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I can’t tell you how delighted I am to be a Dot again. Until last

week I was Simon_Marquis, which is a bugger to say out loud: ’Underscore

Marquis’ makes me sound like some sort of furtive, drug-peddling

toff.

I am much happier to be able to tell people my middle name is Dot and

rejoin the wired world with enthusiasm.

Being digitally challenged, I find almost all electronic wizardry

(including my hateful new digital phone) makes me either fume or

chuckle. The phone, by the way, is so complicated it arrived with an

80-page instruction manual, an even more incomprehensible ’quick

reference card’ and then some notes from our IT people which explain

both, in more or less plain English.

In Barcelona at the TV conference a few weeks ago, we were treated to a

messianic demonstration of web TV which - utterly predictably - failed

to work properly. What eventually we did see was a jumble of images

on-screen indecipherable to all but a three-dimensional chess grand

master.

Is this really the future or have these zealots totally failed to

understand the capabilities of a standard-issue human brain?

The internet - about which I have written here before, in transparently

terrified terms - will undoubtedly become a redefining force in business

and communication in the next century. At the moment however, in the

dying moments of the 20th century, it is a turgid, frustrating,

mind-numbing morass that for most people is blessedly unknown. I can’t

wait for it to speed up, cheer up, and shape up. On the already

wreckage-strewn carriageway of the digital superhighway, however, there

is one gleaming vehicle - e-mail.

I love e-mail. It works. It’s quick. It’s easy. It brings me everything

from what the sandwich shop is offering for lunch to notices about

meetings, and from client letters to recycled jokes from a friend in the

US. And I can compose and deliver my answer within seconds of receiving

the message, which makes for much snappier communication than the

average four-day memo turnround.

E-mail is genuinely a new medium. It has its own little protocols and

mannerisms. It has a tone of voice more considered than the phone but

less formal than paper. It’s a voice that works well in modern

business.

Unless you send the wrong messages to the wrong people.

Some complain that e-mail is already swamping offices with trivia and

tittle-tattle. Certainly if you are away for a day or two it is daunting

to open your computer to ’You have 95 new messages’. On the other hand,

you can read and delete a lot quicker than you can edit physical

mail.

Of course the direct marketing industry is salivating at the thought of

e-mail as a new medium. It is right to. The delivery of relevant

messages to the personal computer is a great opportunity, but it is an

opportunity that must not be abused. The rapid growth of direct mail has

prompted more and more frustrated consumers to opt out. We must be

careful not to let a good idea become an irritant. We must avoid junk

e-mail.

The particular strengths of e-mail are immediacy and intimacy - useful

marketing tools in an information-swamped world. So, new jokes only

please to: simon.marquis@zenithmedia.co.uk.