The Prescott Report

http://www.targetmarketingmag.com/article/the-challenge-huge-bargain-complex-fulfillment/2

This is classic Denny Hatch. Delightful personal story with many lessons for marketers and business executives buried within.  His customer service experience with an English shirt maker is so typical, one wonders how the same customer service program designer manages to make the same stupid mistakes in all the websites that purport to be “focused on the customer”.  The tag line – “you’re not in business to make sales but to serve and retain customers” should be tatooed on the forearms of anyone who decides to go into business.   And checklists!   We wish him many more years of travel to the UK.

http://www.dmnews.com/electronic-retailers-take-a-flier-at-the-marketplace-fairness-act/article/293690/#

The Marketplace Fairness Act is anything but fair. It will put small businesses out of business and benefit the big companies, who can carry the overhead of compliance.  One small company I know, on online marketer of CD’s and DVD’s with religious content, just makes it in to the million dollar range.  He now pays sales taxes in his home state and even that exercise costs him 1/2 day a month in compliance.  This is in a company with 4 full-time employees.  Occasionally California sends him a dunning notice for sales taxes on sales he has never, ever made.  They simply assume he has.  He writes back to say he’s never sold anything there and gets a second notice with a threat of legal action and a “guess” tax levy with penalties. He can’t afford a lawyer in California, or even in his home State.   Multiply this by 46, and the perhaps 100 other aggressive taxing jurisdictions like cities and counties, and you have a nightmare.   And there is no software, and even if there was, he’d still be spending 1/2 day per State, or half his time.

Consultas Ifai

Lucerna Juris (‘Light of the Law”) member Carlos F. Portilla of the firm of Portilla, Ruy-Diaz & Aguilar, S.C. informs us that the Mexican Authority (Federal Institute for Access to Information and Data Protection- “IFAI”) imposed the first penalty regarding violations of the Personal Data Protection Law and its Regulations.

The penalty was determined against a company named Pharma Plus, S.A. de C.V., which operates important drug stores around Mexico because:

1. The company did not provide data subjects with a privacy notice when obtaining their data.

2. The privacy notice included in the company´s web page failed to identify the data controller.

The penalty exceeds two million Pesos (approximately USD$180,000).

“The Weirdest Welcome”

The Prescott Report is still dedicated to international marketing and “making the borders go away”.   Master Marketer Denny Hatch annihilates the Cunard Line’s welcome to him and his wife to a cruise on the Queen Mary 2. 

For an excellent primer, literally, on the basics of “what not to do” ,  eg. a 26 page brochure in grey sans serif 7- point type that insults the reader and doesn’t provide him/her with important information needed to get to the ship.  And that’s merely the beginning.

Also, excellent comment in response to his article as to why Cunard has sunk (sorry) so low, by a veteran of the travel industry, Donna Cusano.  Worth the clicks.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/23/us/alan-f-westin-scholar-who-defined-right-to-privacy-dies-at-83.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130223&_r=0

It is not far-fetched to assert that Dr. Westin “created” the field of privacy law in America.  He also put much of it on “research” foundation, using carefully balanced survey work to detect changes in Americans’ attitudes to the collection of information by both government and business. His annual privacy conference in Washington to discuss and debate these surveys, and the many developments in what then was still a nascent field, were “must attend” events for what slowly became a broader population of privacy law practitioners. His balanced and fact-based approach and weighing of numerous factors in the debate set an intellectual example for me.  Always a gentleman, his calm and perceptive approach was always effective in calming excited debaters and empower us all with quiet intellectual discipline.   All of us in this field should pause a moment and honor his life and memory.

http://www.dmnews.com/the-misleading-premise-of-do-not-track/article/280366/

Excellent article on the state of the discussion on Do Not Track at W3C.  To one with more small-company focused privacy-related scars than I can count, this author’s warning on the probable creation of an oligopoly in the tracking space is prescient.  The voices of those big enough to pay to have very sophisticated advocates attend important policy meetings overseas will always be louder.  And their companies’ interests will be protected.   Smaller businesses need to fund an office to represent them in this subject area.  The US government won’t, because they don’t hear from you.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/27/opinion/sunday/what-we-dont-know-is-killing-us.html?emc=tnt&tntemail1=y&_r=0

A very balanced and non-emotional look at what should be, but isn’t, probably because the NRA has already got the answers to the questions and doesn’t want anyone else to have them. In point of fact, we might find that more people are hurt by power and chain saws than by guns, although I doubt it.    Having studied the origins of the 2nd Amendment, I can be pretty sure that both before and after the Revolution, the town authorities knew very well who had a rifle and who did not, and how good a shot they were.  Gun ownership until the industrial revolution was probably a minor part of the population, even on the frontiers.  Until the Civil War, guns were hand-made one by one, and thus were expensive.  Many records of early American settlement of the West mention that the settlers were often powerless against native American attacks because they did not have firearms.

Thousands of people die from guns each year. Certainly as a matter of public policy we should have responsible research. Our entire society pays a price for our collective ignorance.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/06/sunday-review/more-guns-more-killing.html?emc=tnt&tntemail1=y&_r=0

At last, a little sanity and some harsh facts from around the world. More guns does not make for a safer society, regardless of what the NRA says.  The example of Australia is especially telling.  Are we a civilized country, or not?  It pretty much comes down to that.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323353204578126671124151266.html

Excellent partial description of the Obama campaign’s use of big data and sophisticated analysis. The cost of this exercise must have been pretty significant, but so were the money raised using the same techniques!

http://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/survey-says-consumers-confused-about-on-16755/?&utm_source=LinkedIn+App+Subject+Feeds&utm_medium=email&utm_term=Privacy&utm_content=DocTitle&utm_campaign=Subject+Feed+Email+-+Privacy+-+11/8/2012

This article/synopsis of a recent study on what consumers understand about “do-not-track” protection online is quite revealing.   So consumers are confused about what “do not track” means, and are inherently naive about the lawful ability of websites to collect information about them.  Given what marketers do with the information collected, one wonders why the FTC and Congress make such a fuss about it.  There is already in place a “hierarchy” of data which requires special permission to collect and use – financial and medical information come to mind. For these, one needs permission.

And I’m getting more upset about our government guardians at the State and Federal level spending so much time fussing over this.  Given a recent experience I had with tracking,  I’m especially annoyed that US Senators and Congressman are doing so, given that our economy may well implode unless they do something about the fiscal cliff we are about to drive over while they sit in the back seat and squabble like bored 5-year olds.

In any case, I realized earlier this week that I was being tracked. “Horror!”, you say.

Not a bit of it. In the midst of Sandy I did some research on generators. The increase in the decrease of capability of New York State Electric and Gas to provide timely relief from the lack of electric power is driving me to the expensive conclusion that I must acquire one of these nerve-rattling devices.

Over the last 5 years, NYSEG’s response to removing downed trees and restoring wires has become weaker, slower, and more incompetent, although admittedly exceeded by Verizon’s increasing reluctance to put the telephone wires back up.  I can understand  Verizon’s desire to get out of land-lines and concentrate on the mobile service, and I gather that our home is the last one in our neighborhood not using Skype as its primary phone.  We all have to, you see, since the mobile signal is too erratic, the nearest tower  being nearly 2 miles away. The number of bars seems to vary with wind direction and velocity.

So, Verizon has a business survival need to migrate to the airwaves. But NYSEG does not and it grows increasingly slow to start the meters up again. And we thought that competition would be a good thing in this industry!

In any event, having checked some do-it-yourself sites on how not to kill myself when I hook one of the growling electricity makers up to my house, and prices and manufacturers and various technical articles, I closed out the subject and returned to my browsing of various news sites.  And there I am confronted, on about 3 or 4 sites, with ads for generators of several different brands-most, but not all, of whose websites I had visited.

And the ads, some of which I clicked on, were very useful and informative. Some had technical information; others offered interesting discounts and services.  I was very pleased to receive more useful information and I took notes.

Alas, it was not meant to last.  Today, there are no more pop-ups for generators.  Only ads for business class airfares on a couple of airlines I always fly economy on to places I have never been and have no intention of going, and hotels I could not afford to stay at even if I wanted to go there.

Sigh.   It was nice while it lasted. The ad world was giving me something I really wanted, in fact, needed.  If only they realized my purchase timeline is a long one.  If I don’t research a purchase down to the bone, especially one in five figures, I’ll feel cheated no matter what I buy.  Keep on tracking advertisers. I love it.