We all remember passing notes surreptitiously around the classroom at school. It may have been a love note or something far more antisocial to a sworn enemy, whatever, it was targeted communication. Life is full of missions’ hell bent on getting our own way. We are marketing our desires to others from the earliest possible moment. “Meet me beneath the oak tree tonight” or “See you down by the river this arvo.” “You are dead Steve prepare to die!” Email and SMS have probably replaced bits of paper in 2021. Perhaps, email marketing should be taught at high school, there’s a thought.

“You Are Dead Steve Prepare to Die”

The art of the begging letter is alive and well in the twenty first century. Email marketing seeks to entice the attention and avarice of the reader. Students and graduates could do an internship at an email marketing agency to learn the finer points of this quest for business and sales. Ernest Hemingway famously said he could tell a poignant story in 6 words, to the scepticism of his listener.

“For sale: Baby shoes, never worn.”

Arrangements of Words Convey Meaning

Arrangements of words convey meaning and getting to the point with economy is a rare skill indeed. Newspaper editors, those hard drinking grizzled men depicted in plenty of old movies, knew a thing or two about telling stories with few words. Email marketing should be taught at high school, no, it should be ingrained in primary school for the benefit of those young hearts and minds. That death of a salesman never happened, rather he was joined by her. We are all in sales in 2021, selling ourselves and the products and services we represent.

You know it’s easy to develop anxiety when you get too many messages and plenty of people do in this day and age. Victorian police have won the right to disconnect after hours and surely more will follow. Being in constant contact with your employer via technology is a curse. How do human beings protect their inner space? Young people are growing up with a permanent eye on their phone’s screen to the detriment of their health and sanity. Homo sapiens are not the masters of their technology, they are still sheep following without question. Emails are a form of communication, much maligned by spammers and fraudsters. Email marketing is seen to be a dirty business and many don’t wish to be soiled by involvement in this activity.  Social media and trolls? Well, that is another nasty story for next time.