Ladies and gentlemen,

We are proud to introduce you today to Jack the Spammer, the most evil character on the net. More malicious than Charles Manson and uglier than a monkey’s armpit (unless for some reasons you find it cute), he is here to make you an offer you can’t refuse.

Try his evil magic, but don’t let the first impression fool you. Remember that also Jack the Spammer is loyal to the TAKE IT EASY rule and might surprise you.

If you are ready and you are really sure to go on, click the emergency button.

We took inspiration from the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera to talk about Muhammad Yunus, the inventor of the Grameen Bank or the mother of the microcredit concept.

In a very few words (words from Wikipedia…) “in 1976, during visits to the poorest households in the village of Jobra near Chittagong University, Yunus discovered that very small loans could make a disproportionate difference to a poor person.”

What we most admire of Mr Yunus is the rational perspective. Mr Yunus is a man with a dream, really to “make poverty history” and he built an efficient business around this idea. His business improves lives and makes money, incredible, isn’t it? Building social businesses is the only way to convince the most talented people to employ their skills and creativity without entirely giving up the profit they would make being in a ‘traditional’ business.

Our business is wine and we would like to deliver a more and more contemporary, funny, interesting and exciting idea of wine. Innovation is the key. How to find innovation? If you bring enough technology to N’Djamena, in Tchad, would they be, let’s say, great graphic designers? Maybe not, not now at least but surely they would bring to your design an innovative flair and in a few years, who knows…

I take inspiration from Seth Godin’s latest post: “Email campaign case studies (one good, one bad)”.

I read Seth every day, it has a prominent place in my iGoogle page. I do like his post, I like his style, he knows what he says. He gives enthusiasm. This time I am not sure I share his view.

From a generic point of view, sure, it is right: building a permission newsletter is far more efficient than spamming 100,000 people. Writing personal, targeted emails is more efficient than an anonymous ‘buy this’.

There is any middle way between spamming and building a targeted newsletter, list or whatever? I refer to specific cases (we do wine business so I will refer to wine): if a paper is specifically interested in wine and publishes the contact email, you are not allowed to spam, but it is fair to presume you can send a ‘anonymous’ press release about a wine business to target at least the vertical press. Seth, is he?

Seth Godin