Is marketing about to burst our personal space bubble?

July 30, 2013

From subliminal cinema advertising trials to the increasingly sophisticated online behavioural targeting, every now and then you see a development in marketing and communications that makes you think: “can they really do that?!” Thanks to a wave of new technologies, we could well be on the verge of another one of those moments.

A German firm has developed a new technology which enables adverts to be transmitted through train windows — so that for anyone resting their head on the glass, the advert appears to come from inside their own head. No, you didn’t misread: the advert plays inside your own head. Meanwhile, Amstrad has rolled out ‘OptimEyes’, a face detection technology, on thousands of its advertising screens which will pick up how many people are looking at an advert, as well as their age, sex and evaluate spending potential. And, shoppers beware, because soon retailers will be tracking your movements inside their shop via your smartphone’s WiFi signal.

These rather intrusive new applications of technology could have huge implications for how brands reach and communicate with their audience, giving them more power and — in some cases — shifting the ‘conversation’ between brand and end-user from figurative to literal.

“Google policy is to get right up to the creepy line and not cross it”

But do we really want that? Marketers will tell you that providing a more individualised experience for consumers can only be a good thing — but it does highlight how very fine the line between innovative and creepy can be when it comes to finding new ways to understand and reach out to your audience. This delicate balance was rather amusingly referenced by Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt, when declaring that “Google policy is to get right up to the creepy line and not cross it”; the ironically creepy nature of such a policy perhaps being something of an oversight.

I also wonder whether, as a collective, we might regret surrendering the cat-and-mouse game we’ve been unknowingly playing for decades — making businesses work harder to figure out what it is we really want. Companies and brands that have cracked this code, like Apple, have always stood out… but in a world where every single one has the information needed to give every customer exactly what they want, when they want it, which ones will ever stand out — and how?

This is not the dawn of a dystopian future where corporations run the planet and we’re all fitted with tracking chips; but it is an interesting development, and could well represent a marked change in the relationship between brands and consumers. Whether it crosses a moral line, or if the public will even let it happen without taking a stand, is another matter altogether.