The Lighter/Darker Side of Net-Centric Marketing
Back in December, The Marketing Consigliere blogged about the “Do Not Track” movement and how it was not good for B2C business (Do Not Resuscitate “Do Not Track” Part I & Part II). While he was critical of the privacy interest groups, he does have a sense of humor and admires their depiction of privacy intrusion in a Flash video he stumbled on the at the ACLU website. It portrays the CRM GUI of an order taker at a place called “Pizza Palace.”
With tongue-in-cheek irony, they illustrate the intrusive nickel and diming that a customer may suffer should marketers be allowed to collect business intelligence and perform over-the-top data mining and predictive analysis. He admits he laughed at the scenario.
His thoughts: While it’s technically feasible, it’s further off than they’re trying to make us fear. The integration of those disparate data points are probably not in even the most enthusiastic of Net-Centric Marketers’ heads. While many would like to have a EMM platform of that capability, the everyday worries of marketing tools such as advertising to even get a single customer still weigh heavily on a marketer’s mind.
While C4ISR Marketing may sound scary when portrayed by the privacy advocates, it is a tool that can be used for the good of both the Marketer and the Customer. Ultimately, the Internet and net-centric world empowers customers too, and as far as I know, in the future there will be still be plenty of pizza joints to choose from….
To underscore his point, he asks you this – would you buy from Pizza Palace after being treated that way?