The Pirate Review - Moving-Target Markets

Don't give away more than you intended—protect your privacy whenever you can

I recently heard a radio ad geared toward small business owners. I can't remember the company who was doing the advertising, or the word-for-word text of the ad, so I'll paraphrase the gist of it for you.

Imagine yourself taking a picture of a potential customer's house with a camera. A digital camera. Then imagine downloading that picture to your laptop, using a photo tool program to give the house a custom paint job, and printing out a customized flyer to leave on their front door for your house-painting business. You don't have to imagine, you can do it with [our hardware/software/whatever it is we're selling today].

My very first response to this ad was, "How utterly creepy." I didn't see it from the point of view of a small business owner, but as the homeowner. Imagine yourself opening the door and finding a flyer on your doorstep—a flyer featuring your house, with a custom paint job. Even if you're not that paranoid—as I am admittedly prone to being—wouldn't you feel a bit panicky? At the very least, won't you wonder who else is getting this flyer, and whether your house is featured on it? Could the company be making false claims to have painted your house, perhaps with a bogus testimonial from you? If some unknown person took a picture of your home, what else could he or she do with that picture? What other photos, possibly incriminating, could have been taken of your property or loved ones? What could people do with those kinds of photos? Would you be likely to patronize the business who left this flyer?

Now I'm pretty sure the advertiser didn't intend for me to react as I did, but then, I'm not the target market for these particular products. Advertising in the late '90s and early 2000s has been all about "target markets," an advertising term for finding and focusing in on the people who are most likely to want or need your product or service. In a country where individuality is highly praised, where personal interests have splintered and specialized, it makes good financial sense for advertisers to seek out only those who will respond favorably to an advertisement—or so the argument goes.

The thing is, the word "target" is used advisedly. Today's for-profit businesses—and non-profit organizations; more on that later—are doing much more than just advertising to a pre-existing market. They're not aiming at a target that already exists; they're trying to create new targets out of whole cloth, then move in for the kill—er, sale. For example: the specialty kid meal packaged with a toy didn't even exist until 1979, when McDonald's debuted its first Happy Meal. Children didn't ask for it; they were perfectly happy with a basic burger and small fries until some marketing wizard came up with the idea. Now you can't visit a fast-food joint anywhere without being offered some knock-off of the same concept. It won't be too long until an entire industry springs up around the the collectible (yes, collectible!) toys included with the meal.

At the same time businesses are busy creating targets, there's a sharp uptick in the number and frequency of invasive bids for your money. Telemarketers call unlisted numbers at odd hours (some of the cockier ones are now leaving voice mail messages), porn spam pours into the inbox of every e-mail account, and big online stores use cookies to track your every browser move, the better to offer you juicy tidbits upon your return. And it isn't just limited to business—non-profits can be just as demanding when it comes to cash.

I learned this the hard way in late 2001, just after September 11. Swept by a wave of patriotism and concern for the Americans whose lives had been shattered by the attacks, I made out a small check to the American Red Cross. That turned out to be a wretched mistake—had I been thinking more clearly, I would have paid them in cash. You see, I ended up paying the Red Cross twice. The first time was when they cashed my check; the second time was when they harvested my name, address and telephone number off the check and sold it, along with thousands of other addresses obtained the same way, to a slew of organizations bent on getting donations from me. Every week there came more piteous requests, either by phone or in the mail, for money to help the needy. I had no respite until I moved, without giving the USPS a forwarding address; even then, the March of Dimes somehow managed to get hold of my current location and has been sending me donation envelopes. The Mail Preference Service doesn't seem to help, either.

Technology is marvelous, but it also has a menacing potential for misuse by intrusive people. In the last few years, I've become a big advocate of privacy. So have many others, particularly those who have grown tired of having their homes violated on a daily basis by salespeople who seem to believe it is their right and duty to do so. To borrow some ad parlance, we have become "moving targets," people who refuse to sit still and be relentlessly marketed to; we opt out, unlist our numbers, pay cash, cut up our grocery store discount cards, hang up on telemarketers, whatever it takes to get away from in-your-face advertising.

Because at this point, it's not about finding markets, it's about making them. And I refuse to be a target.