Well, Joy has told me that she prefers this new habit of mine (writing for the blog) over my old habits of writing to magazines, newspapers, columnists, and companies, so I guess I'm doing something that makes her happier. Woohoo!
Yes, it’s true... I used to write e-mails (or if you go way back – U.S. mail) to companies suggesting things such as new product ideas, marketing campaigns, product improvements, etc. To the media outlets I’d write to tell the columnist that he or she wrote a good piece. Occasionally, I would also write to disagree with a piece, but that is fairly rare. I think it is nicer send support, y’know? Actually, I think that the only times I would ever send in disagreements would be when I read magazines targeted at women, because I think that they might actually care about my opinion I guess.
The letters and e-mails I liked the most were for new product ideas or product improvements. Some people like to dream about winning the lottery, but I always thought it would be cool if the M&M/Mars company would just make some marshmallow M&Ms. This grew into other things like a desire for Strawberry Kiwi Gatorade, pizza box recycling, a number of Ben & Jerry’s flavors, and my latest – more almonds in the new Almond Snickers (there’s ole M&M/Mars again.)
Actually, I pretty much stopped that practice when I learned that most companies would never read the letters anyway, because they often feel like they might be liable if they did use the idea. I don’t understand that at all, but I will believe it for now because I am pretty ignorant when it comes to law.