Specialty Food Magazine

JAN-FEB 2013

Specialty Food Magazine is the leading publication for retailers, manufacturers and foodservice professionals in the specialty food trade. It provides news, trends and business-building insights that help readers keep their businesses competitive.

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FROM THE PUBLISHER Online and Personal T he digital tracks you leave is the subject of a loud and emotional debate between consumer advocacy groups and marketers. How much retailers and marketers know about your habits—and how they use that information—is an important discussion. I've always been fascinated by the ways smart marketers focus their messages for specific audiences. By age 18 I had received countless direct mail pieces and seen lots of appealing advertising. But Volkswagen was the first company whose marketing efforts impressed me. It was as if they knew me. They advertised their zippiness in the magazines I read as a teenager, sponsored bike-racing teams when I raced bikes and, as I started a family, their message seemed to have adjusted again to fit that stage of my life. I had owned five VWs by the time I was 30. I admire Volkswagen's—and its ad agency's—ability to recognize people like me as a group with aspirations that were distinct from, say, someone buying a Toyota or Honda. They didn't know me as an individual but they knew enough about people like me that they could speak my language and target me as a consumer. With Netscape's creation of the "cookie" 20 years ago, targeting took on a whole new meaning. The sites we visit, and the things we search for and buy, could now be tracked. This wasn't apparent to many consumers until they noticed banners following them from site to site after they'd searched for something like "skis." At first, behaviorally targeted ads were unsettling, but now they are so common I mostly see them as a nuisance. (I bought the skis, already!) Smarter marketers are now enticing me with banners for places I might like to go to use those skis. As a consumer I don't mind giving up the illusion of privacy for a marketer to show me something relevant. But one man's convenience is another man's invasion of privacy. With the staggering amount of data being collected, it is understandable there is a corresponding increase in concern about what is acceptable. Jeffrey Rosen, law professor at George Washington University, explored the implications in a November 30 New York Times piece titled, "Who Do Online Advertisers Think You Are?" In it he argues that personalization could take us to a place where advertisers, publishers and politicians "evaluate us not as citizens but as consumers, putting us in different—and often secret—categories, based on the amount of money they predict that we'll spend or the votes they predict we'll cast." Spooky. Most big marketers argue that we should trust them to know where to draw the line in using our personal information. Consumer advocacy groups, however, are calling for aggressive governmental regulation of information collection. This leaves consumers and marketers alike trying to figure out what feels right and fair. I take a more optimistic view. While I fully appreciate the potential for abuse and that the balance is a delicate one, I believe the value of a personalized experience is too great to put the genie back in the bottle. Isn't this what we attempt to offer our customers every day, offline? Why wouldn't we want the same online? |SFM| HAVE A COMMENT? Go to specialtyfood.com/mthomas/online By Matt Tomas Publisher, Specialty Food Magazine mthomas@nasft.org facebook.com/fancyfoodshows JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2013 5

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