May Day, May Day: Spam turns 30

May 1, 2008, marks the 30th anniversary of Rhea + Kaiser. Van Kaiser and Steve Rhea certainly had some sense of what they intended when they, and 6 brave souls, started their agency. Congratulations and may success continue!

A much less auspicious event also took place 30 years ago today: the first piece of unsolicited commercial email was sent. In what Wired Magazine reports as Spam, from novelty to nuisance in a couple of decades, we are reminded that what something seems on a small scale can seem to be something completely different when the power of computing is applied on a large scale.

In 2007 for instance, Barracuda Networks (maker of Spam filters and email applicances) reported that 95% of all email was classified as spam:

As marketers, email can seem an appealing vehicle to reach out and touch prospects and customers. The plague of Spam reminds us that what seems like a good idea to the sender can become something completely different in the eyes of the receiver.