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Re: Aw: Re: [projectvrm] Some possibly VRooMy stuff from the NYTimes R&D lab… Realising Consumer Rights


Chronological Thread 
  • From: Bart Stevens < >
  • To: Graham Hill < >
  • Cc: Don Marti < >, ProjectVRM list < >
  • Subject: Re: Aw: Re: [projectvrm] Some possibly VRooMy stuff from the NYTimes R&D lab… Realising Consumer Rights
  • Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2014 12:30:00 +0300

Graham,

Just a brief remark on your last remark.

If you will be able to "sell" the idea to suppliers of a world shift from Attention economy (like shirt sponsoring of ManUnited) towards Intention econony, then your remark is not completely correct.

They will spend less on marketing and are even able to offer a better price/conditions @ no cost to consumers.

Best (from Kenya)

Bart

bjt.stevens.tumblr.com

On Apr 18, 2014 10:20 AM, "Graham Reginald Hill" < "> > wrote:
Hi Don
 
The blog post was very interesting. It reminds me a lot of a recent Consumer Futures report on 'Realising Consumer Rights: From JFK to the Digital Age' (http://www.consumerfutures.org.uk/files/2014/03/Realising-consumer-rights.pdf). The report took JFK's four rights taken from his 1962 spage on consumer rights, added four newer ones and showed how they were being enabled by a range of technology-driven consumer behaviours. One of the consumer behaviours is Radivcal Transparency. The report is well worth reading and triggered a lot of thought on my 90 minute  flight home yesterday.
 
I agree entirely with you about consumers and transparency. All of the studies suggest that consumers would like to opt-out of much of the tracking that they know they are subject to but don't know the extent of. Fixing this requires consumers to take responsibility for managing how they are marketed at, for the marketing industry to change its targeting approach, or for an intermediary to sit between them to mediate on the consumer's behalf. Each brings their own challenges.  The challenge for consumers in taking responsibility for managing how they are marketed at is that to do so requires a degree of technical knowledge and skill on the part of consumer and the time to use it. Your Average Joe has none of these. So he isn't going to change. The challenge for marketers to change their targeting approach is the fear that the process of change will put marketers at a temporary or permanent conpetitive advantage. Targeted marketing clearly works for marketers. It's purpose is short-term sales in support of marketers' product P&L focus. A customer-responsive intent-driven MeCommerce model would clearly work better for those consumers who express their intent, but it would practically rule out all market-making activities where marketing creates response that otherwise wouldn't exist. So marketers aren't going to change. The challenge for an intermediary sitting between consumers and marketers is that they have to win the trust of both parties for their business model to work. As intermediaries are a fundamentally a cost to the market as a whole, they have to be paid for either out of the customer or the marketer's pocket. They are the most likely source of change in the zero-sum game that has become marketing today. That is not without its problems. A quick look at current markets where intermediaries play a significant role suggests that they often capture cashflows in the market to the detriment of other actors, including consumers. Just look at the airline travel and car insurance markets.
 
We should be careful what we wish for; we might get it!  
 
 
Easter greetings from Cologne, Graham
 
 
 
Gesendet: Donnerstag, 17. April 2014 um 23:09 Uhr
Von: "Don Marti" < " target="_blank"> >
An: "Doc Searls" < " target="_blank"> >
Cc: "ProjectVRM list" < " target="_blank"> >
Betreff: Re: [projectvrm] Some possibly VRooMy stuff from the NYTimes R&D lab
begin Doc Searls quotation of Thu, Apr 17, 2014 at 03:51:08PM -0400:
>
> <http://blog.nytlabs.com/2014/04/07/in-the-loop-designing-conversations-with-algorithms/>
>
> Angles: market conversations and the Internet of Things.
>
> Thoughts?

"Transparency" seems to be the first thing that
people come up with when they start thinking about
surveillance marketing. Let's make the vendors be
"transparent" about what they're doing, and the users
can decide whether or not to participate.

But the problem with transparency is exactly that
it does require people to spend time thinking about
surveillance marketing. This doesn't seem like a
problem to people who already spend time thinking
about surveillance marketing. It doesn't impose any
extra work on them. But for normal people there are
only so many hours in the day, and little time to
think about some new business model.

In the best case -- secure, well-communicated
transparency -- privacy becomes limited not by the
user's technical skill, but by the cognitive load
on the user of understanding how he or she is being
tracked in more and more situations.

Jonathan Levitt, at Advertising Age...
"In-Store Cell Phone Tracking Pits Consumers Against
Retailers"
http://adage.com/article/digitalnext/store-cell-phone-tracking-pits-consumers-stores/292628/

"Industry research shows that consumers overwhelmingly
reject cell phone tracking. In a recent OpinionLab
study of 1,042 consumers, 77.0% said that in-store
cell phone tracking was unacceptable, and 81.0% said
that they didn't trust retailers to keep their data
private and secure."

So here's the VRM-ish part of all this. Users are
already communicating about their privacy norms.
There are vacant niches for information technology
products and services to help the users enforce
these norms.

--
Don Marti
http://zgp.org/~dmarti/
" target="_blank">

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