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Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Tuesday Morning Amusement

Dear Food Blogger,

Can I offer you and your readers a special discount coupon for organic sesame butter?

While you are probably aware of the nutritional benefits of sesame butter, and despite the fact that the yummy nutty flavor has been in use for decades in Asian and Middle Eastern cuisines, sesame butter is not yet common in America. I'm on a quest to change that.

If you reply positively, I will be happy to send you a customized introduction coupon with your site's name that would give your readers an exclusive 40% discount. I will also send materials and images to help you with writing a post.

If you are willing to give it a try yourself, the following coupon already gives you a 40% discount (for food writers only). Please keep this private. Once you agree to post on your site, I will send you a customized coupon for your readers.
Use coupon: foodblog
(it works after entering the shipping address)

After a long quest for the perfect sesame butter, I decided to make it myself. This premium sesame butter is made from the highest quality organic sesame seeds grown in Ethiopia, crushed in a traditional method using a 90-years old millstone, and is free of nuts or any artificial additives. Healthy and delicious...!

So, what do you say – can I send you a customized coupon for your readers?

I will be looking forward to receiving your feedback.

All the Best,
Tomer Treves
http://SesameButter.com



Dear Clueless Product Pusher,

Thanks for taking the time to personalize your message to me.

Please do me a favor and keep your organic sesame butter. Your marketing effort to rebrand tahini as "sesame butter" feels as silly to me as does calling something like High Fructose Corn Syrup, "Corn Sugar." While I love to use tahini in many of the Mediterranean dishes that I make, trying to pass it off as something else does not sit well with me.

I am usually tempted to pass things along to my blog readers when it benefits them; however, I also keep no secrets from my readers either. If you are giving me a discount on a product, I will disclose it. And as for the offer of assistance in sending me "materials and images to help you with writing a post," I can assure you, were I to take you up on your offer, I'm pretty sure I could come up with plenty of words on my own to describe your product.

I have no problem with the notion of incorporating more tahini into the diet. Your impersonal approach, silly marketing rebrand, and rather shady "let's just keep this between us" modus operandi makes me give this opportunity a pass.

Sincerely,
Tom Noe
Exploring Food My Way

3 comments:

  1. Oh you make me laugh! LOL well done and I might just go and use that "secret" code right now ;)

    ReplyDelete
  2. I interpreted it differently. I think they were saying that the first code was only for you and the other food bloggers they pitched. Not that you couldn't talk about the discount, but not to give it out since they were going to send a different code for readers.

    I agree with everything else you said though.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Wow, I did not know that the highest quality sesame seeds came from Ethiopia! Guess all of my Isralie tahini is crap.

    ReplyDelete

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