That would seem to be a safe bet, since they’re now being spoofed in the above (pretty funny) AT&T commercial.

Takeaway for marketers: Maybe suggesting a flash mob as part of your guerrilla marketing strategy isn’t such a cutting-edge idea after all.

So I click into Huffington Post yesterday afternoon to check on the news and — YOW!

Okay, I can well imagine somebody getting all kinds of excited about turning the background of a page into an ad — talk about finding some new real estate for slapping a message — but this was just a little too intrusive. Okay, it was a lot intrusive.

Do I want to watch Men of a Certain Age? Not any more than before, that’s for sure. Am I pissed at HuffPo and TNT for this SCREAMING LOUD INTRUSION into my news reading? You betcha.

Takeaway for marketers: Ask yourself whether your ads are designed to engage or intrude.

Someone designing the newspaper inserts for CVS must have a sense of humor.

The rapture was supposed to happen yesterday at about 6:00 in the evening, east coast time. Maybe that’s what that break in the clouds was; after all, we hadn’t see real sun around here for about a week.

Whether it did or didn’t happen, though, it occurred to me this morning that it was maybe one of the best guerrilla marketing efforts ever.

Check out the AIDA model posted on guerrillaonline.com: the rapture had it all. Attention? Who’s not going to pay attention when the end of the world is at hand. Interest? There’s a clear “urgency, feeling of a special situation” where the rapture is concerned. Desire? Action? Check. Check.

Hey, isn’t the goal of a successful guerrilla marketing campaign to raise attention and awareness? Well, just look at the graphic I posted above. That’s a Google Trends look at searches for the word “rapture” over the past 30 days. You’ll see similar spikes for “familyradio.com” and “Harold Camping.”

And isn’t the goal of a successful guerrilla marketing campaign to win earned media? Done and done. Everyone from CNN to the Wall Street Journal to  Reuters and everyone in between covered the story. Camping probably got more press than anyone else in 2011 this site of Charlie Sheen and Osama bin Laden.

And isn’t the goal of a successful guerrilla marketing campaign to also get people to spread the word on your behalf? Done and done. Robert Fitzpatrick is a perfect example of this campaign’s success: He spent his life’s savings of $140,000 on spreading Camping’s rapture message.

So the campaign worked. Awareness raised. Base energized. Press coverage won.

Now what?

HubSpot has a blog post … and an audio recording … and an ebook … detailing 60 ways in which “the ‘Personalization Revolution’ has been enabling a select number of marketers to create not just windfall profits, but also far deeper relationships with customers, constituents and the marketplace.”

Having been in this digital marketing game since the first Clinton administration, I’ve long felt that personalization is one of those things that seems great in theory but looks terrible in practice. For all the hopeful and optimistic language about “making things personal in a meaningful way,” the end result is typically something quite different.

So what happens is I wind up getting emails addressed to “Peter” (a typo of my last name) instead of to “Craig.” Or I get messaging imploring me to buy a Mother’s Day present for my mom who passed away two years ago. Or I get pinged to buy something wholly inappropriate for me because I used my computer and Amazon account to buy something for my daughter for her birthday.

You get the idea. The reality is that the “algorithmically-driven content” HubSpot touts too often winds up delivering irrelevant crap.

Because true and meaningful personalization — like when a close friend of family member recommends a terrific new movie you’ve never heard of because they know who you are, not what you’ve bought lately — is hard to come by.

The rest is just smoke and mirrors.

Takeaway for marketers: Pimpin’ (your product or service) ain’t easy.