Big Brother, You’re Watching Him!
The art of knowing who might want to buy or trade what has been a time honored tradition as long as anyone can document. Vendors setting up shop to sell specific goods and services fulfilled a need of supply and demand. Moreover, most vendors over time learned what a particular patron might want from them, and would cater to their needs.
There is nothing new at all about this concept. But in today’s global market place, the individual feels more and more left out and catering to an individual’s needs comes at a price that many feel they can’t afford. Oh sure, you ask for a catalog from Crate and Barrel and before you know it your mail box is full of more of the same from Pottery Barn to Z Gallery.
The art of knowing and targeting your market actually began with Sears and Roebucks in 1895 when it published it’s first catalog – a 532 page book filled with just about anything you could imagine, and a few you hadn’t. In just five short years this mail order business turned out to be one of the most successful, and copied businesses ever conceived.
Anytime you bought something from the catalog your request was received by a processing center that verified that you enclosed the right amount of money, that the item requested was indeed what you wanted and before it was forwarded to the distribution center to be sent out, your name and address was checked to see if you had bought something from Sears and Roebucks before. If you were a new customer, a mailing “dog tag” was created – a medal embossed plate with your name and address – that was run through a machine creating a mailing label for shipping to use. If you were an old customer, the clerk would pull your tag and make a label.
But, one other important thing occurred. Whenever you purchased something from Sears and Roebucks the tag was run several times over index cards with what was purchased and when. That was filed by category, and also with your master card, and sometimes cross referenced with other categories.
So, over time, if you were buying a fair amount of farm equipment from Sears, when they had a sale on farm equipment they’d pull the cards of everyone who had bought farm equipment and send it to the processing center to have mailing tags printed. A special catalog was created for just those customers.
By today’s standards, this was very labor intensive endeavor, but it was the grandfather of the modern target marketing techniques used today.
There are hundreds, if not thousands of database companies that can provide you with mailing, emailing, phone numbers of target markets, based on age, sex, income, area you live in and just about any other criteria you wish to filter the data by.
Most all of us have supermarket “Value Shopper” discount cards that we swipe to save on in store promotions, available only to those shoppers who are in the “in club”.
Any time the supermarket chain wants to look at buying trends by zip code, or any other criteria that you gave them when you filled out that card, all they have to do is type in a few parameters and guess what? They can look at what you bought over the last week, month year or more! Even if you don’t have a card, the computer logs exactly what was bought on any transaction, time of day, etc. and can easily see what folks bought for Memorial Day last year to make sure they’ve got a good stock on hand for this year.
Ever noticed how some markets of the same chain have a much better “upgraded” goods in some areas, but not in others? That’s area demographic target marketing. All major chains from Home Depot to Bed Bath and Beyond practice this very specific target stocking practice. Simply put, you won’t find a Kmart on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills!
But with the advent of the internet, and the ability to buy things “on line” this has changed the rules for marketing companies who, up until the early 1990’s thought they had the game pretty well nailed.
Recently I bought a historical account of John Brown’s life on line from Amizon.com. Now, I receive an email from them periodically announcing when they have another new biography that they think I might be interested in. That’s pretty basic stuff that Sears figured out along time ago. But the internet has become much more sophisticated than purchase profiling.
There are several online companies that sell profiled ads. In simple terms, they track what websites you visit. Let’s say you’re an avid gardener and you subscribe to several webzines on the subject. It stores that information, by your sign on name or your Internet Explorer access code married to a particular computer. Then anytime you do a search for something unrelated, let’s say you’re looking for concert tickets, and there are ad windows for other products on that site, and this profiling marketing company has bought advertising access to that sight, it places an ad for gardening equipment, fertilizer, or a local gardening suppler on that site for concert tickets, in the mere seconds that it takes to load the site. It knows what interests you, and where you live! I’m not making any of this up. This has proven to be a muli-million dollar industry in just a few short years, and it’s getting more sophisticated everyday.
Using this model, cable companies are now designing programs to deliver specific advertising to just you, based on what you watch, when you watch and how often you watch.
Within a year’s time, it is estimated, all major cable companies will be able to offer this service to local, regional and national advertisers who are looking to advertise just to their target audience. Watch the Food Channel, Home and Garden and Do It Yourself networks – we’ve got a do it yourselfer who likes to cook, and every time you turn the channel on any cable network that allows for regional cable companies to insert commercials, guess what, you’re going to see the same set of commercials set to your personal demographic profile.
And you didn’t think anyone cared. Think again.
Bon Appétit!
The art of knowing who might want to buy or trade what has been a time honored tradition as long as anyone can document. Vendors setting up shop to sell specific goods and services fulfilled a need of supply and demand. Moreover, most vendors over time learned what a particular patron might want from them, and would cater to their needs.
There is nothing new at all about this concept. But in today’s global market place, the individual feels more and more left out and catering to an individual’s needs comes at a price that many feel they can’t afford. Oh sure, you ask for a catalog from Crate and Barrel and before you know it your mail box is full of more of the same from Pottery Barn to Z Gallery.
The art of knowing and targeting your market actually began with Sears and Roebucks in 1895 when it published it’s first catalog – a 532 page book filled with just about anything you could imagine, and a few you hadn’t. In just five short years this mail order business turned out to be one of the most successful, and copied businesses ever conceived.
Anytime you bought something from the catalog your request was received by a processing center that verified that you enclosed the right amount of money, that the item requested was indeed what you wanted and before it was forwarded to the distribution center to be sent out, your name and address was checked to see if you had bought something from Sears and Roebucks before. If you were a new customer, a mailing “dog tag” was created – a medal embossed plate with your name and address – that was run through a machine creating a mailing label for shipping to use. If you were an old customer, the clerk would pull your tag and make a label.
But, one other important thing occurred. Whenever you purchased something from Sears and Roebucks the tag was run several times over index cards with what was purchased and when. That was filed by category, and also with your master card, and sometimes cross referenced with other categories.
So, over time, if you were buying a fair amount of farm equipment from Sears, when they had a sale on farm equipment they’d pull the cards of everyone who had bought farm equipment and send it to the processing center to have mailing tags printed. A special catalog was created for just those customers.
By today’s standards, this was very labor intensive endeavor, but it was the grandfather of the modern target marketing techniques used today.
There are hundreds, if not thousands of database companies that can provide you with mailing, emailing, phone numbers of target markets, based on age, sex, income, area you live in and just about any other criteria you wish to filter the data by.
Most all of us have supermarket “Value Shopper” discount cards that we swipe to save on in store promotions, available only to those shoppers who are in the “in club”.
Any time the supermarket chain wants to look at buying trends by zip code, or any other criteria that you gave them when you filled out that card, all they have to do is type in a few parameters and guess what? They can look at what you bought over the last week, month year or more! Even if you don’t have a card, the computer logs exactly what was bought on any transaction, time of day, etc. and can easily see what folks bought for Memorial Day last year to make sure they’ve got a good stock on hand for this year.
Ever noticed how some markets of the same chain have a much better “upgraded” goods in some areas, but not in others? That’s area demographic target marketing. All major chains from Home Depot to Bed Bath and Beyond practice this very specific target stocking practice. Simply put, you won’t find a Kmart on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills!
But with the advent of the internet, and the ability to buy things “on line” this has changed the rules for marketing companies who, up until the early 1990’s thought they had the game pretty well nailed.
Recently I bought a historical account of John Brown’s life on line from Amizon.com. Now, I receive an email from them periodically announcing when they have another new biography that they think I might be interested in. That’s pretty basic stuff that Sears figured out along time ago. But the internet has become much more sophisticated than purchase profiling.
There are several online companies that sell profiled ads. In simple terms, they track what websites you visit. Let’s say you’re an avid gardener and you subscribe to several webzines on the subject. It stores that information, by your sign on name or your Internet Explorer access code married to a particular computer. Then anytime you do a search for something unrelated, let’s say you’re looking for concert tickets, and there are ad windows for other products on that site, and this profiling marketing company has bought advertising access to that sight, it places an ad for gardening equipment, fertilizer, or a local gardening suppler on that site for concert tickets, in the mere seconds that it takes to load the site. It knows what interests you, and where you live! I’m not making any of this up. This has proven to be a muli-million dollar industry in just a few short years, and it’s getting more sophisticated everyday.
Using this model, cable companies are now designing programs to deliver specific advertising to just you, based on what you watch, when you watch and how often you watch.
Within a year’s time, it is estimated, all major cable companies will be able to offer this service to local, regional and national advertisers who are looking to advertise just to their target audience. Watch the Food Channel, Home and Garden and Do It Yourself networks – we’ve got a do it yourselfer who likes to cook, and every time you turn the channel on any cable network that allows for regional cable companies to insert commercials, guess what, you’re going to see the same set of commercials set to your personal demographic profile.
And you didn’t think anyone cared. Think again.
Bon Appétit!
No comments:
Post a Comment