Sounds + Food 'n' Retail

It's about a week before my birthday, and (Dutch) T-Mobile, as they do every year, decided to send me a gift. And, just like every year, I pretty much throw it out a minute after opening it. This year it was a pink tablecloth with joyful crap written all over it, last year I think it was an inflatable window-decoration, pink also, and I don't remember what it was before.

There's two reasons, why I respect T-Mobile's gesture: one, they make an effort and I appreciate the gesture; and two, they combine their gesture with marketing, which I respect from a business-standpoint.

That said, everything else about it is idiotic. I'm 30 years old, they know this, and I'm seriously not considering using a pink table-cloth. From my phone-patterns, they should also know that I'm not planning on throwing a big party. Had they bothered to do a simple Google-search, they would have known I run a few blogs and decided that this would be a better way to reach me.

They should have given me free cinema-tickets instead. Their marketing-value from the table-cloth is zero because I won't show it to anyone, and am instead calling them tasteless.

If they had given me a cinema-ticket, I would have maybe scanned and pasted it all over this blog, thanking them. At least a 100 people would've read about it and thought about subscribing to T-Mobile. Instead all they now see is this:

Welcome to the internet, T-Mobile.