12/17/2003: 
Criminally Absurd
Soon, Marketing Will Follow You
From the "Year was 1984" department.
By Daniel Terdiman, Wired
To hear Paco Underhill tell it, the scene in Steven Spielberg's futuristic Minority Report, in which Tom Cruise's character is besieged by video advertising targeted directly at him as he walks down the street, is, even today, more than pure science fiction.
Already, thanks to cell-phone technology that can track subscribers' whereabouts, retailers have access to technology that can tell when a particular customer walks into a store. With that information in hand, stores could conceivably tailor marketing messages to people based on demographic data or on answers to questions they were asked when they signed up for cell-phone service.
And while consumers may wish for less-intrusive advertising, it appears, short of permanently shutting their wallets, they may not be able to fend off the coming wave of mobile-target marketing.
"It isn't futuristic, it's right now, it's real," says Underhill, author of the bestseller Why We Buy. "That technology's out there now. It's just a matter of finding people willing to pay for it."
It is important that the government and every corporate entity on earth know where I am at every minute, just on the off chance that I get lost.
3 Annotations Submitted
Wednesday the 17th of December, prof_booty noted:
Paco Underhill???
Wednesday the 17th of December, rafuzo noted:
Supposedly my Sprint PCS phone has that capability. But it also has the ability to shut off the locator service on the handset itself (this does not, however, prevent it from being used by Big Brother to see where I am). Even still, I've kept it on for quite a while, and I have yet to receive a single bit of advertising on it.
Wednesday the 17th of December, awiggins noted:
From the article it sounds like they have been unable to attract the interest of retailers, so far. I am leaving the country the day I walk into the supermarket and the Scrubbing Bubbles® tell ME there is a sale on toilet cleaner.
