John,
While I do believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, I don’t believe that any store would ever do that. It would absolutely freak out their customers. Ignorance is bliss.
Guy
From: John Wunderlich <
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> Date: Wednesday, June 15, 2016 at 10:04 To: Doc Searls <
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>, ProjectVRM list <
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> Subject: Re: [projectvrm] Being watched by smart lights in stores, vs. intelligent personal assistants & intentcasting
Would be interesting if the receipt you gotfrom the store included the data ceom a consent receipt:
While you were in out store we collected the following information about you, and used it to ... and will share it with ....
On Wed, Jun 15, 2016 at 11:02 AM -0400, "Doc Searls" <
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> wrote: New item from MediaPost: Smart Lights In Stores Can Pinpoint Shoppers to Within 8 Inches For Messaging, by Chuck Martin.
Here’s the text, with my responses: Indoor beaconing is
going wall to wall. Or more accurately, it’s going from ceiling to floor, as store lighting joins the Internet of Things. The
ultimate effect is that the location of in-store
shoppers can be very precisely identified and retailers or marketers can
then deliver highly targeted, location-based offers, on the spot.
Do any shoppers want this? By what evidence? That they already have a CVS or Walmart app? Presumably.
I find myself thinking, given Apple’s moves on the privacy front, that Customer Commons should propose filtration of apps in app stores by customer terms. As in “only show me apps compliant with my terms (or preferences)." GPS has been pretty good at identifying general
location and when combined with Wi-Fi and beacons, the combo can paint a pretty good picture of proximity of a person.
GPS + Wi-Fi has proven good for providing graces such as better navigation in mapping apps, but in the second clause in that sentence I see a slippery slope from a handy feature to unwanted personalization. But now other location technology, along with beacons, is being built
into light bulbs. This is yet further evidence that beacons as
battery-operated, standalone devices may have seen their day, as I wrote
about recently (Beacons, GPS, Wi-Fi Combo: The New Mobile Presence). When
installed at
retailers, these smart lights can locate a shopper at a precision of 8
to 12 inches and then promotions and other messages can be triggered
based on the location.
Let’s look at affordances here. The single affordance we want from a light is illumination. That’s it.
We do expect stores to have cameras or one-way mirrors that allow security people to spot shoplifting. The affordances of those are self-evident and separate from those of lighting.
And hey, maybe we also don’t mind “smart” lights that also have cameras for security work. Those exist too.
But we don’t want lights to identify us personally and send us messages. Not yet, anyway, and not until we have some kind of genuine opt-in relationship with the store. More about that below. I just spent some time
speaking with two of the executives in charge of implementing the
connected lights strategy to see how this approach will be used for
targeted marketing and advertising. “This is about
proximity vs. positioning,” said Gerben van der Lugt, global business
development lead for indoor positioning at Philips Lighting, a company
that’s been in the lighting business since
1891.
Yesterday I threw out a bunch of Philips bulbs I hadn’t yet used, because others just like them fell apart after they died, right in their sockets. When I tried to unscrew their glass-and-shit-metal corpses, the bulbs fell out in my hand while the screw bases stayed stuck inside the sockets. I had to make sure the electricity was off while I worked each bulb base out of each socket, using a needle-nosed pliers, like a dentist extracting a rotted tootht. If I were a retailer having the same experience, Philips’ brand value for me would sink toward Zika's. Instead of sending a signal to a smartphone, like beacons,
the LED lights in a store connect with a phone screen as soon as it is
opened.
So let’s say you enter a CVS store equipped with these things, and you open your CVS app just so you can find which aisle has, say, the nasal spray. Is the first thing you want to see instead is a promotional message that says “Hey! Deal on batteries, right there by your right knee!”
(Credit where due: the CVS app is actually okay at helping manage prescriptions. Could be better, but it’s actually useful, to some degree.) Each light fixture has a unique
identification code using what Philips calls visible light communication. A smartphone camera detects the code in the light and identifies its precise location. And that’s where
marketing messages come in. “Every fixture has a unique ID and a
small variation in the intensity of light,” said van der Lugt. “The
camera of the phone can see the
modulation, although people can’t.”
I don’t mind not seeing the modulation, but I do mind being spied on without permission. As with beacons, the shopper has to have a relevant app, such as the retailer’s where they are shopping.
That’s good. It would also help if they were made aware that systems like this are in place, and opt-in, rather than opt-out. Carrefore installed the
Philips location-based lighting system in its hypermarket in France using 800 lighting fixtures.
Wonder how well that system agrees with the spirit as well as the letter of French and EU privacy laws. “The
retail space is transforming,” said Ravi Koul, marketing director,
retail and
hospitality at Philips Lighting. “At Carrefore,
Correction: Carrefor. the app ties into the
promotion system so a consumer can select and browse through the
promotions. “When they’re in the store,
the app opens and the shopper can say ‘show all promotions around me.’” (Koul will be detailing this in a presentation at the MediaPost Iot Marketing Forum in New York on Aug. 3). One of the main differences in using lighting for location is in cost, since to add the
technology to the lighting is incremental, rather than having to install separate beacons, for example. “They need lights, and they can outfit them with communications or not,”
said Koul. “But adding the communication can make them future proof.” The key is that location is becoming much more refined. “Proximity marketing is different than
indoor positioning,” said Koul. “There is nothing as accurate as lighting.” As with beacons, consumers have to opt in to receive the light-triggered messaging.
Well, that’s good. “People kind of like that as well, since they’re in control of the connectivity,” said van der Lugt. In addition to the lighting-triggered technology, the fixtures can
include beaconing technology, so that even while in a pocket or purse, the smartphone location can be identified and tracked. But when opened, the person holding the phone can be located to
within a few inches.
Better crosshairs. Nice.
As a next step I can almost hear a phone talking from a purse, saying “Let’s see what else you’ve got in here… Lipstick, a bunch of credit cards, an umbrella, a pack of smokes—hey, we thought you quit! Have you tried vaping? We have those on sale!" The Internet of Things is birthing a new state of location. As if the Internet of Things is only about retail promotions.
Here’s another MediaPost piece by Chuck Martin, from a few days ago:
Here’s the pull-quote that matters from that one: only about a third (36%) of consumers have tried a mobile payment app
in a store within the last year, more intent on using credit and
debit cards, based on a new retail study. Most (61%) of them say
security issues are holding them back, according to the annual Future
of Retail study, which comprised a survey of 1,400 U.S.
consumers’ shopping habits, preferences and views on emerging retail
technology conducted by Walker Sands Communications.
The rest of the post makes clear that the appetite for store apps, at least as of today, is bargain hunters and coupon clippers.
Okay, so let’s VRM this thing, and say we design a retail app for individual shoppers that gives them scale: one app for dealing with many stores. What would that app be? Are we already part way there with intelligent assistants and intentcasting? And can we pivot Chuck Martin’s and MediaPost’s interest in spyware-based IoT into an interest in shopping experiences led by shoppers themselves?
I’d like us to try.
Doc
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