Igor Clark

I received this email from someone called "The Mentalist", using an anonymous Yahoo mailbox, out of the blue on Monday:

Hi Igor, How's (my place of work) treating you these days? Hope all the family dinners went well. Do you think you'll pursue more creative ambitions in photography or stick to the tech side of things? Best wishes, The Mentalist tinyurl.com/mentalist5

All of this is information that I've made publicly available via Twitter, Flickr, LinkedIn - I don't exactly go out of my way to keep it hidden - but it's tied together in a way suggesting someone who either knows me or is following me around on-line, which in the context of an anonymous email from "The Mentalist" is less than comforting.

So I replied, in a friendly manner, that I didn't know how far the photography would go other than as a hobby, and asked directly to whom I was speaking. No reply. I checked the email headers, found out the network location from which the mail originated and the contact details of the network manager in case I needed to use it, and left it at that.

This morning, however, I received another reply:

Well, you should maintain the photography as a side kick one way or another. Did you miss me last night? See if you can work out some mentalist abilities at seemorethanothers.com. Best, The Mentalist

Oh. This is an advert for a TV programme. Right.

The whois record for the domain linked in the mail shows the registrant as Brooklyn Brothers, a Soho digital agency who, according to their website, started because they "wanted to be an antidote to advertising in general", and who believe that:

[…] we are currently placing the future of all commerce and communications in a network that can’t be trusted to deliver a reliable answer to a simple question. You can’t trust online reviewers. You can’t trust the gossip-cum-news outlets. You can’t separate the wise from the cranks.

So, Brooklyn Brothers, I don't have a TV. I know nothing about your campaign or your product. All I see is person(s) unknown making it clear to me that they know details of my personal life, refusing to reveal their own identity, and directing me to some vaguely sinister photos. How, exactly, am I supposed to separate you from the cranks? More importantly, why should I have to?

This is not wise. It's all wrong. It's obviously intended to be 'edgy' or 'alternative', but frankly it's nothing more than intrusive and creepy.

Apart from anything else, once the load has been shot and the website link has been sent, as a campaign it just feels a bit crappy. If they had the balls, they'd go the whole hog and really scare the shit out of me by going over the line - that'd get some publicity, alright - but of course, they know they're subject to ASA guidelines and ICO laws the same way anybody else is, so they're reduced to "well, err, can you look at my website please?". Well, err, no.

As I said in my email to the Brothers, if this is the antidote to advertising, give me billboards and banners any day. This is bollocks.