random thoughts – Day 1,367 – (Thursday) – meat haunt

It has been a bombardment of ads from Omaha Steaks for the past few weeks. Snail mail with sheets of glossy paper with glamorous photos of meat. Texts. Sponsored ads in my Facebook feed. And the emails -- two, three, even as many as five a day.  

The ad onslaught began in earnest after ordering a gift pack. The ads arriving since sending the gift are loaded with offers and extras. Twelve free burgers! Free freezer pack or lunch bag or cookware saver kit. A $30 coupon. Bonus this. Extra that. 

Yes, I realize I could unsubscribe, but ... but ... what if I need to send another meat gift in a hurry? And from a marketing perspective, I'm curious to see if it gets worse as we get closer to Christmas. 

The worst part is, while ordering the gift on Cyber Monday, I had an itchy little thought that the deals might get better and maybe I should wait. Now, I’m thoroughly annoyed that seems to be the case.

I’m also kind of annoyed by the crushing avalanche of ads. Enough already. I understand the whole customer touchpoint thing, but cripes, they could touch me a little bit less and that would be great. It's a fine line between feeling wanted and feeling stalked. Tonight, as of 9:00, I had received four emails from my friends at the steak company, timestamped three, 9, 11, and 14 hours ago. Do I hear five? A few days ago saw five. 

Most of the ads feature the image of a succulent petit filet mignon, and after seeing this countless times a day for the past three weeks, I have never wanted a stupid little filet mignon more. Usually, I don’t want one at all. Don’t even think about it. Red meat is generally pretty far off my radar. I don’t buy it or prepare it at home, and if a red meat craving hits (every six to eight weeks or so) I have a burger in a restaurant. 

But damn, if I wasn't looking at Omaha Steak packages and counting the number of filets and burgers and caramel apple tartlets and thinking about how much freezer space could be made available.

Tonight, I nearly ordered a package for myself. I was saved by the pork chops. Except for the novelty of the 2-inch thick chops one time at Patti’s 1880s Settlement in Grand Rivers, Kentucky, I’ve never been much of a fan of pork chops. The presence of pork chops in the package with a decent number of filets and burgers was enough to have me scroll on. Besides, ordering it tonight wouldn’t satisfy the sudden filet craving, also tonight.

The filet craving morphed into a burger craving which sent me to the website of my favorite delivery joint to scroll burgers, including the Impossible Burger. That seemed promising, but in the end, it was leftover tortellini for the win, both for speed and affordability, and in mere minutes I was dining thanks to the wonder of microwave oven technology.

Maybe tomorrow I can continue to hold strong against the daily haunting of the steak ads. With luck I’ll be over the (hopefully) temporary filet mignon infatuation. Maybe I'll even buckle down and unsubscribe from the emails and texts, but at least they make me feel wanted. Or maybe I’ll be roaming the streets in search of a filet mignon. Fingers crossed I’ll be spared such a fate.