| This is definitely not the best way to base a marketing campaign on privacy issues. That said consumer products are traditionally ad supported, and regular consumer appear to tolerate it, mostly. Internet advertising is quite unlike TV or print advertising though, and consumers are definitely not sufficiently informed of how much they're being tracked, particularly by products of companies like Google and Facebook, that live on advertising in one way or another. Google Web Analytics (reportedly used on half of the websites on the net) and the "like", "tweet" and "+1" buttons are arguably much more likely to track your interests than GMail, even if you have never signed up for a single Google, Twitter or Facebook service. My guess is the creatives who build the campaign either had no idea or didn't know how to communicate it in a personified way, which has more emotional impact. So Microsoft's campaign sucks, and I have a fundamental anti-Microsoft bias that stems from their despicable business conduct in the 80s and 90s, but Google isn't any better these days, Schmidt's comments on the "creepy line" make me shudder. Perhaps it can be a good starting point for discussing privacy issues. Privacy shouldn't be a competitive advantage, it should be a sacred right of anybody who has children or financial/health/private issues. |