I purchase a new product / thing / software. I delight in opening / using / starting it for the first time. Then, an advertisement spews up for a related product. Lousy douchetards, if I wanted that, I would have bought it. The growing trend of “cross-marketing” is reaching epidemic proportions. When I choose to buy a product, whatever it is, I don’t want to be the target of some marketing campaign.

Parallels Desktop

Everytime I upgrade the Parallels Desktop Tools on my Windows virtual machines, a dialog prompt me to go and buy some crappy virus / malware product.

Hint: It’s not free, after 12 months you are going to pay a lot for this software. They are betting that you will blindly sign up. Don’t be a sheep.

Sony Laptops

A friend recently bought a Sony Laptop, it had over 15 GB of crudware, including movies and games from the Sony Entertainment. Fail.

CiscoWorks management software

Whenever you install CiscoWorks software (the Common Services component, which is in every install) it installs the Cisco Security Agent. Worse, it requires a reboot to remove it. If you don’t remove it, then the machine is mostly unusable. Why put it there at all ? Fail.

Basic Software is Free but promotes the paid version

I think this is fair enough, after all, you got a free version that is the result of someone’s hard work- “something for nothing” . I got something back for nothing – nah, that doesn’t happen so it seems like a fair deal to me.

The only concern here is how aggressive these the provider is being about it. For example, when installing Java from Sun, this promotion is perfectly OK:

But this is absolutely not acceptable, basically you are encouraging malware by supporting stupid software installation:

Software in this category includes:

AVG AntiVirus

AVG Antivirus uses their free version (personal use) to promote their malware products. It has been a fantastic service, but the latest versions have more intrusive marketing. Check the notification bar below:

This is FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) and creating a hysteria about security that is not entirely warranted.

Think about it

The idea that traditional marketing has failed makes me happy, much of that model was offensive as well. But this new type of “internet marketing” is about the same as hiring a medical doctor to tell us about the benefits of smoking (while not telling us about the side effects).

One day, marketing will develop an understanding of what customers will bear, and what maintains a good image, and what doesn’t piss customer’s off. I am not averse to marketing or advertising, but this cross-promotional or tie-in marketing is a kind of evil. I’m sure that it’s lucrative and everyone wants to make money, but some things you don’t want to be associated with, the tarnish you and your brand.