{"id":539,"date":"2006-12-22T11:28:29","date_gmt":"2006-12-22T17:28:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.redmonk.com\/cote\/2006\/12\/22\/high-touch-holidays\/"},"modified":"2006-12-22T11:28:29","modified_gmt":"2006-12-22T17:28:29","slug":"high-touch-holidays","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/cote\/2006\/12\/22\/high-touch-holidays\/","title":{"rendered":"High Touch Holidays"},"content":{"rendered":"

Recently, I’ve been digging into marketing and brand books. At the moment, I’m finishing up the excellent Brand Hijack<\/i><\/a>. After reading just a bit about marketing or retail history, it starts to get difficult to go out into the American consumer world without getting that sinking feeling that you’re being manipulated every second.<\/p>\n

Happy Holidays! (Want to Sell Your House?)<\/h2>\n

On the other hand, to use one of my favorite rhetorical tricks, you can ask the question, “has it or could it ever be different? Isn’t that just life?” Indeed!<\/p>\n

To that end, you can imagine I had a grand old time just now when a real estate broker came to my door with a pile of business cards “just to say happy holidays.”<\/p>\n

Of all businesses that push marketing on me, the local real estate agents and brokers are the most persistent. I live in a popular part of town, so real estate folks are eager to get in on housing sales. We’re sent all sorts of post cards and even little newsletters.<\/p>\n

Pre-Seeding<\/h2>\n

The visitor today was just walking around and after saying “happy holidays!” asked “are there a lot of people moving into the neighborhood?” Over-thinking the encounter, this seemed to accomplish two goals:<\/p>\n