There was an interesting article on NYTimes last month about how Target uses the data it gathers about you to guess -- very accurately --
whether you're pregnant. The fact that companies do things like this should not come as any surprise; what did you think those club cards were for, anyway? But
one bit jumped out at me:
“We have the capacity to send every customer an ad booklet, specifically designed for them [...].
“With the pregnancy products, though, we learned that some women react badly,” the executive said. “Then we started mixing in all these ads for things we knew pregnant women would never buy, so the baby ads looked random. We’d put an ad for a lawn mower next to diapers. We’d put a coupon for wineglasses next to infant clothes. That way, it looked like all the products were chosen by chance.
“And we found out that as long as a pregnant woman thinks she hasn’t been spied on, she’ll use the coupons. She just assumes that everyone else on her block got the same mailer for diapers and cribs. As long as we don’t spook her, it works.”
In other words: Target got explicit feedback that their customers hate being spied on. They think it's creepy.
They get very angry. How did Target respond? Rather than respecting their customers by
not doing the thing those customers told them not to do, they acted to deliberately obscure their creepy behavior.
A class act, guys, really. Did you feel proud of yourselves when you came up with that stunt?
