Is it time to add this to your privacy policy?

What with the recent AOL gaffe, where they distributed a huge data warehouse full of search data without proper anonymization, I’ve been wondering if it’s time for a few of our clients to add a clause to their privacy policy.

The clause would have to do with use of internal search data. After all, I’ve written here about the utility of mining this type of search data. These data are important markers to user behavior, and should not be ignored.

So, since consumers are realizing their search behavior is attracting attention, how about a privacy clause such as, “The owners of this site will not release user internal search data, nor will they allow it to be used to make observations about individual users. Instead, the owners pledge to use the information only in aggregate, to improve the experience of exploring this site.”

I know from looking at our clients’ web logs that privacy policies are being read over, or at least given a quick review. Therefore, this addition could help clients’ online images in the eyes of these readers, and also encourage these readers to go ahead and search within the site with confidence.

Big Brother may be watching, but he’s benevolent.

Mobile marketing of tomorrow is beyond anything you can imagine

Here’s another long post, but I suspect you’ll find it worth the ride. It will paint a picture of what mobile marketing will be like, much sooner than you may think. Actually, it will paint a picture of what person-to-person retail (as opposed to digital retail) will be like, because mobile devices will merely be the means that will take us to this fascinating future.

If you’re a new reader, I need to explain why I write this thing. I strive not to be part of the echo chamber that is current public discourse. By echo chamber, I mean the repetition of the same hot concept or idea until it starts to sound credible. Many occupational blogs (as opposed to recreational blogs), merely convey the industry “news” of the day. Sometimes that’s worthwhile. But other times, the repetition contributes to a pattern of half-baked ideas taking on more significance than they deserve.

My hope is to make sense of what’s happening or about to happen in marketing technology — and occasionally to pass along a juicy tip or two that you can use right now. Rishad Tobaccowala, chief innovation officer of Publicis, put it well. He’s with one of the world’s biggest advertising groups. Tobaccowala was quoted in The Economist as saying, “All of us have been classically trained, and now we’re in a jazz age.”

We’re all riffing, my friend, and I’m hoping this blog will help keep the improvisation going.

Let me steer us back from that digression. I mentioned The Economist, which you must understand is not just a magazine about economics. Although, to use a famous Seinfeld quote, “Not that there’s anything wrong with that.” On the contrary. Living, breathing economics is much like living, breathing history. By that I mean the following:

  • Economics bears no resemblance to what most of us were exposed to in school
  • Economics is extremely helpful in making sense of this furiously changing world

A case in point is the mundane and exciting observations of economist Tim Harford. In his recent book, The Undercover Economist, he sets us straight about Starbucks. We think they are larger and more powerful than they are because they have a location on every corner of major cities — or so it seems. He uses the example of how you cannot pass into or out of Washington D.C.’s Metro Station without encountering at least one Starbucks.

Yet that is proof not of the seductive draw of their products, but of the weak gravitational pull that they exert. By contrast, Mr. Harford points out that there is only one Washington D.C. Department of Motor Vehicles. If you have a problem with your driver’s license, you must go there and suffer. And people do. They must.

That’s power. That’s scarcity! Conversely, Starbucks knows that the majority of coffee drinkers are quite fickle about where they buy their coffee. It just so happens that Starbucks is big enough to buy up those scarce good locations so that they consistently arrive in our faces when we round the next corner.

The scarcity is not in the lattes and cappuccinos, but in the prime locations from which they are proffered. This is why, he asserts, Starbucks is not nearly as wealthy, in relative terms, as the merchants of those selling opportunities — namely, the landlords who rent to Starbucks and the property owners and brokers who sell to Starbucks. A validation of this theory can be found in a recent New York Times article about the proliferation of bank branches and the property boomlet that this industry expansion has ignited.

Banks, too, know that they are selling a near-commodity. And so it goes: the tyranny of location, location, location.

Imagine if these industry leaders could say, “To hell with these physical locations. We’re stuck in place while our customers travel around the city. That’s just dumb!” Or more likely, what if this declaration was from non-leaders in their industries? After all, the leaders in gourmet coffees and financial services have much invested in their physical brand. It stands to reason that it is the upstart competitors who will stage the more nimble attacks, just as small bands of guerrilla-fighting American Revolution soldiers sprung out of the bushes to fight and ultimately defeat the legions of lockstep Redcoats.

But how will this assault be staged? I’m suggesting that there will someday be a mobile army of coffee merchants and bank branches. These establishments on wheels will find their customers around the next corner because they will see them coming from ever-changing maps of movements and probabilities.

Why maintain a brand address, after all, when you’ve trained your customers to expect you to show up exactly where and when they need you? Of course, this data will come from the only possession other than our wallets that we dare not leave home without (and soon enough those two will merge into one!). I’m speaking of course of the cell phone.

Already, privacy-protected surveillance is being done on a city-wide scale. You can read of several such studies on the following MIT web site, but I’m going to quote from one such study, about a “realtime” Rome, Italy:

In the visualizations of Real Time Rome we synthesize data from various real-time networks to understand patterns of daily life in Rome. We interpolate the aggregate mobility of people according to their mobile phone usage and visualize it synchronously with the flux of public transit, pedestrians, and vehicular traffic.

By overlaying mobility information on geographic and socio-economic references of Rome we unveil the relationships between fixed and fluid urban elements. These real-time maps help us understand how neighborhoods are used in the course of a day, how the distribution of buses and taxis correlates with densities of people, how goods and services are distributed in the city, or how different social groups, such as tourists and residents, inhabit the city. With the resulting visualizations users can interpret and react to the shifting urban environment.

How cool is that?

When I first saw these maps, which surge and pulse with life, I thought they were interesting but were like many technologies — a solution in search of a problem. Now I think I’ve found the problem: Taking power from the owners and renters of real estate and putting them in the hands of retailers. And in doing so, making life for their customers easier and more pleasant.

I’d love to go on and address the objections that I’m sure you have about privacy, and the ability to move branch locations through congested urban streets. Those answers will have to wait (unless you’d care to ask me in the Comments area — in which case I’ll be much obliged). But for now, I’ll leave you with this thought:

If a retailer …

  • Analyzed aggregate cell phone data about your movements as well as everyone else’s who want the same services as you, and …
  • Anticipated through statistical means where to locate itself to fulfill those needs, and …
  • Alerted you through that same cell phone where they are in real time (e.g., “We’re two blocks away — care for your favorite beverage?”) …

Would you choose instead to go out of your way, back to those place-bound merchants you visit now?

I suspect that this consumer choice is quickly on its way.

Is there a future in reaching professionals through their PDAs?

I could have called this entry “Why I own two Tungsten C Palm Pilots.” The short answer is marketing to physicians.

By the way, the answer to the inevitable question “Why two?” is I use one of this pair of identical PDAs as a sort of software tester and back-up, and the other to manage my life (or attempt to).

Physicians are a market that I frequently help my clients reach. They are a difficult market, since they are extremely pressed for time and suspicious of anyone who they perceive is “selling something.” And who can blame them?

I had always been curious about whether technology can help attract this group’s attention and ultimately win their trust long enough to decide on a trial of what we were selling. Three years ago, what we were selling was a respected but underutilized Heart Center in Southern California. We knew that once referring physicians (mostly primary care specialists) sent a patient or two our way, they would likely be pleased with the results and become loyal advocates of this center.

The biggest barrier to trial was perceived distance. Although the center was not located far from our targeted physicians, it wasn’t one of the closest to them. This drive time objection was exacerbated by the major rush hours of the day.

Research at that time told us that the PDA (led, then, by the higher-level Palm OS devices) had high adoption rates among our physicians. They used their PDAs daily, to prescribe, research, review diagnostics and in other ways accelerate care. (The trend continues, with publications such as MedPage Today offering education and CME credits via the three major PDA platforms).

That led to us developing a small Palm application and corresponding Excel macro, both delivered in a direct mailing that these physicians could not ignore. The program allowed these physicians to tap in a patient’s home or work ZIP code and see the actual drive time to our heart center, shown in minutes. To more accurately simulate reality, a sliding bar could adjust for mild, medium or heavy traffic conditions.

Sadly, we never got to launch this application and test its effectiveness. But it illustrates a valuable lesson: The only hope of marketing to the professional (of any stripe) through her PDA is to help her do her job better.

To my knowledge, this is still completely uncharted territory. But with PDA adoption rates continuing to rise, the concept seems more appropriate than ever.Â