Less than a year ago, I saw a video online where Andy Rooney railed against marketers who send out junk mail. In it, he suggested a way to get even by using their postage paid envelopes against them as well as other things. Both barrels of this segment pointed clearly at marketers and the lame practices that consumers have grown very familiar with and very opposed to.
Then something happened. It disappeared.
While there remains a lot of related content and releases of Andy’s aggression on the topic, there is only trace evidence of his suggestions and the segment itself. A blog post re-circulating his recommendations was posted as well as an apparent transcript of what was said. There is even a post discrediting the advice given. But we have been robbed of the call to arms from as powerful a pulpit as 60 Minutes begging the question, “What happened?”
We still have a segment on the junk mail you can discard without opening. We still have his rantings against zip codes and state abbreviations and the another on the number of catalogs we all get at Christmas. And he has even shown transparency by reading from his own mailbag of angry fan mail he has received and junk gifts from fans that annoy him. CBS has left all of those intact.
But the only advice he has espoused about action to take directly against the marketers who send junk mail indiscriminately has gone away. We will forever be robbed of our [potential] Patron Saints’ thoughts. Take some solace in an apparent transcript of the segment.
But hurry before CBS finds out!!!
