Did you see the scene in Minority Report<\/i> where the Tom Cruise character is walking through a shopping mall and all the stores are identifying him (by a retina scan, I think) and then delivering custom messages? <\/p>\n
A lot of people fear that kind of stuff. They get worried that the local grocery store knows they have a pet cat, or that Google knows which web sites they’ve visited. <\/p>\n
I agree there is some cause for concern over the proliferation of personal data, but I can also see an upside. <\/p>\n
I don’t want advertisements for dog food or commercials for “adult” movies or emails telling me where I can get my latest horoscope. <\/p>\n
But aside from that relatively trivial stuff, I would like to be able to see what I want to know<\/i> about a product. For example, if I’m interested in a coat, the first thing I do is look at the price tag. If it’s not in the range I’d want to pay, I lose all interest. <\/p>\n
Other people don’t shop like that. They want to see how it looks, and whether it has a special jelly bean pocket, and whatever else is important to them, and if it has enough fancy features they like they’re willing to pay a premium for it. <\/p>\n
Marketers decide how to display \/ sell a product based on averages. They do tests — e.g., show it this way to half the market and this other way to the other half of the market and see which method works better. <\/p>\n
That maximizes sales, but it also forces all of us to put up with that same sales technique. <\/p>\n
This weekend I got an email advertising a roundtable discussion on digital marketing issues. I clicked through to find out what it was about and had to put up with a really annoying video — obnoxious music in the background, jargon-laden nonsense about the product, etc. <\/p>\n
That stuff doesn’t work with me. I want to know what it is and how much it costs. If the presentation doesn’t answer that question in the first 20 seconds, I’m gone. That’s how I treat sales people who call me on the phone, and that’s my expectation for videos. <\/p>\n
Obviously I’m not in the majority. Other methods must be working better in the target market for these services. <\/p>\n
Maybe some time in the future some really good personalization<\/i> will solve this. Everybody else can get the fluffy stuff and I can get the fact-based presentation I want. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Did you see the scene in Minority Report where the Tom Cruise character is walking through a shopping mall and all the stores are identifying him (by a retina scan, I think) and then delivering custom messages? A lot of people fear that kind of stuff. They get worried that the local grocery store knows …<\/p>\n