15 February 2010 Information Is A Spam Filter

You know what the best thing about being in a relationship is? You don't get those annoying "Meet single 18 year old girls" ads on Facebook. Upon this realisation, it reminded me of an argument I once had with a tutor. The class discussion was about database marketing, and her advice to students was to never sign up to any competition because your details will be used to spam you. Perhaps it's the naive utopian young marketer still yet to be beaten out of me by the industry, but isn't the more knowledge a brand has about you the better? Of course there will be brands who sell this information on to others. But ideally, brands can use this to reduce the amount of spam you're receiving, not increase it. Ads become more targeted, personalised and therefore more relevant. At the end of the day, ads are inevitable. And I personally would prefer brands to know as much as possible about me to make these ads as useful and value providing as they can be. And by definition, they no longer become spam....