say it is dumb, etc. Regardless I got a hoot out of it and I am a dog person not a cat person. The below post is really illustrative of two things. One we create bad terms and more bad terms every day. Two we need to focus on understanding what we hear before playing the game of telephone.

But what spawned this was someone today asking me if I had heard about “cat phishing”. I was not sure what to think. Many ideas ran through my brain of what it could be, but in the end after searching and searching it turns out that is was “copy cat phishing” they heard. Yes now that makes more sense. 

It is something that all brands have to consider as it is everywhere and could negatively impact your own brand and the consumer trust in your brand. But then again so could the avian bird flu, a wayward mack truck, or the news. So until you find the magic brand protection bullet (I think it is co-ownership with the consumer/partner) let’s just enjoy some cat phishin’.

Now the image is funny, but the problem is not. It is kind of like opting in for a camapaign with a name like Mr. Poopypants. I bet there are quite a few other ways we could make a dent here, like a public service campaign of education about email marketing from the DMA, EEC, DM News, and all the other ESPs and marketers. That would most likely help all of us if we took this to the public proactively instead of just sitting back and dealing with it. 

 


Published in Behavioral Marketing, Best Practices, Brand Marketing, Deliverability, Email News, Spam Emails

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    J.D. says:

    The email marketing industry is in the perfect position to educate users about how to protect themselves from phishing and other scams, and how to tell whether a marketing campaign they’ve received is legitimate or not. You’ve got the eyeballs, and in many cases you’ve got the trust (unless you’ve squandered it, which is another issue.)

    I’ve seen a few attempts to capitalize on this, but most of ‘em are kinda haphazard — and some even give bad advice. I wonder if the Anti-Phishing Working Group might be open to coordinating these efforts?