The Unified Field Theory of Creepy

When marketers discuss using consumer data to drive content or offers in addressable communications such as email, apps or on-site messages, sooner or later the word “creepy” comes up.  Front-and-center stand such examples as the New York Times’s infamous “father learns of daughter’s pregnancy via direct mail” article.

However, even ordinary consumers in ordinary situations may feel that a marketer has violated some form of privacy when it reveals too much about what it knows in an email or SMS.

My former colleague Tim Suther used to use this image as a prime example of when marketers use data that they shouldn’t

We all agree that we want to avoid creepiness, but I don’t think we marketers, as a group, have established a working definition of creepy.  While no one would deny the creepiness of the lubricant example above, would an offer for sports equipment or kitchenware have raised an eyebrow?  How can we create a standard for what kinds of data are off-limits?  

In another dimension--time--how long can a marketer hold onto data without looking like a stalker?  I suspect that most consumers wouldn’t think twice about seeing items browsed the previous day in the “recently browsed items” column of a retail site.  However, would that customer look askance at the column if it featured something browsed a month ago?  Three months ago?  A year?

My favorite football columnist, Gregg Easterbrook, has coined the term “the Unified Field Theory of Creep” to parody the tendency of retailers to move all holidays forward, such as when Target puts out back-to-school merchandise in early July.  So I suggest, ladies and gentlemen, a Unified Field Theory of Creepy.

Data: Your Scariest Corporate Asset

Thanks in part to McKinsey’s coining of the term “Big Data” last summer, company data have never had more visibility than they do now.  At the same time, they have never faced more scrutiny.  Most of this scrutiny takes the form of concerns about privacy, the consumer-facing threat of data.  However, the larger data discussion has not--so far--broached the aspect that makes them the scariest assets a company has.

Once the near-exclusive domain of direct marketers, data has become the secret weapon du jour in-store, online and just about everywhere else.  The New York Times reported in February on how Target developed data models so sensitive that it could tell whether a customer had become pregnant before she told anyone.  Brands such as Virgin America and Axe have used Klout to evaluate customers.

So what makes data so scary?  Intangibility.