Category: Marketing / Advertising

Privacy? What’s That?

Corporate Fuckery, Marketing / Advertising

Very few things get under my skin as much as bullshit like this:

A recent study from Consumer Reports engaged 709 volunteers who provided archives of their Facebook user data. Astonishingly, Consumer Reports discovered that 186,892 different companies transmitted data about these users to Facebook. On average, data from each participant was shared by 2,230 companies, with some users’ data being shared by over 7,000 companies.

Think you’re outside this little net?  Think again, Winston Smith:

This examination highlighted a lesser-known form of tracking known as server-to-server tracking, where personal data is transferred directly from a company’s servers to Meta’s servers, alongside the more visible method involving Meta tracking pixels on company websites.

A surprising finding was the pervasive presence of LiveRamp, a data broker, appearing in the data of 96 percent of study participants. The list of companies sharing data with Facebook extends beyond obscure data brokers to include well-known retailers like Home Depot, Macy’s, Walmart, and others, such as Experian and TransUnion’s Neustar, Amazon, Etsy, and PayPal. Notably, LiveRamp did not respond to a request for comment on this matter.

The study’s data came from two main collection types: “events” and “custom audiences.” The latter involves advertisers uploading customer lists to Meta, including email addresses and mobile advertising IDs, to target ads on Meta’s platforms. ‘Events’ describe real-world interactions, like website visits or store purchases, facilitated by Meta’s software in apps, tracking pixels on websites, and server-to-server tracking.

I’ll sum up all this in a simple sentence:  if you’ve bought anything online in the past three years, your personal data is everywhere.

Of course, there are the weasels:

Emil Vazquez, a spokesperson for Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, defended the company’s data practices, stating: “We offer a number of transparency tools to help people understand the information that businesses choose to share with us, and manage how it’s used.”

Oh sure.  Forgive me for being skeptical about the motives of said weasels, and the companies they work for:

However, Consumer Reports identified issues with these tools, including unclear data provider identities and companies that service advertisers often disregarding user opt-out requests.

I don’t even know what to do about all this — nothing can be done, seems to me.

But the best part of all this — and the reason for my hopelessness — is that of you think that Government isn’t getting their snouts into this data trough, I have a fucking bridge to sell you.

Corporations, no matter how big, always fall straight to their knees every time some government department demands a blowjob.  And this circumstance is no different.

Carnies and Hucksters

Marketing / Advertising

Longtime Reader GT3ted sent me an email of the latest Sotheby’s auction catalog — the topic of this coming Saturday’s post, by the way — and when I commented that the prices seemed unusually-astronomical, even by Sotheby’s standards, he replied:

Yes, I thought the suggested bid ranges were high as well, But remember these are the the typical auction company’s “Projected” bid ranges which are often optimistic. And Sotheby’s does seem to have a better-than-usual lineup this year. The whole point of the catalog is to bring in as many Big Dollar buyers as possible since they need multiple buyers to run up the prices. Or at least the appearance of multiple bidders.

The Winter Arizona / Scottsdale Hype is strong thanks to “Bidenomics” / a soaring stock market and nervous investors looking for a place to park some equity before the possible collapse of the more traditional equities market place.

The world of high-end auctions is still just smoke and mirrors run by used car salesmen and ex-carnies all looking for the next greater fool, just at a much higher level.

It’s a very cogent statement.  But even among them what has more money than common sense, this (for example) seems egregiously overpriced:

Now let it be known that I loves me some 70s-era Bronco, but I would humbly suggest that even a handbuilt-from-the-ground-up item such as this isn’t worth anything like two hundred big ones.

It’s not an original — it’s a Kincer creation — and there’s another outfit that handmakes “classic” Toyota FJ45s, at similar nosebleed prices, and still another that does likewise with 1970s-era Mercedes G-wagens.  While I understand that hand-built cars involve an astonishing amount of labor — in some cases, hundreds of hours — I would suggest that it’s a fool’s gambit to try to recoup (and even profit from) the job.  As any amateur restorer will tell you, one never recoups the cost of restoration, and I just can’t see that restoring old cars as a production enterprise makes it worth the work and expense…

…unless, of course, the target market is not the brand’s loyal devotees but (as Ted puts it) Big-Dollar Buyers (“whales”, as the casino industry derisively calls them), for whom the car is not an object of desire but an investment.

And all investments, as any fule kno, carry risk.

Caveat emptor imprudens.

All that said, there are some juicy cars indeed in the Sotheby’s catalogue, but you’ll have to wait until Saturday to see them.  Just ignore the prices, and drool.

Marketing Morons

Marketing / Advertising

We’re all familiar with companies that screw up their brands — Bud Lite coff coff — and I often wonder how they stay in business.

Chief among these offenders are companies which change their logo, a change which may not only cause customer confusion at the moment, but which can screw up future brand recognition as well.

One shining example of when it’s a good idea to change one’s logo is that of Federal Express, abbreviating that (unnecessarily-long) name to simply “FedEx” — and it made sense because ta-da!  that’s what their customers had been calling them for years anyway.  (And adding colors to differentiate the various services:  genius.)


And to be honest, FedEx hasn’t made that many mistakes anyway, over their relatively-short corporate history.

That makes sense.  But this one doesn’t.

WH Smith has left shoppers baffled after dropping ‘Smith’ from its signs in a trial rebrand. The High Street retailer has shortened the signs to simply state ‘WHS’ in a move that has confused customers.

The sign now consists of the three letters ‘WHS’ in a white font on a blue background, dropping the surname of William Henry Smith, who turned his father’s business into a nationwide concern.

I should point out that the stationery company has been known as WH Smith since 1846.  (It was originally founded by WH’s father in 1792.)  This is not a heritage to be messed with.  The change is massive;  it goes from this:


…which everybody knows, even internationally, to this:


…wherein the sign would idiotically incorporate the name of the town, as though customers would be unaware of where they are.

All that said, however, there may be some hope:

A spokesperson for WH Smith said the new signs were designed in mind to raise awareness of the range of products sold by the company.

He added that there were currently no plans to roll the new design out to further stores.

What fucking bullshit.  How does shortening the company name increase awareness of the product range?  More to the point, who was the moron who came up with this idea?

Here’s the thing.  “WH Smith” is inextricably linked with things like books, stationery, newspapers and such.  Yes, they sell other stuff such as toys and games — but mostly it’s paper and paper-related products, and it’s what they’ve been known for since the nineteenth century.

What are they going to do to their product range that would make so fundamental a change necessary?  Expand into tools and hardware?  Clothing and perfumes?  Garden furniture?

You see, that’s the problem right there.  It’s because WH Smith is so linked with paper and publications that it might be difficult to tell customers that “Oh no, we don’t just sell newspapers, we also sell motor cars and cookware!”

One ironclad marketing rule is that you never mess with your core brand’s identity — New Coke, anyone? — but if you want to expand your product offering, you do it under a new brand.  It’s why Procter & Gamble doesn’t sell Pampers tampons, even though Pampers and Always are part of the same corporate entity, and often manufactured under the same roof.  Most consumers, by the way, are blissfully unaware that the two products are made by the same corporation, nor should they or anyone else care, because it’s irrelevant.

So if WH Smith wanted to branch out and extend their product offering — and there’s nothing wrong with that, necessarily — they would need to separate the non-stationery items under a new brand, and preferably in a new location altogether.  Frying pans ain’t magazines, Bubba, and they require a different approach altogether.

FFS:  this is Marketing 101 stuff, and I feel like I’m explaining the need for personal hygiene to kindergartners.  I’m sure there are all sorts of Smart Young Things at the Swindon headquarters of WH Smith — pardon me, WHS — who would love to bend my ear about The Need For Change, and Not Letting Your Brand Become A Dinosaur and every other marketing trope (I nearly said “tripe”, which would have been equally appropriate).

I would have thought that said Bright Young Things might have learned from the debacle of New Coke — yeah, I know, but that was such a Long Time Ago and Times Have Changed, Old Man — but it pains me to think that they couldn’t even learn from the very recent debacle of Bud Lite, whose dolorous ripples are still being felt even as I write this.

The problem, you see, is that Marketing always has to stay relevant.  That’s what is taught, and it’s regarded as gospel — when in fact it really isn’t.  The core principle of marketing — Never Fuck With Your Brand — is about as unyielding, and as timeless, as the principles contained in The Gods Of The Copybook Headings.

Then again, the latter are also regarded as old-fashioned nonsense nowadays, so perhaps this whole “WHS” nonsense is unsurprising.

I just hope that this “WHS rebrand experiment” remains just that, and is tossed into the trashcan quickly.

Irrelevant Protest

Culture, Marketing / Advertising

Talk about misplaced priorities outside Rome’s Colosseum:

Alexis Mucci, who has 7.5million followers on Instagram, donned nothing but satin robes and black lingerie sets with fitness model Issa Vegas. In the clip, which has gained more than 134,000 likes, the pair untied the belts on their robes to reveal their skimpy outfits.

Dark-haired beauty Alexis was seen in a strappy bra that barely covered her cleavage with a lacy thong and pair of patterned fishnet stockings. Meanwhile, Issa wore a black lace bra with a matching thong and similar stockings.

So far, so good.

However, some Instagram viewers took to the comments begging the OnlyFans model and her fitness star pal to “cover up.”

One user said: “Cover yourself it’s cold.” Another added: “Move I can’t see the colosseum.” A third commented: “What a shame they have to sell themselves like this.”

It’s the last comment which got me shaking my head.

Anyone who’s ever been to the Colosseum knows that it’s a hive of hucksterism:  people offering tourists “private tours” of the place, and gawd knows how many assholes dressed up as Roman legionaries offering to pose with said tourists in front of the ruins, all for a (horrifying) price, of course.

So in fact the Colosseum is the perfect place for two houris  to sell themselves.

Feel free to scrutinize them via the link, but be warned that they’re nastier than cheap Italian red wine.

Man Takes Woman’s Job

Marketing / Advertising, Perverts

This is just the best:

Gay lifestyle magazine Attitude is facing backlash after naming transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney as its ‘Woman of the Year.’

The US TikTok star, who documented her transition on the video sharing platform last year, accepted the title this week at the Virgin Atlantic sponsored awards bash in London.

But critics slammed the decision, accusing the awards of ‘gaslighting women everywhere’ with prominent feminist campaigner Maya Forstater calling it an ‘insult.’

I have to hand it to this little fegeleh:   first he/she toppled the #1 beer brand in the U.S., and now she/he is doing the same to some fegeleh publication, in essence taking the cover girl/boy’s position away from, shall we  say, a more-deserving homo/dyke.

If your head is spinning, join the (heterosexual) club.

And then there’s this one:

Two transgender cyclists have taken the top spots on the podium at the Chicago CycloCross Cup after triumphing in a women’s race.

Sheesh, even the actual chick who placed third looks kinda iffy.

Still, despite all the confusion, there’s only one thing left to say:

Lures

Lies and Untruths, Marketing / Advertising

Last week I received in my email something from these guys:

…with the following message:

Walmart, a company who’s known to be one of the biggest supporters of conservative causes, has just bowed to evil liberal demands.  Here’s what happened…

Several major companies (including Amazon, Walmart, Barnes & Noble and more) have decided it’s against Americans’ best interests to carry a new book on their store shelves.  And the reason why should have you fuming…

The book is called The First 72 Hours.

The First 72 Hours was written by one of the world’s leading survival authors, Damian Campbell.

And the reason these companies won’t allow you to buy his book is because it exposes how the left is using the current political unrest to steal our freedom in ways we never imagined…

And it teaches you how to prepare for the coming collapse.

The secrets in this book are well-known by government insiders…

And Campbell has put them all in this book in an attempt to warn you about what is going to happen in the next few months.

Since Campbell isn’t allowed to sell this book in stores we convinced him to let us hand out a few copies at a deep discount.

Right now we have permission to give 50% OFF copies to the next 288 people who click here.

However, once you get access to this book you’ll need to review it ASAP.

I can’t tell you when the S will hit the F. But I can tell you Jesus was right that no man knows the hour – and that we should be vigilant and prepared.

Get your copy of The First 72 Hours for 50% OFF before they’re gone… and before it’s too late.

Being of a suspicious nature when people send me stuff and want me to spend money with them, I did a little investigation for myself.  I didn’t look at Walmart, because the next time I buy a book at Wally World will be the first time, and the last time I bought anything at B&N was when we were still homeschooling the kids.

So onto Teh Intarwebz I went.  A whole two minutes later, I came across this:

…so the second paragraph contained at least one lie, which kind of pissed me off right there.

But my ire having been aroused, I decided to do a little more digging, and found the following:

  • the book is under 100 pages long — and for $40, I want something a little more substantial than what is basically a bullet-point list.
  • it’s apparently published by “Prepared Patriots”, which printing house doesn’t exist.
  • However, there is a website called PreparedPatriot.com, which sells the usual tactical / survival stuff.  Are they the “publishers” of said book?  Well, no — at least, I found no mention of the book anywhere on the website.

Well, what about this “Firearm Man” guy (or org)?  Searching for “firearm-man.com” takes one here:

  • “firearm-man.com” is just a fucking newsletter;  basically, a means whereby people can send out spam to whoever.

So:

Fuck them, fuck their newsletter, and by the way, fuck Damian Campbell and his poxy little expensive brochure.  I wouldn’t accept it as a gift, now.

Caveat emptor, y’all.