An Exciting Announcement from Toomey Audio-Visual

I received this email sixteen hours ago:

Dear Customer,

On behalf of Toomey Audio Visual, I wanted to reach out to you with some exciting company news – we have recently been acquired by Stacked Group. Should you not be familiar, Stacked is one of Ireland’s leading suppliers of AV & Digital Signage, IT Hardware, Managed Print Services and Workplace Supplies. The company was founded in 2002 and is headquartered in the Red Cow Dublin, with an all-Ireland presence and over 85 local staff members.

The acquisition is strategically well-timed and will help to further enhance the service and product offerings to our clients. We believe that Toomey AV is very closely aligned with the Stacked Group in a number of critical areas, particularly in terms of professionalism, experience, service and expertise.

The acquisition will help to ensure that we can uphold our commitment to delivering top-tier Audio-Visual services to our clients based on our 55+ years of experience, whilst leveraging Stacked Group's scale, expertise, additional services and wider solutions.

Both the teams at Toomey AV and Stacked are excited about this next chapter and look forward to joining forces to offer our customers an excellent product offering.

Should you have any questions on how this may impact our relationship moving forward, please do not hesitate to contact us on 01 4660515.

Obviously, this is important news in itself, and I'd like to extend my hugest congratulations to both Toomey Audio Visual and Stacked on the happy nuptials.

But why do I mention it?

Well, because I've been receiving Toomey Audio-Visual promotional emails for years. I can find evidence going back to 2017, when I mentioned it on Facebook, but it was already a tradition by then. (I clear out my inbox occasionally.)

The truth is, I feel weirdly sentimental about the strangest things. I don't know how I first started getting promotional emails from them. But something stopped me from unsubscribing, though I've unsubscribed from tons of other mailing lists. Maybe it's because I like the name "Toomey".

They also email me a reasonable amount of times. I think we should be pretty tolerant about advertising and promotion, since it's what keeps the wheels of our society turning. (I write about this here, in case anyone cares.) But there's an implicit contract. Don't BLITZ me with emails. Toomey don't, and so I am happy to keep getting them. I might even buy one of their products one day!

I'm a bit confused by the fact that Stacked Group is headquartered in the Red Cow, though. Isn't that a pub? I rather like the idea of a company having their headquarters in a pub, although of course I know I must be misunderstanding something.

I really think there should be ceremonies for acquisitions and mergers. I don't mean a photo-op where somebody signs a piece of paper and there's a mascot or a big helium balloon or something cheesy like that. There should be a proper ceremony, like a wedding. Both CEOs should make public vows, dressed in ceremonial robes. Why can't we drape contemporary things in time-honoured forms?