Offers to die for

Here's some good news

It's the best that I've had

My death is now cheaper

I really am glad

With lots of red robins

To chirp and to sing

Granddaughter hugging

That sort of thing

I don't have to worry

Myself anymore

With discounts and offers

And bargains galore

This brilliant news

It has got me all flustered

I'm really excited

My heart's in a flutter

It's left me quite breathless

My pulse is a racing

I'm hot and quite bothered

My maker is pacing

I'm phoning the hotline now

Please make it fast

Sign me up quickly

I'm not sure I'll laaaaaaahhhhhgggggghhhhhhhhhhh...

... Sir... sir... SIR! are you still there?

The scary thing about this marketing mailer is that it uses only tried and tested methods to bag a sale. Any mailshot needs to have as many inserts as possible, to fatten up the envelope. Include a big brash offer on the front, a free gift (in this case stickers of cute robins) and a clear call to action. The various leaflets tell me that a funeral in the south east of England will cost £4,746, which looks far more accurate than if they had said "nearly £5,000." All presented with beautifully colourful charts and diagrams backed up with no-doubt carefully researched facts and figures.

This is perhaps the best bit of through-the-letter-box sales gimmickry I have ever seen (or noticed, as usually they get torn in half and put out with the garbage).

You deserve an award for most effective marketing folks!

Only thing is... I don't give a fuck how much my funeral will cost. Spend as much or as little of any money I leave behind as you see fit. Personally, I would advise against extravagance but that will really be up to you.

Amusingly, while I was writing this diddy ditty and diatribe, I took what turned out to be a marketing call from an unusually well-spoken person representing a distillery that, she told me, was the only one to pay 7.5%. Ordinarily I just hang up on cold callers but the mention of the magic word (distillery) made me wonder if there was a free sample bottle of whisky in it for me (stupid boy). When I asked what the caller meant, the line went dead for a few seconds. I then got a trite reply about that being a very good question and I would have all of the answers I needed once I had provided some "basic information," which I was certainly not about to do. I asked another question and the line went dead again. I wondered if this might be the latest 'AI' chatbot being put to 'good' use. Some more avoidance on the part of the caller and I hung up. Thinking about it, the voice was far too good to be anything computer-generated, even with the latest natural language processing products available. I think the caller was just asking her supervisor what to say. Probably a trainee.

Further thought suggests the offer, had I bothered to find out, was probably an investment scam to do with buying a barrel of whisky to sell in ten years' time, hence the 7.5%. If so, the call was just some telemarketers being slow to catch up on a similar AI-slopscam that's been festering around the clickbaitosphere for some time.

How about this for a bit of opportunistic advertising to the elderly:

... did you spot the appearance of the ad? What was it selling?

Given the current state of geopolitics, it won't be long before I start getting cold calls for the latest, high-tech nuclear blast bunker.

Thanks for reading