Beelzebub Blackberry

• Author: Matthew Jackson
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» Blood Blackberry!

In November last year I made the mistake of buying a Blackberry. I rocked up for family dinner, lauded my technological prowess over my Luddite siblings and went home to set-up my email, my BBM and a plethora of social media and IM applications.

Then I started a company. For a month or two my now hated phone behaved much like any other phone; it beeped periodically, I got phone calls occasionally and Brickbreaker and a decent media player seemed to be my reward for giving into shiny syndrome. Oh the naivety!

In March things started to happen for the company; we landed our first international client and one or two interesting local clients too, so life was good.
My phone started to get a little more attention than usual, but I wasn’t complaining – this was business after all.

Since then, I’ve learnt a valuable lesson.

Staying in touch all of the time isn’t always a good thing.

Today, after a weekend of blissful silence, I turned my phone on to get in touch with a long lost friend who was up from Cape Town for the weekend. Within seconds of activation the dreaded communication beast started to vibrate, it did so for a full fifteen minutes while my inbox updated with two hundred emails. Thankfully, my social life has gone to hell so there were only ten or twelve Facebook messages, seven or eight twitter messages, four missed calls, nine SMSs and two BBM messages (the cheap bastards).

I did what any rational human being would; I marked all folders read, ignored the social media, glossed over the SMS subjects, called a friend and turned off my phone with alacrity. I ruined the rest of my Sunday nonetheless.

I’ve been dreading what I’ll find hiding in my inbox come Monday morning. I know it’s not pretty, I know it’s not spam, I know it could even be new business, but for god’s sake, if it’s not proof of payment or a notice from god announcing the apocalypse I don’t want to hear about it on the weekend.

I know that you’re probably thinking: you lazy little wastrel, you’re starting a business, put in the time for heaven’s sake. Normally, I’d agree, but for the last four weeks we’ve been putting in 18 hour days and saving the fun work for the weekends.

This weekend was designated quality time. I had drinks with friends on Friday; I took a languid walk with the girlfriend on Saturday, cooked a decent meal that evening, and have spent most of Sunday getting reacquainted with my cats, my couch and my movie collection while whispering sweet-nothings into the light-of-my-life’s ear.

Is there a moral to this post? Well yes; downgrade your phone. Is there a deeper message we could apply to digital marketing and all things digital? Yes, of course there is, people just like are getting sick of the intrusions that marketing makes on their lives through digital channels, so if you’re going to deploy anything digital, make it smart and engaging.

Am I going to tell you how to do that now? No, it’s late and I’ve got two hundred emails to go through in the morning. I’ll save that post for another day.