A small brief tucked away in the business section rewrites this press release announcing that The Gazette has reached an agreement with a company called ZenData Marketing.

Never heard of them? Neither have I. They’re a local company whose website is high on the marketing-lingo-to-useful-information ratio (“dedicated to excellence”, “Integrated e-relationship marketing strategy (working in synergy with other elements of your marketing mix)”, “implementation of technology solutions”, etc.). Their staff seems to consist of two guys and a computer, and they’ve issued a whopping six press releases since they began a year ago.

The agreement (at least as much of it as my non-marketing-educated puny brain can decipher) will make ZenData responsible for spamming our inboxes creating “e-relationships” via email, and generating “return on investment” for the paper, as well as automating some processes I’m shocked aren’t automated already.

Hopefully this will mean I don’t get angry emails and popups every month angrily telling me my subscription has expired and to buy a new one when I have it set to automatically renew every month, and then a day later getting a thank-you email telling me my subscription has been renewed.