Tag Archives: Marketing and Advertising

August 11, 2015 · 10:20 am

The Real DNT Question

The good folks at the Electronic Frontier Foundation released their own definition of “do not track” the other day.  You might wonder why there needs to be more than one definition of such an easy to understand concept.  After all, what could be more clear than “do not track?”  As it turns out, marketers and others seem to misunderstand the term, at least then they are wearing their business hats.  They’re also hiding behind those hats in order not to address the real issue.

Here is where the EFF is coming from:

We think using the Web—including viewing online advertisements—shouldn’t come at the cost of privacy.  Whether their business is analytics, advertising, or social networking, companies dealing with data must be persuaded to respect a universal opt-out from tracking and collecting personal data without consent.

Pretty clear, I think.  You can read the policy they’re promoting here.  DNT Means Do Not Collect…And Do Not Retain…Except Where Required…Necessary to Complete a Transaction… Or With the Clear Consent of the User.  That seems very clear and yet even though this discussion has been going on for years, there is still no effective implementation.  As MediaPost said:

One reason why do-not-track never gained broad support is that the ad industry and privacy advocates couldn’t agree on how the signals should be interpreted. Some privacy advocates argued that people who say they don’t want to be “tracked” don’t want any information about their Web-surfing history compiled. But ad industry representatives said they were willing to stop serving targeted ads to people who turned on do-not-track, but wanted to continue to be able to collect data for purposes like market research and product development.

In other words, we’ll tell you what you mean.  Opting-out is never as good in my mind as opting in.  While advertisers and publishers aren’t exactly holding people against their will in their ad universe, they are forcing users to ask to leave as opposed to inviting them in.  Opting out has been made hard on purpose.  But we’re avoiding the real issue.  We are very focused on finding a good and technologically persistent way to respect users’ privacy and to opt them out.  What we really ought to be focused on is how can we  keep users engaged and opted in while maintaining their trust in how we’re using their information.

How do you see it?

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August 7, 2015 · 10:01 am

The Lord Helps Those That Yelp Themselves

Let’s end the week with a Foodie Friday post about reviews.  There are lots of studies that will tell you just how important “social proof” is as consumers are checking out a prospective buy.  People want to take comfort in knowing that they are making a choice that others have made and felt good about.  Over 70% of Americans say they look at product reviews before making a purchase, and I suspect the number is no different for restaurants.  Because of that, it’s incumbent on every business to check out their reviews.  For restaurants, that means Yelp.

We went out for dinner the other night and I decided to post a review of the place.  We’ve been to this place a number of times over the years and love it, so I thought a positive review would be a nice thing for me to give in addition to my patronage.  Most of the reviews of the place are quite positive.  There were, however, a few one-star reviews (roughly 10% of the total) and they are what bring up the business point today.

You can’t let bad reviews hang around like an old plate of food.  They must be dealt with or eventually the smell will overpower everything else.  Bad reviews are also a great source of research.  In this case, there were complaints about undercooked rice on a few nights.  Who was cooking that night?  A couple mention slow service – was someone absent?  Sometimes the reviews are unfair – complementing the food and service and giving the place one star because you think the neighborhood is “sketchy” isn’t accurate.

So what do you do?  Read every review carefully – you can learn from the good ones and learn more from the bad.  If it’s bad, maybe you want to figure out if this is a legitimate complaint or just a troll (check out the reviewer’s other posts).  You’re going to respond either way.  Apologize, lay out the facts as best you can gather them, and promise to do better if given another chance.  Remember that most of the people reading reviews have no opinion of you (or the reviewer).

A recent Washington Post article mentions that most restaurants don’t hear directly from customers while they are having an issue.  Instead, 80% go home and write something.  Your reputation is one of any business’ most valuable assets.  You need to monitor it and, to the extent possible, control it.  Fair or unfair, that’s reality!

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July 24, 2015 · 9:04 am

I Wanna Go THERE!

Foodie Friday, and today we’re going to vary from the usual routine.  Most Fridays, I rant about some dish or bit of cooking trivia and attempt to relate it to your business.  This week I want us to have a think about some information I read about the food business and how it markets itself to children.  After all, what better way to get a family into your dining establishment than to have a kid demanding to go!

The folks at Media Post reported on a study by the folks at Packaged Facts, which does research in the food, beverage, consumer packaged goods, and demographic sectors.  The study, called Foodservice Marketing Trends in the U.S.: Technology, Mobile, and Social Media, examines how restaurants and others in the food service industry can grow their businesses based on the trends uncovered by the study.  So far, so good.  It’s what they put in the press release that concerns me:

The family demographic is important for restaurant marketers to target. Almost inherently, acceptance by kids strongly influences parent choice in where to dine and parties with kids aged 12 and younger account for almost $18 billion in annual restaurant spending. However, it’s often easy to overlook kids as vital consumers of digital marketing. Successful modern day restaurant strategies often leverage digital entertainment to increase brand engagement with kids.

It goes on to talk about what several firms are doing to market themselves to kids in order to have the kids ask the parents to take them to the dining establishment.  These activities include downloadable apps using a QR code on the menu, branded tabletop games (which cost the adults money so the kids can play – no pressure there), and the ability for kids to upload things they color or make to their Facebook pages – guess no one told the restaurants that kids under 13 aren’t supposed to have a Facebook page.

My real concern is that there are a number of laws that have been put in place to protect kids.  There is something called CARU – the Children’s Advertising Review Unit – that works with the marketing community to protect kids.  It issues guidelines.  There is also COPPA, which is a law that protects kids’ online privacy.  I couldn’t find any specific guidelines for mobile, but I wonder if the general online guidelines are being followed.  These include:

  • Reasonable efforts, using all available technology, should be made to establish full disclosure and choice exercised by a parent or guardian when a site wishes to obtain personally identifiable information from children for marketing purposes.
  • Advertisers who maintain children’s sites should not knowingly link their sites to pages of other sites not in compliance with CARU’s guidelines.
  • Advertisers who communicate with children via e-mail should remind and encourage parents to regularly monitor their children’s e-mail and online activities.
  • Information collected for the purpose of obtaining verifiable parental consent should not be kept in retrievable form by the site if consent is not received in a reasonable amount of time.

In other words, just because kids are a good set of influencers, the food industry – and all of us in other industries as well – have some rules that we ought to follow.  In the rush to grow sales, it’s never a great idea to grow legal liability at the same time.  Marketing to kids is tricky business, and I wonder if the people who focus on that target are as focused on the laws and guidelines that apply here.

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