Are your iPhone-equipped clients thumbing you a stream of unintelligible, incomplete replies to your emails? Feel more like an elite puzzle solver than marketing professional?
Relax. You’re among a large crowd of (slightly confused) friends.
You’re experiencing iPhone Fragmail Syndrome.
(click image to buy this wonderful card)
Hand a client a smartphone and the anytime/anywhere road warrior attitude that goes with it, and while they’re clearing their inbox and giving themselves high fives for efficiency, you’re trying to piece together an actionable answer from ambiguous, incomplete, typo-obscured emails.
Fragmails.
I recently asked a client for feedback on an ad concept.
“like, but hiher” was the “Sent from my iPhone” response.
Uhh, OK.
I asked another to approve their company bio, which I included in the body of the email.
“Add more xtensve and delete enterprise” came back.
Yeah. I’ll get right on that (the word “enterprise” wasn’t in the bio).
I know it’s a shocking concept, but detailed answers sometimes demand emails with upwards of a dozen words, which your average smartphone user thinks is at least six too many.
Some also don’t seem to be reading the original emails very closely, at least those who answer my three neatly bulleted questions with a single, unformed answer.
Welcome, my fellow freelancers, to a bold new age of instant communication.
Unfortunately, it’s as incoherent as it is speedy.
And we haven’t even touched on the concept of autocorrect, which can turn an email into a sexual harassment suit faster than you can say Damn You Autocorrect.
There is no known cure for iPhone Fragmail Syndrome. In fact, most of the perpetrators seem awfully proud of themselves, and therein lies the problem; “Sent from my iPhone” is not only a branding statement that would make PT Barnum smile, it’s also a considered a Get Out of Jail Free card for what came before it, which just might be incomprehensible.
Since I’ve yet to convince anyone to write an answer in longhand and then send me an iPhotograph of it (this works on a surprising number of levels), I’m simply going to turn lemons into a fizzy lemon beverage; I’m adding the title of “Puzzlemaster” to my LinkedIn profile and powerful cryptology software to my PC.
Kep Writg, Tom Chandler.
Lucky i never face this problem.. but nice post!
Ah, technology.
A friend of mine had a problem with the autocorrect thing that cost him his marriage. His wife was at the grocery store and texted him to ask if they needed anything. He texted back: “Yes, we need bread and blueberry syrup. Thanks! Love you!” but the autocorrect turned it into “LEAVE ME THE [expletive] ALONE, YOU [expletive] [expletive], YOU RUINED MY [expletive] LIFE!”
Poor guy. Never did get the blueberry syrup, either.
Back to the topic at hand though. I guess the positive thing with fragmail (great word, BTW — did you come up with that?) is that miscommunications can now happen more efficiently.
~Graham
PS – full disclosure: that bit about the autocorrect is gratuitously and unapologetically ripped off from a Sam Kinison joke. However, the modifications are all mine.
See, when it started with “a friend of mine had a problem” I have to be forgiven for thinking what people always think when they hear that…
I turned off AutoCorrect on my Android phone after I tried to type “soldiers” and somehow ended up with “suckers” — a truly unfortunate substitution given the context.
Ha – Kinison’s original joke is about himself, and I started writing it that way, but somehow I couldn’t say that about my own wife, even in pretend. Should have sold that line harder though so as to not confuse…
Hope your own incident didn’t have similar results…
~Graham
My wife has amended her signature thusly: “Sent from my iPod touch. Sorry for the typos!”
I’m advocating for more honesty on the part of some of my clients, whose tag would have to read: “Sent from my iPhone. Please excuse the lack of thought or the absence of common sense.”
Ah, see that’s the beauty and simplicity of Apple. You just have to say “Sent from my iPhone”. The “Please excuse the lack of thought or the absence of common sense” is implied.
~Graham