Thursday, April 20, 2006

Someone Needs A New Marketing Director

I love catalogues and magazines, but, because I'm creepy I like to play a little game called: Who Sold My Name????

When I sign up for something, like a magazine or a survey...anything, I always correlate my middle initial with what the magazine's name is.

Example:

If I sign up for Cosmopolitan, I'll put that my name is Emily C. Smith (My middle name doesn't start with C and by the way, my last name isn't Smith). But, if, lets say I get a catalogue addressed to Emily C. Smith, I know that Cosmopolitan Magazine has sold my name. Like I said, I'm a little creepy.

So, when I received a catalogue called Body Central, and saw that it was addressed to Emily L. Smith, I knew that it had come from my many orderings of clothes from Lane Bryant.

"A new fat girl catalogue?" I thought to myself "Awesome."

But, to my shock and to the shock of fat girls around the country that received this catalogue at the same time, it was for skinny girls. Wait, I should clarify, it was for really skinny girls. This catalogue didn't even go into XL, like many skinny catalogues do.

I'm sure there is a simple explanation for this, like the LB happens to be owned by the same company or something, but I just want to know who the genius was who wasted postage and paper to send someone who obviously shops at Lane Bryant a skinny girl catalogue?

11 comments:

Obesio said...

Yeah, but the other day I got a catalogue from the Muu-Muu Hut, which was a bit of a blow to my self-esteem.

Kelly said...

I think that middle initial idea is brilliant! I wish I'd thought of it years ago. Then I'd know exactly who ALL this junk is from. One company got my middle initial wrong ages ago so now I know exactly who they've sold my info to.

Stephanie said...

That is a great idea!!! I am totally stealing it.

That is really weird about the mag though, you'd think LB would be more sensitive to their clientelle.

Anonymous said...

That is hilarious! Not so much because you got the catalog but because some skinny company actually thinks that they are going to be able make any money by hooking up with Lane Bryant's customers!

Of course, this could just be to try to intice us fatties to lose weight or something.

Anonymous said...

If you gals really want to take this to the next level, use spamgourmet.com to give you the same "who sold my info" tracking for email. It rocks. Especially because you can limit how many times a given email address can be reused. So all that mail to freeipod.5.fattymcgurk@spamgourmet.com, well that no longer comes my way. I love spamgourmet.

Anonymous said...

I worked for Lane Bryant retail. Victoria's Secret, Bath and Body Works, Limited (I think) and Lane Bryant (can't remember the rest) are owned by the same company.

Imagine the horror if the Victoria's Secret thong crowd knew that.. lol.

BTW.. love your blog.

Anonymous said...

Sometimes they do it by neighborhood demographics. How do I know? Because I got a catalog of really sharp clothes and some household things that were very specifically targeting African-Americans. Which I am not. I am a Pale Porcelain Princess, in the terms of one makeup blog. A Person of Pallor, if you will. I called them up and told them that they had great stuff, but to save their postage, since they were trying to market it to Snow White.

Anonymous said...

The Limited chain sold LB a few years ago. Now they're owned by the same company that owns Fashion Bug. They probably lump all their mailing lists into one.

Anonymous said...

omg! snackiepoo! Thats sooooo true! It is a little pet peeve of mine. I mean, I browse through a fat girl catalogue and all I see are girls who are like 'Medium' modeling the clothes. Like Hello! Who the heck cares what THEY look like in the clothes? O_O I wanna know what an XXL girl would look like wearing em. At least then it would be a more honest depiction of how large my ass would look in it >< LoL! Usually I end up not buying anything from em and stick to my super large (and comfy!) t-shirts and jeans :P

Anonymous said...

Speaking of Lane Bryant - am I the only one that wants to barf whenever shopping there lately? The "fashion" is terrible, what with the cropped/capri/knicker stuff, and the rhinestoned/embroidered/bejeweled jeans and khakis. They used to have cute clothes - now it's almost bad enough to get me to lose weight so I don't have to shop there.

*sigh*

Angi said...

That middle initial idea is fricken awesome. I have stolen it and will use it from now on. Thank you very much!!!!!!!