Before you label me a heartless old cynic, let me declare that I have nothing whatsoever against the Easter Bunny. Au contraire, any kind of creature that brings me free chocolate is all right by me. Easter duckbilled platypus? Not a problem. Easter dugong? Bring it on, I say. Gratuitous personalisation I can cope with, too. So what has annoyed me about this mailing?

No, it’s not the way the headline repeats the word ‘spring’ to hammer the concept into my thick head.

You have to open the thing up (nice format, by the way… which I think is what they’re selling) to see what makes it a bit special.  Frankly, the somewhat heavy-handed spring references led me to expect the bunnies to get the flogging they deserved once I peeked inside.

But not a bit of it.

A quick(ish) glance reveals this to be another one of those ‘Easter-bunnies-personalised-origami-people-looking-into-a-waste-bin-map-of-the-UK-with-a balloon-how-many-people-can-you-fit-into-a-mini’ concepts’. “Not that old chestnut again” I hear you cry.

Now come on, we’ve all mixed a metaphor or two in our time, but most of us would stop short of stitching six of them together and coming up with this Frankenstein’s monster of direct marketing concepts.

What the hell happened? “Yes, we like all six ideas.” “Let’s do all of them then”.

Isn’t there a case for the old ‘less is more’ adage here? Or am I just being grumpy because none of the plethora of Easter-themed mailings I received had any bloody chocolate in them this year?