Wise Buddha

Is Google starting to act a bit creepy? I am starting to think that the all pervasive Google needs to be reined in a bit for a couple of reasons.

1. Their recent launch of Street Level search was badly handled from a PR / communications point of view and the service is invasive in its current form. CNET has a useful summary here. 2. This much power over a sector has never been a good idea - will Google become the next Microsoft and evolve to being thought of in the same terms i.e. omnipresent but accepted sort of. There could be a backlash on the horizon.
3. I know they profile Gmail so they can target us with ad’s. But on the back of point 1 what seemed a couple of years ago as acceptable for a free email account with generous storage now appears a little more troublesome.4. Google stores too much personal search information and keeps it far too long on US servers.

There is no doubting that Google does great things but as the saying goes with great power comes great ahem revenues. But it does highlight the privacy question and in particular how our anonymity is being eroded. This may seem a strange observation for a marketer to make when knowing your consumer is paramount and new technologies are providing  us with unparallelled access to data. But there is also a social and ethical aspect to this that needs to be tackled as marketing does not exist or operate in a vacuum and needs the participation and consent of the population in order to work. Otherwise we start to battle against onerous legislation curbing marketing practices like telemarketing, guerrilla marketing and the like. Consumers need to feel confident that their personal information is being handled correctly, I am fairly certain that it is not as a couple of recent personal examples seem to indicate -

It seems now that whenever I go into a store to purchase something I am asked to part with valuable personal information  - name - why do they need to know my name, address, post code and telephone number. Hang on all I want to do is buy X, I haven’t opted into a privacy policy nor have I been told how my data will be stored or used. I think many  retailers are operating way out on the edge of what is acceptable and ethical practice and surely will get some push back either from consumers or Privacy Groups. I have a small group of retailers I gladly sign up to receive information from - Toys R Us, TJ Kids, Safeway, The Bay and Ikea are not on that list!

I have also spent some time recently trying to opt out of various promotional mailing lists for which I must have opted into when I bought something - I think. What seemed like a straightforward thing - click the link to unsubscribe has proved a real hassle. And the two worst culprits Zip the online DVD retail arm for Rogers and Dell. In the case of Zip several months after opting out and closing my account I am still having dialogue about the amount of personal information they want to keep about me and Dell continue to spam me despite the fact I have received various emails confirming that I am no longer on the database.

In my view the marketing function in all businesses has to place great value on the data and information they collect about their consumers and prospects. It is a privileged position and must be managed correctly. Transparency is key and consumers must be told when their information is being collected and how it will be used. If not then we face alienating people and undermining any trust. The holy grail for marketers is to have our  business bookmarked and a consumer opted into our CRM program, being active and spending regularly. If the current trend persists an accident is waiting to happen e.g. IKEA losing a briefcase with all their Canadian database and the sudden realisation by tens of thousands of customers that they have been unwitting participants in a very large database that has been compromised.