Monday, June 15, 2009

Phone-Sex Service Gets Boost from Lands' End, International Paper


Here's one for the No Good Deed Goes Unpunished Department: Lands' End and International Paper are among the companies whose names have recently been connected to a telephone-sex outfit offering hundreds of "hot, horny girls . . . who love nasty talk."

The accompanying scan shows an example of the inadvertent promotion of the "Intimate Encounters" operation: It's from a panel of a box that was manufactured by International Paper and used to deliver Lithonia Lighting products to a construction site several months ago. The box includes the message "Corrugated Recycles", with a toll-free phone number to call for more information.

The American corrugated industry, however, phased out (800) 879-9777 at the end of 2007. Callers now are greeted with a recorded come-on that begins, "Hey there, sexy guy", as explained in "Hey, big boy, can I recycled your cardboard?"

It's taken awhile for the word to get out about the phase-out; some recycling information Web sites still list the number. And even companies that stopped ordering boxes with the phone number didn't throw away their existing boxes or pull the boxes off of dealers' shelves.

One Dead Tree Edition correspondent got a box displaying the 800 number from Lands' End last Christmas. He says the Sears subsidiary responded quickly to his email about the situation. Lands End apologized, said it was "shocked" to learn that the phone number had been changed, and offered a coupon, he reports.

One advantage of corrugated boxes is their durability. No doubt there are thousands of "porno cardboard" boxes in homes across the U.S. containing everything from Christmas ornaments to tax records to children's toys.

And one of the strengths of print is its durability. It doesn't disappear when a server goes down or a hard drive crashes.

Moral of the story: Printing a message on a corrugated box is great if you want the message to be around for a decade -- and not so great if you want to change the message after a year.

Disclosures: Although I've written several articles about "cardboard porn", I don't really get it. I'm not a pedophile, so the idea of talking nasty with "girls" seems creepy; I prefer women. Come to think of it, "telephone sex" sounds like an unnatural act. Then again, I don't know much about pornography. I don't even own a pornograph.

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