Through my letterbox this morning came three pieces of junk mail. The first was addressed to ‘the occupier and over fifty’ which was not an encouraging start. Who the hell wants to be addressed like that? Is that going to sell me something? I think not. I was tempted to bin it unopened, but in the interests of education (and blog material) I succumbed to temptation and took the bait. It turned out to be a suggestion from SAGA that I might benefit from joining and taking advantage of their ‘over fifties’ car insurance offers. Ok, so the binning was delayed by five minutes. You had your chance, SAGA, and you blew it.
The second piece of junk mail was more interesting. Oh, it was just a routine charity begging letter - you know the sort: this is what we do, and it’s very worthy, now hand over your cash. This one was for Cancer Research UK, which is indeed a very worthy charity and from time to time they do in fact get their hands on a small wad of my cash, but I never respond to unsolicited charity mailshots on principle. Once you respond, you’re on their ’sucker’ list and they Won’t Stop Mailing You. But here’s the interesting thing. You know how they often include a cheapo biro so you have no excuse not to sit down there and then to fill in the direct debit form? Well, this one was no exception, but instead of providing you with a cheap and environmentally unfriendly plastic biro containing very little ink, they gave me this rather wonderful cut-down and rather greener version.
It’s a simple biro refill, sealed inside a piece of stiff paper. The paper is almost certainaly degradable, unlike a standard biro sleeve, and it’s perfectly usable - at least for long enough to write a cheque. It also fulfils the other avowed intention of the free biro being quite capable of spreading the word, because the advertising is there too.
Cancer Research UK, I applaud you.
The third piece of junk mail informed me that my local John Lewis department store is running a promotion for the next two weeks whereby I buy a couple of Clinique products and they give me a free goodie bag full of trial sized samples. Let me tell you that I’ve had these sample bags before and they are seriously good! If you travel, as I do, they’re the perfect size for packing for a week or so, and a good way to try out lines you might not normally buy. In fact, in order get my hands on this new goodie bag, I am going to buy full size versions of the samples I was given in the last one. I use Clinique products as part of my normal skincare routine (such as it is), so a piece of ‘junk mail’ telling me that my local store is running an offer is just the sort of junk mail I like.
You can order direct from the Clinique website too, by the way - and they also give away free trial-sized samples.