Dopp Juice Archive

I received a very interesting voicemail the other day. The voice sounded like an old friend of mine who had called me earlier that day, so I grinned from ear to ear when he launched into a slew of compliments: “You are so awesome. Everyone just thinks you’re great. I was just talking to someone the other day and we both agreed you’re the best person ever. And I love what you’ve done with your hair! You’re really looking sharp these days…” And so on. And so on. And so on. I was overwhelmed with the inflation of my ego. And actually, you can listen to the whole thing in mp3 format here. Because it’s on the web. It wasn’t my friend at all. It was a prerecorded message from PopularityDialer.com. Their concept is this: You can program the site to call you at any given time with a recording of one side of a conversation, so you can look important in front of your friends. Say you’re having lunch with someone you don’t really want to spend time with — have Popularity Dialer call you 20 minutes into it with the “You’re needed right now at the office!” call, and boom, you’ve got an out. Shallow? Yes. Silly? Absolutely. Absurd? Totally. But you’ve got to give them props for being creative. Why did they call me? I’ve boiled it down to two possibilities:1) A friend of mine fed them my number to send me the affirmation call (if so, thanks, whoever you are!)2) They got my number off a list and were spamming me to get my attention (if so, it worked!)I’m actually hoping it’s #2. It’s so rare that I see invasive advertisements that actually make the target audience feel good about themselves. Marketers, take a lesson here. And if anyone else wants to call me and compliment me on how sharp I’m looking these days, hey, don’t fight the urge…