Madison Avenue is abuzz this week about the latest university research which found that 2/3s of American consumers don’t like being tracked online. I’m not really sure why this is shocking or even newsworthy.
Not surprisingly, all the pundits are jumping on the privacy angle….consumers don’t want anyone to know anything about them!! I think that’s BS. We share personal information with realtors, car salesmen, neighbors and strangers daily. But when we do that, WE receive the value, not someone else. I don’t think consumers are freaking out that Ford wants to know what car you drive. I think we are freaking out because that info is gathered behind our back and sold without any benefit to us.
If the question is asked honestly, what the advertising industry is really asking is this…
“How can we get consumers to feel OK about having their personal information collected and sold despite the fact that we are unwilling to share any of the bounty and value their personal information generates?”.
If consumers, who own their personal information, received the money that was spent buying that information…does anyone think 2/3s of Americans would object?
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Every week, there’s another bevy of articles warning us that marketers are trying to get information that belongs to us. Marketers want to know what we drive. How many kids we have. What our favorite breakfast cereal is. This worries me too. But not because I don’t want anyone to know this info…I don’t care. But it’s MY information. It belongs to me. What bugs me is that other people are buying and selling my information without giving me my cut.
Information about you and me must be protected. Privacy must be assured. But most of the articles are not about fraud or misused information. Most of the uproar is over safe, protected information that belongs to us. So what’s the fuss? The fuss is that consumers deserve to be included. Once we are confident that we’re safe, we’ll give our info to doctors, car salesmen, mortgage brokers, and magazine publishers. And we’ll gladly give it to reputable marketers too. It’s not that big a deal. If Nike wants to know I’m wearing New Balance that are starting to fray a bit, no problem. What’s in it for me?
Our information was bought and sold long before the Internet. This is nothing new. At my high school job in 1983 at Eastern Mountain Sports, the store manager used to give a different middle initial for every magazine he subscribed to, every application he filled out, every contest he entered. And then he watched as the direct mail, catalogs, and phone calls came in. Growing up, every pizza parlor and burger joint had a box on the counter to fill out your name to win a car or vacation. You still see it sometimes. Our info has always been, and will always be very valuable. The technology has improved, but the game is the same. Unless consumers decide to change the rules.
There was a great book written in 1998 called Net Worth by John Hagel III. This blog mirrors many of the topics covered in this book. The author had great insight about personal information and one line in particular has stuck with me. “The privacy backlash for many consumers may have less to do with their desire to keep information about themselves confidential and more to do with the pragmatic assessment that the returns for the information they divulge are, simply put, unsatisfactory.”
Well said. I’ve yet to meet someone who didn’t agree. I’ve also yet to meet someone who is doing something about it. That’s where we come in.
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