If iris scanning sounds too Orwellian to you to exist or if you think the technology is too advanced then check this out
Seems pretty fantastical right? Imagine marketers of the future having a database of information about you such as your dating history, the places you hang out, and a list of the most popular words you use to update your "future-version of Facebook" status.
I can hear you say, "how would they get this information?" Many people make all of this information readily available on their public social networking site. Most users of Facebook and Myspace do not ever edit their privacy settings so things such as relationship status, places people "check in", and the various wall posts on a person's profile page are readily available to whoever wishes to look.
Twitter adds another source for futurist marketers to mine data on their potential customers. People tend to talk about what they are interested in. What they are interested in most likely has an entire support industry of products and services behind it. When people update their Twitter page with what they are doing and where they are, over time that information can be tracked to find the words that are used the most. These most-used words become keywords that marketers can then use on various search engines to make their websites linked to the products they sell show up on the front page of Google, for example.
Using this readily provided information by individuals in a specific niche market the savvy futurist marketer can choose which way to tailor his or her marketing campaign to better leverage this personal information. The more relevant the advertising the better chance it has at producing a sale.
There is a point where market research begins to infringe upon privacy and become downright creepy. Iris scanning = creepy. Mining Facebook and other social networking sites for market data = creepy.
With the advances in technology allowing marketers to gain access to personal information and leverage that information for their campaigns it becomes more and more necessary for individuals to protect their privacy.
Good post. I agree with you that it’s really creepy the way that some websites capture our information infringing our privacy, but that’s nothing in comparison to what the future might hold, since we might have to worry about these companies accessing our personal information directly from our body without asking permission to do so. I hope it never gets to that point.
ReplyDeleteI think it is not only too personal but also too invasive. As I mentioned in My Blog, it is important to establish limits for this emerging field or our future as consumers would be very creepy. Today, you can define a good marketer as someone capable of understand people’s needs and translate that information into unique products and services. In the neuromarketing future, skills could be replaced by technology and the best marketer would be the one with the finest brain scanner.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with your post! I even drew the comparison of Minority Report on my posting before I even read your article. Great minds think alike! The idea of advertisements being able to tell what I have previously purchased and how I currently feel is disturbing. I like how you drew comparisons with Twitter and other social media. There are so many ways that a company can "get into your head".
ReplyDeleteThe right of privacy that is entitled to us by constitutional right, is sadly diminish as our society evolve and we find ourselves immerse in ever more complicated issues. Although our ancestors draw the line very clearly about the boundaries of privacy we have been pushing it back with or without reason, but we ought to stop that. I invite you to read my blog, which also talks about the ethics of subliminal messages. There is a very fine line to draw in this issue and until what point is acceptable to influences consumer decisions.
ReplyDeletehttp://econmarkethidalgo.blogspot.com/
Minority Report did come to my mind immediately when Neuromarketing was mentioned. My initial perception was, wouldn't it be cool to have advertising cater to your particular need. However, not only would it be annoying, but with the direction that this world is heading, clearly that kind of information in space is troubling. There is the possibility of that information being used against you. With employers already screening potential employees via facebook, access to that kind of information in their eyes would be too ideal. With continued technological advancements, we seem to be heading in that direction, and noted in my blog on neuromarketing, we are becoming somewhat immune to the negative impact of invasive technologies like Neuromarketing.
ReplyDeleteAlc
I'd say the genies out of the bottle, but really that doesn't quite explain it properly. In my own blog post
ReplyDeleteI try to address some of the concerns you and several other commentators raised (although I do so more from a phenomenological perspective). The added problem I see here is that even if we get accustomed to certain elements of technology in our daily life, it is often and increasingly the result of simply blindly adopting that technology into our lives before we question it (thus the genie in the bottle dilemma). I think this means that ultimately we can't and shouldn't try to prevent innovation (such as Neuromarketing), but instead we need to take a more active role in dictating how that innovation will coexist with our lives.
Think of it this way; if the eye scanners in minority report creep you out so much then stop shopping at places that (would theoretically at some point in the future) have them (assuming privacy legislation has already failed to protect you). If people feel invaded by technology it is only because they are responding to it in a reactionary (instead of active) manner.
I fully do agree with V. It is completely up to the customer if he or she uses these services and the sophisticated technological approaches in our world. For some reason human beings are very curious and also fascinated by todays possibilities. This is the reason why we give away information that might be valuable to us, such as contact data. Here a great point of service marketing is mentioned. The major difference of marketing itself and service marketing is that in service marketing people have to consume the goods in order to evaluate them. So in other words we have to pay upfront. Think of a movie that has been advertised on television. In order to evaluate the film yourself you have to consume the whole movie first and you cannot give it back. That is the reason why you have to pay in advance. That is what most people do, they pay in advance for a service they do not know. Why do people do this if they are so scared? Why do they give away information that they actually do not want to give away? The service itself might end in a eye scan, which before had been mentioned, but curiosity in that very moment apparently is so much bigger than keeping the personal data to oneself.
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