Making it Right - The Metropolitan Hotel & Spam
What's not to hate about spam?
It's about as infection-free as a dirty penny lying in spit, fills inboxes daily with offers to steal your identity, to kill you with fake pharmaceuticals, and it's starting to hit mobiles - phones, tablets, etc. - where pricey data rates mean the recipient gets to pay for the delivery of this garbage.
But the most hateful thing about it?
When a company I actually like doing business with joins the slime.
Toronto Bound
In the late spring of 2009, we did video production at an event in downtown Toronto. As normal, we stayed in the same facility as the event. And it was horrid: terrible service, totally unreliable Internet - our life blood - and suspecting we'd be back the next year, we thought it wise to look for another place to stay.
Enter Metropolitan Hotel Toronto.
The Metropolitan is on Chestnut, a curious bit of streetscape bounded by the University of Toronto and Nathan Phillips Square that t-bones Dundas Street to the north, heads south to a 90-degree bend into Armoury Street which runs briefly west before intersecting University Avenue.
This convergence has created an odd combination of bustle and bliss: whizzing honking traffic and a flood of pedestrians, convenience stores, coffee shops and ethnic fast food joints, broad and shaded car-free walkways.
We'd been on the road for a week when we pulled into Toronto for the same event in 2010.
Because of the nature of our equipment - cameras, mics, lights, mixers, computers - it doesn't stay in the car but goes with us. All 400 pounds of it. And we always load and unload ourselves.
Tired. Hungry. Worn out.
And a doorman is right there - with a cart.
Can I help?
We'd rather do it ourselves. Camera gear. You understand.
And he simply nods and backs off.
Two people stand next to us and light up cigarettes. I cough when the cloud surrounds us. The doorman asks them if they'd mind moving away from the entrance. Please.
From the rejection of the offer to help, noticing we're troubled by the smoke, asking gently if they'd mind moving...all done in such a pleasant, professional way.
We thank the smokers. They nod.
We're already starting to relax.
We get into our room: clean, decent, and we're online in minutes after a quick call to the front desk (yes, we do really need a half-dozen Internet access codes).
Downstairs for something to eat. Did I mention the restaurant in the hotel the year before was closed and 'no, we can't give you an apple, sir, the restaurant is closed but if you hurry, there's a Subway up the street that closes in about two minutes'. Not sure if it slipped my mind or it's just another repressed memory.
So downstairs at the Metropolitan, where we had one of the best meals of the entire trip. Exactly when we needed it most.
Yes, it was a pain to have to pack up and move all of our gear to the event venue and then back again, but it was worth it.
The event moved out of Toronto for 2011, but is heading back in 2012 and if we're taking part, we know where we're staying.
Or at least, we did.
And Then There Was Spam
Imagine this: The Postie drops a few flyers into your mailbox. Knocks on your door once a month and demands that you pay for their delivery. You'd be saying: Are you nuts? Pay for junk mail I didn't ask for and don't want? Slam.
Imagine this: Your mobile provider drops a few flyers into your mailbox. Comes back once a month and demands that you pay for their delivery. You should be saying: Are you nuts? Pay for junk mail I didn't ask for and don't want?
Here's a typical trip through my inbox:
Mrs. Handsome Darling has 4.5 million US dollars to share 70:30 with me because she's dying of a half-dozen different diseases, is a pure Christian woman whose email address is 'Barr James Something' at Yahoo! in China. Sure. Four words: Nigerian advanced fee fraud.
See XXX celebrities I don't care about do unspeakable things with each other and office equipment. Here's a photo.
Thanks. My wife just walked by.
Not happy with the strongness and size of your manlihood then our best Canadane pharmacy is ready to srevice you with the perfect product. Get a girlfiend like this to wish your every dream.
Great. Nice timing. And just love the command of the language.
I get another ping - check my mobile mail - and after honouring my request to use the email address provided when I made the reservation in 2010, Metropolitan Hotels hit me with two within a few seconds of each other.
I could stand up in front of a crowd and give them - off the cuff - a brief history of spam with examples, names and dates. I belong to a high tech crime fighting organization - a joint venture between law enforcement and the private sector - and it's become clear that what was once a nuisance is now generally the tip of the organized crime icerberg.
If you're a criminal, the online world is THE place to do your business: it's hard to get caught because national laws generally aren't enforced internatonally, the penalties are generally just a license fee to keep doing it, and as P.T. Barnum noted: There's a sucker born every minute.
Our Weird Email Addresses
Whenever I come in contact with a business for the first time that I think may be spammish, I create a special email address that's only provided to that business. Sell, share, give it away or have your contacts database hacked and it's simple to track the problem back to the source.
Hello, Tamara
Tamara Stepek is the Metropolitan's head of PR. She answers her phone line and she returns calls when she says she will. She told me straight off that she was relatively new to the job but was coming up to speed quickly.
I told her about the spam - the fact that the address hadn't been bothered in over a year and now two in the space of a few minutes - and asked what was going on here.
"I don't know," she said, "but I'll find out and get back to you."
What? None of the usual lame excuses?
1. It was a technical glitch. (We don't know what we're doing with your personal information, but you can trust us with it.)
2. We thought it was really important information. (Great. I pay for you to tell me about your lunch specials. What part of NO do you misundertand?)
3. Just give me your email address and I'll remove it from the list. (We've been busted. Now we want you to help us clean up our dirty little list that we bought/stole/harvested from the Internet.)
So Why Do Companies Spam?
Because it's easy. And it seems really inexpensive: reach millions for only $1 a day.
As we move to mobile - where data charges can be usurous - shifting the cost of advertising to the recipient isn't so hard to spot.
A few dozen junk emails a day? Annoying.
A few dozen junk emails a day on your mobile? That could push you over your data cap - more and more telcos are capping data - and start costing the recipient silly amounts of money.
See what happens with mobile spam when you're racking up roaming and overseas data charges on your travels. The costs can be shocking.
Your Call Is Important to Us
I said a callback in a couple of days would be fine with me.
But Tamara didn't call back the next day as we'd agreed.
She called back a few hours later, said she'd made some progress, asked a couple of quick questions, and said she's have more information the next day.
No silly excuses, no BS.
What kind of PR person is that?
What she learned and shared with me was that I should have been spammed earlier. I'm not being sarcastic or facetious. An update that should have dumped my email into the marketing database was missed. When the error was caught...boom. Spam.
Spam that I pay for.
"I agree. It's not fair," Tamara said. "Were not at all like that."
Metropolitan Hotels are now reviewing their entire online marketing strategy. "We're checking on the settings," she told me.
One big consideration is opt-in versus opt-out. In other words, you're given a chance to keep the promo emails coming rather than being forced to opt-out. And for hard core spammers, opting out only confirms that they have a live one. So you're damned if you do and damned if you don't.
The Social Media Angle
The Metropolitan Hotel Toronto isn't just a hotel: it's a downtown nightspot and home to fine dining. So not all of the clientele are stayovers. Many of them appreciate knowing when something special is on offer - either in terms of price or rarity.
Nearly every company wants to be seen on social media - and that cuts both ways.
It means I can post on Twitter and the Metropolitan's Facebook page for the world to see. Which is what I did. Tamara was obviously paying attention and responded in kind.
What's Next?
I'm looking forward to finding out more about the Metropolitan's review of online policies and practices.
I'm looking forward to meeting Tamara in person. She's a prime example of how to deal with legitimate complaints in a a social media world.
And I'm looking forward to staying at the Metropolitan again.
-g
