Many a small thing

Charles Ping

This is a question that has vexed marketers for many years.

I remember years ago working with a mail order company with full CTI integration (when it was something new) who had tried answering the phone to a repeat purchasers with “Hello Mr Smith, how can we help you today”. They stopped doing this for two reasons. Firstly many customers were spooked by this level of “big brother” knowledge and secondly the ensuing explanation actually wasted time, and in a contact centre time can mean money.  The consumer calling never questioned the targeting of the offer specifically to them, based on detailed RFV and other segmentation. They questioned the in your face application of the data.

The recent Phorm controversy is just this argument moving forward. I’d hope that all Marketing Direct and most BR readers are up to speed on this latest manifestation of data usage but you can get a fair summary on wikipedia (with the usual Tim Berners-Lee disclaimer about the web). In reality there are always two sides to these arguments and with privacy issues they tend to become polarised. However the success or failure of the implementation is whether it gives the consumer a better online experience or worse one. Given that no consumers really like online advertising then making it more relevant seems entirely sensible. That is as long as it doesn’t make some “mickey mouse” beginners mistakes. As an example the computer in our study at home is likely to have my wife or myself surfing. Our online habits are very different (no no, not that way!) but if my 17 year old son happens to use it because he’s too idle to go upstairs to his room then it becomes even more difficult for any behavioural targeting to keep pace. The light touch that was used by the mail order call centre many years ago, ignoring some of the attributes of the CTI integration, still teaches us lessons.