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 It's time to "spill some tea", as my daughter would say. 

I'm now officially 8 months into my life as a Man of Semi-Leisure. Brought about by the not unexpected severing of the chord with my last employer. I'm not prohibited from naming them by name, but in deference to some pals that still work there, I won't.

Nor do I have to because what hinders the Neandarthals running the Marketing department there, hinders Marketing Departments everywhere. My good friend and fellow ad curmudgeon, George Tannenbaum, writes about it often. And wrote it about last week, hence this follow up. And my leaping on the very popular Tannenbaum Train.

Of course I'm referring to Data Deification, his words, not mine. 

Though I love that word and often use it to deflect the idiocy of Red Hats and accuse them of TDS, Trump Deification Syndrome.

We, and again, I'm not specifically PAYing attention solely to my last employer, have slavishly bent the knee to Data Tech, which can be argued to have put the last nail in the creativity coffin.

Unlike George, who can cite WSJ articles or the thousands upon thousands of books he has read, and thus command a professorial tone on the topic, I can only offer anecdotal evidence of its deleterious effects.

In my last inglorious position, I was charged with writing a shit ton of emails. 

They called them newsletters, but they were more like PennySaver flyers in reality. There was no content to speak of. No reason to spend any time with the "newsletters" as they were merely driven by price points and the promise of cash back. BTW, has there ever been such a lame and overused marketing tool as Cash Back?

When will Kevin Hart make a long-awaited exit form our zeitgeist?

To get folks to open these newsletters I would often write "click bait-y" subheads (those teasers that show up in your emailbox every morning) and then get disposed of en masse. I don't want to sound immodest, but after 35 years in the business I think I can write a snappy line to pique a consumer's interest.

So every week we'd send out millions of these emails. And there would testing. Hot spots. Heat maps. Open rates. Unsubscribe rates, etc. And while some companies would do A/B testing, mine did A/B/C/D/E testing. That is, they would test 5 (sometimes 6 or 7) different subheads/preheaders and gauge their Open Rates. 

Not surprisingly, the ones I pushed for, had the higher open rates. 

Many times substantially higher. 

Also not surprisingly, the ones I pushed for were not the favorites of the Email Marketing Team Members, or whatever fakakta name they called themselves.

It was in these contentious moments that the slaves to data became slaves to their own jobs/careers/mortgage payments. And decided, "we don't rock the boat, Rich." Can you just stick to things like: Three ways to save up to 25%.

My favorite Subhead, one of thousands written in my 2 year tenure with my Pals, was written for  a Mother's Day Sale. It read: 

You 10 lbs. babies owe her a great gift. 

Entering the world at 9.8 lbs, I thought this was good grist for the mill.

That one got me in a lot of hot water. And substantially higher rates than any other contenders.

I miss fighting for good work. 

Then again, I don't.