Opting Out
Wireless World, Singapore/Kuala Lumpur, August 2004 issue
Permission marketing is on the increase. Consumers are becoming more wary of invasion of their privacy, and they're not prepared to let just anybody into their private lives. Everyone has seen what spam has done to email marketing, and all of us hope the same thing won’t happen with, say, mobile phones.
Permission – giving it, or withholding it – is becoming increasingly important, both to users and to marketers. People are bombarded with thousands of marketing messages a day. From the moment we wake up and scan through the morning newspaper, stepping out in the street or enter buildings, opening our mailbox or switch on the TV, advertisements and brand logos are clamouring for our attention. No wonder that today’s consumers increasingly crave some sort of control over these messages, the frequency with which it happens, and the media that carry them.
But permission is a volatile thing. None of us keep lists of who we gave permission or who we refused. If we permit someone to send us information we like to have today, tomorrow we may not be interested at all. So permission has a use by date. It also depends on the medium that’s being used. The same unsolicited message that reaches us through snail mail will enrage us when we suddenly find it on our handphone.
The reverse is also true. Keeping up to date in this crazy society depends for a great deal on getting information without asking for it. You shouldn’t have to ask what’s new all of the time. Please send me information on watches and sports cars, even when I don’t ask. But – and please note this, spammers – I’m not in the market for cheap Viagra, low-rate mortgages from dubious lenders, or male enhancement of any kind. Shoo! Go away! And stay away!
So we can’t all become Robinson Crusoes, left alone on our own little islands in the information society. But we can’t let commercial messages become a free-for-all, either.
This is the curse of the opt-in vs. opt-out debate. Privacy advocates often choose the easy way out and pronounce opt-in the One Ring that rules them all; only opt-in marketing should be allowed. Industry lobbyists find it too easy to respond that innovations may not be curbed and that anything goes until the addressee opts out.
In reality, permission sits on a sliding scale, from implicit to explicit, from opt-out to opt-in. It varies with the intrusiveness of the message, and the medium that brings it. Mobile phones are close to the skin, enter that personal area without invitation and you’re almost certainly trespassing. Mass media – ads, billboards, or sponsors’ logos – don’t intrude as much. But they’re in the periphery of vision, making it more difficult to explain new things in an increasingly complex society.
So here’s our little dilemma. How to solve it? I predict that mobile phones will become Permission Command Central, and connectivity becomes the key.
The one thing that distinguishes mobile phones from any other gadget is that almost all of us carry them with us almost all of the time. Not only that, but they also become increasingly connected. WiFi and GPRS connect to the Internet. Bluetooth connects to other phones in the vicinity. Cameras will be able to read barcodes. And RFIDs, intelligent identification tags, will make themselves known and provide information when we pass by.
In future we will store our personal profiles on our handphones, making ‘permission to speak’ a partly automated process. Opting out will be as easy as batting an eyebrow, opting in can be done by pointing your phone at an ad or an object.
Marketers better prepare, and leave opt-in vs. opt-out to the debaters.
Permission marketing is on the increase. Consumers are becoming more wary of invasion of their privacy, and they're not prepared to let just anybody into their private lives. Everyone has seen what spam has done to email marketing, and all of us hope the same thing won’t happen with, say, mobile phones.
Permission – giving it, or withholding it – is becoming increasingly important, both to users and to marketers. People are bombarded with thousands of marketing messages a day. From the moment we wake up and scan through the morning newspaper, stepping out in the street or enter buildings, opening our mailbox or switch on the TV, advertisements and brand logos are clamouring for our attention. No wonder that today’s consumers increasingly crave some sort of control over these messages, the frequency with which it happens, and the media that carry them.
But permission is a volatile thing. None of us keep lists of who we gave permission or who we refused. If we permit someone to send us information we like to have today, tomorrow we may not be interested at all. So permission has a use by date. It also depends on the medium that’s being used. The same unsolicited message that reaches us through snail mail will enrage us when we suddenly find it on our handphone.
The reverse is also true. Keeping up to date in this crazy society depends for a great deal on getting information without asking for it. You shouldn’t have to ask what’s new all of the time. Please send me information on watches and sports cars, even when I don’t ask. But – and please note this, spammers – I’m not in the market for cheap Viagra, low-rate mortgages from dubious lenders, or male enhancement of any kind. Shoo! Go away! And stay away!
So we can’t all become Robinson Crusoes, left alone on our own little islands in the information society. But we can’t let commercial messages become a free-for-all, either.
This is the curse of the opt-in vs. opt-out debate. Privacy advocates often choose the easy way out and pronounce opt-in the One Ring that rules them all; only opt-in marketing should be allowed. Industry lobbyists find it too easy to respond that innovations may not be curbed and that anything goes until the addressee opts out.
In reality, permission sits on a sliding scale, from implicit to explicit, from opt-out to opt-in. It varies with the intrusiveness of the message, and the medium that brings it. Mobile phones are close to the skin, enter that personal area without invitation and you’re almost certainly trespassing. Mass media – ads, billboards, or sponsors’ logos – don’t intrude as much. But they’re in the periphery of vision, making it more difficult to explain new things in an increasingly complex society.
So here’s our little dilemma. How to solve it? I predict that mobile phones will become Permission Command Central, and connectivity becomes the key.
The one thing that distinguishes mobile phones from any other gadget is that almost all of us carry them with us almost all of the time. Not only that, but they also become increasingly connected. WiFi and GPRS connect to the Internet. Bluetooth connects to other phones in the vicinity. Cameras will be able to read barcodes. And RFIDs, intelligent identification tags, will make themselves known and provide information when we pass by.
In future we will store our personal profiles on our handphones, making ‘permission to speak’ a partly automated process. Opting out will be as easy as batting an eyebrow, opting in can be done by pointing your phone at an ad or an object.
Marketers better prepare, and leave opt-in vs. opt-out to the debaters.
posted by Jos. at Sunday, August 01, 2004
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