💥BLAST! Manifesto

I’ve had a hand in making hundreds of millions of ‘bulk’ emails in the name of marketing. Although their recipients had consented to receiving them, the emails were not made for their recipients. Rather, they’ve been made for brands with something or other to announce, and then broadcast en-masse. The people responsible for these asymmetrical communications talk of email ‘blasts’.

Yet email works best as a two-way medium, perhaps the original social network, and so to use it to broadcast is to neglect its power and pleasure. It’s like a one-sided conversation. Further, people have an intimate relationship with their inbox; it’s the centre of their digital world, not the sort of place they’d want a blast to go off.

So, how about a regular email that feels conversational but places no obligation on its recipient. Emails about interesting things but that respect the intimacy of the inbox. Not adding things to recipients’ to-do lists but rather signposting interesting things that are available in an otherwise relentless slew of variable-grade information. As much of the good of email and as little of the bad.

Interesting stuff?

💥BLAST! has a non-explicit flavour of interesting. Broad contemporary interests. Subjects covered include:

• Overlooked Internet culture: things that give a sense of this era from a human perspective. Not so much what early adopters are doing, but middle and back of curve behavioural insight.
• Insights presented in non-marketing speak.
• Parallels in two or more trends.
• Overlooked women, particularly in STEM.
• Pioneering electronic music and to a lesser extent acid house and rave culture. Also The KLF and Gary Numan.
• Eighties Channel-Island detective-drama Bergerac.

Confluences are more interesting, for example space exploration and pioneering women.

‘Interesting’ is highly subjective; sometimes it’s guided by topicality, other times not. A reasonable balance of the two is desirable.

Off-limits

Not all wartime novels need be about Spitfires or barrage balloons. A few topic areas shall be generally excluded from 💥BLAST!, usually because they are already better-served or oversaturated elsewhere. Rules have exceptions.

• 💥BLAST! is not mainstream media. No political coverage, including Brexit, Trump, Farage etc. An exception is politics in the macro; i.e. a broader trend, as opposed to any particular character or news event. It’s not a news outlet; it’s not a place for scoops or salaciousness.
• Commercial mass-consumption media, including Game of Thrones, Superhero movies, etc. 💥BLAST! needn’t contribute to their already substantial marketing efforts. An exception would be reasonable for an exceptional example, used as a gateway to a broader theme. Exceptions: non-fiction books, providing they’ve not been sexed up with a swear-word in their title, anything illustrating the rapid evolution of media, Love Island and Eurovision (but not the old stuff, and only in a timely manner).
• What Apple or Google etc. is up to now, the only exception being when they’re doing something largely under-recognised. Again, 💥BLAST! isn’t needed here.
• Soapbox subjects. 💥BLAST! shouldn’t pick on subjects that people would avoid talking to me about in a pub. Creeping regulation in Formula 1, for example, would be a subject to avoid if you were drinking with Adrian Newey.
• Tweets. Twitter, Instagram and other services whose logos appear on the sides of vans need no further promotion. Social content is ephemeral so where exceptions are justified it’s worth using another service to display it. Instagram is valid only if a particular account is doing something dedicated and specialised not fairly represented elsewhere.
• Nobody wants to hear about your rash.
• Communication strategy, marketing technology, the digital consumer. All that’s ripe for Complex Manoeuvres.