Subject: RE: Submission: A Different Kind of Company |
From: "websubmissions" <websubmissions@mcsweeneys.net> |
Date: 8/8/07, 09:49 |
To: "'Barrett Brown'" <barriticus@gmail.com> |
Reply-To: <websubmissions@mcsweeneys.net> |
Hi Barrett –
This cracked me up. I love how it gets more and more absurd
as it progresses. So I’d like to run it, but with a couple tweaks:
1. Eliminate the email form and simply write it as though it
were the company’s brochure. So the beginning would read something like
this:
“Heathridge
Partners seeks to assist your small- to mid-size business in the development of
a comprehensive marketing strategy. We take a dynamic approach to advertising
that sets us apart from our more conventional competitors. In doing so, we
provide exceptional value to our clients.”
From there it would segue into the
rest of the piece. (And I don’t think the bullets are necessary.)
2. Add one or two lines at the very end
to sum everything up, much like a typical brochure would have.
That’s pretty much it. If
these suggestions work for you, let me know, and then send a revision at your
leisure.
Best,
Chris
---
Christopher Monks, Acting Website Editor
From: Barrett Brown
[mailto:barriticus@gmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, August 01, 2007
1:15 PM
To: websubmissions@mcsweeneys.net
Subject: Submission: A Different
Kind of Company
A Different Kind of Company
by Barrett
Brown
512-560-2302
Sirs-
You're receiving
this e-mail because you requested information about how Heathridge Partners can
assist your small- to mid-size business in the development of a comprehensive
marketing strategy.
At
Heathridge, we take a dynamic approach to advertising that sets us apart from
our more conventional competitors. In doing so, we provide exceptional value to
our clients.
Before we
move on to the next step, we'd like you to tell you a little bit about what
we're all about.
·
Although we're a fairly large, full-service agency with
copywriters, alchemists, and HTML coders on staff, we take pains to cultivate a
responsive atmosphere in which the client is always the first concern, and in
which the concerns of the client always come first. In fact, this would be our
company motto if our company motto were not already an ancient Greek phrase
known only to our administrative staff and senior copywriters.
·
We get a lot of questions about our name. No, there's no
"Mr. Heathridge" here. Ha, ha! In fact, our name is taken from a
rural English grove, the pre-Anglicized moniker of which has been lost to the
mists of history. There it was, at Heathridge, that the trees shaded the
undergrowth; there it was, at Heathridge, that the stream fed the trees in
turn; there it was, at Heathridge, that the tribal priests first effected to
cajole the earth into the yielding of its bounty by offering the blood of
virgins fair; there it was, thus, at Heathridge, that man began his quest to
control nature by means of magick. We draw on this lesson as we draw on all
lessons, for it is only through the acquisition of knowledge that one may
further the acquisition of power, and it is only the acquisition of power that
the knowledgeable man seeks. This is known as the First Circular Maxim.
·
Because we consider the success of our client to be our
ultimate aim, we take an unusually proactive approach to providing the client
with the most effective possible marketing collateral. If a client is
unsatisfied with a first draft, we'll happily provide a revision. And if a
client is unsatisfied with the revision, we will seize control of the client's
firm by force in order that we might better provide the firm with what we, as
marketing professionals, know to be effective marketing collateral. And though
you as the CEO will be executed as matter of precaution, your children will be
provided for in a manner adequate to their social station.
·
Imagine a kitten sleeping amid a bed of flowers. Now
imagine a hooded figure approaching from the east. He picks up a felled branch,
examines it for flaws, and then – having been duly satisfied with its
quality - hoists the branch above his head and brings it crashing down on the
kitten, which awakens in horror and pain. The hooded figure strikes a second
time, leaving the kitten mauled beyond repair, and then turns and walks back
towards the east from which he came, leaving the kitten to die frightened and
alone. Does this image disturb you? If so, you have only yourself to blame, for
you conjured it of your own volition. Or, rather, you did not – it was
we, through the use of magick, who compelled you to conjure it. That is the
Lesson of the Hooded Figure From the East. Incidentally, the kitten was not a
kitten; it was the cost barriers inherent to traditional buyer-to-buyer
marketing, whereas the hooded figure was actually Heathridge Partners and the
felled branch was dynamic thinking. That is the Second Lesson of the Hooded
Figure From the East, and the fact that this allegory, like most things,
provide more than one lesson is itself The Third Lesson of the Hooded Figure
From the East. To wit: you, the client, see only the surface. Heathridge
Partners sees what is underneath. That is the Fifth Lesson of the Hooded Figure
From the East, and the Sixth Lesson of the Hooded Figure From the East is that
there are three additional lessons that will never be revealed to you.
·
We do not recognize the authority of the
·
Heathridge Partners is only a "marketing agency"
in the sense that any "entity" can be said to be a marketing agency.
In fact, we are a marketing agency in less than that sense, as there are indeed
entities in existence which primarily concern themselves with the marketing of
products and services, whereas we are concerned chiefly with the nature of
certain prime numbers and their relationship to humanity, while we are only
concerned with humanity to the extent that humanity can be said to relate to
certain other prime numbers. And whereas most "marketing agencies"
derive most of their income from marketing, we are funded largely through arms
deals and inheritances passed down from long-dead Balkan royalty.
·
It would be faulty to believe that the plasticity of the
world around us is itself somehow an indication that the forces of magick are
no longer in play, or even that they never were to begin with. It is the
conundrum of the cynic to believe that the existence of hamburger wrappers and
television commercials somehow rule out the simultaneous existence of forces
more profound, and of the great Actors who wield such things. Does the cynic
believe that hamburger wrappers and television commercials possess the power to
define the world in which we dwell, and to auger the nature of same? If so, it
is he who believes in magick, and without evidence, while we believe in magick
only because we have successfully used it to revive Julian the Apostate, whom
we revere as we would a master and love as we would a father.
·
We "provide" "free"
"estimates."