These days, it is not easy to introduce a new product or service.

Even to get one's regular range or new gizmos onto a supermarket shelf requires cunning and super human effort but who can blame the (chain) owners?

What is the point of adding appliance number 31 to 30 of much the same?

The purchasing public will, ultimately, walk away with only one unit and out of those nearly three dozen of reputable brands, he is sure to find one that just fits his bill.

Worse still: it is nigh impossible these days to get a new food product into a chain store.

Not only must there be some real advantage to the buying public and store owner alike, but bulk buying will squeeze profit margins to almost naught, if not into negative numbers, as the price to pay for merely getting onto a store shelf.

Then the payment terms are, in many cases, draconian. Payment will be made only after goods have been sold and even then, are likely to be months, if not years late. To get paid for the very overdue invoices may require (a lot of) additional expenses.

Some purchasing managers and/or the accounts department staff will be happy to discuss the problem in some salubrious restaurant with free flowing Mai Tai and it is not uncommon for this exercise having to be repeated several times to even get a place in the payment queue.

Expensive gifts may also help to shorten the queue.

Yes, I indeed commiserate with the hapless purveyors of products and services.

Less than enamoured, though, am I when their marketing problems become my problems.

That is, when advertisers start to invade and disturb my privacy by bombarding me with SMS messages on my hand phone or mobile.

Here is the sad scenario that inevitable ensues once I get my "message alert."

First, I am interrupted with what I was doing, be it concentrating on my work or whatever, then I have to get my hand phone out of my pocket, push buttons to unlock it, then push more buttons in order to get to see the message only to find that I should enquire at a famous bank (which I decided NOT to patronize from now on) for a favourable loan.

Or how I can save money from my telecom service, or which agency has pretty housekeepers who can launder my underwear so white, that Mrs Lim next door would be ever so jealous.

Then I have to push more buttons to delete the message and, finally, lock the display and put my machine away.

But I was expecting that important business message and, like it or not, I might have to suffer several junk mails till my business message finally arrives. That is, if it has not been blocked by overflowing junk mail messages if I happened to be at a meeting and had to switch my phone to the silent mode as my machine has a storage capacity of only 10 messages.

For those "black advertisers," for that is what they are, who are not clever enough to send hand phone messages from their computer, there is, of course, the manual way: It is still much cheaper to have a battery of hand-phone-equipped, 30-yuan-per-day unemployeds sending the same message to all the 11-digit numbers starting with 138 and 139 and actually get a subscriber to see it, than the paying the high price of a small advertisement in a newspaper that fewer will even notice.

And, while we are at it: even welcome messages to a new city are a bloody nuisance. How annoying it is to drive from Shanghai to Nanjing and be welcomed to explore any of the 50 cities and communities along the way.

My telecom company told me that there is no easy way to combat the problem because, while single offending numbers can be disconnected 100 new ones will sprout afresh. Besides, any hand-phone owner can be a potential black advertiser.

So, what needs to be done?

Well, actually, the solution is quite simple but it requires the will of the telecom companies and the authorities to treat this annoying scourge once and for all. That is: Legislation and strict policing, once that law is in place.

Hand phone messages are a convenient way of communication without having to waste time on pleasantries.

They are a boon to business, busy housewives and teenagers alike. But their usefulness will be totally annulled if bona fide messages are drowned out by a rapidly growing cacophony of advertising, much of the same as we have to continually endure on television, newspapers and - since flat TV displays have become affordable - the underground and the omnibus.

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