Database Marketing Gone Wild

New York Times recently ran a story on its front pages on the wicked ways of database marketers. One of a series of investigative pieces that looks at the problems faced by a growing number of older people in the US, The Times worked undercover to expose the devious ways database companies segregate and manage data about people. The story detailed how InfoUSA customer data was twisted into customer segments such as “Elderly Opportunity Seekers,” “Suffering Seniors,” or “Oldies But Goodies.” InfoUSA has posted a rebuttal on their site that claims that the article is based on files that are part of a case that was investigated and closed three years ago.

Virgin Lending

Richard Branson has taken a majority stake in CircleLending, a company that helps friends and relatives to lend money professionally. The opportunity for the company comes from that fact that almost half of American small and medium businesses take loans from people they know. And in many cases people who participate in these transactions don’t end up enjoying the process. CircleLending brings professionalism to this previously unstructured market just like any financial corporation would, but uses the tenets of P2P to manage these transactions. With Virgin coming on board, the company hopes to broaden its scope of activities.

Banning Virtual Money Conversions

Here’s a piece of news that tells us that Governments do not understand the new economy and the new world that is unfolding in front of us. Seemingly a knee-jerk reaction to the growing economies of virtual worlds in online games, the Chinese Government has banned the conversion of virtual currency into Yuan. Beijing’s logic for the move is that free conversion of the play currencies could undermine the country’s financial system. There are 10 types of virtual currencies in China and one of them, QQ Coins, is being accepted as legal tender in the country. Read more on the rise and rise of QQ Coins.

Young and Poor

USA Today has a story on the growing disparities between the rich and poor. Biggest piece of news: more than class as a deciding factor, age is growing as strong determinant for one’s wealth. Since 1989, nearly all of the country’s wealth has been accumulated by people over the age of 55. Households headed by people 35-55 have actually lost wealth over the past 20 years due to inflation. An interesting aside to this bit is the story in the Times, listed below on how wealthy old Americans are becoming extremely important to marketers.

Good Presentations Start Here

If you have not been to Slideshare, we suggest you click here now. Because this is the kingdom for presentation 2.0, the place for some of the most amazing, new age presentations. Look up presentations from some of the coolest, new age thinkers. David Armano, the guru of Digital Marketing, has uploaded slides of his best thinking. So has Russell Davies, Lawerance Lessig, Cory Doctorow, Zeus Jones and more. This is really the YouTube of presentations with slides on just about anything that users have shared. If there’s one site that embodies the spirit of open source knowledge sharing, it’s Slideshare.

Happy Customers Happy Stock Prices

The Consumerist has a paper from Journal of Marketing that links good customer satisfaction scores to better returns on stock prices. Findings of the study suggest that satisfied customers are economic assets with high returns/low risk. Companies at the top 20% of the the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) greatly outperformed the stock market, generating a 40% return. From 1996-2003, the portfolio of companies with high customer satisfaction scores outperformed the Dow Jones Industrial Average by 93%, the S&P 500 by 201%, and NASDAQ by 335%. More at The Consumerist.

Brands in the Brain

Millward Brown’s Nigel Hollis has a very interesting post on how we store brand messages in the brain. Recent scientific evidence points to the fact that we don’t store coherent images of anything, not even the most powerful brands, in our heads. Bits and pieces of information are stored in different areas of the brain and they all well up into a sort of a drawing board, sort of space to become an image. The evidence suggests that the more frequently we draw on our mental associations to form a representation of a brand, the stronger and more complete the representation becomes. So this repeated mental ‘rehearsal’ of what the brand is about, helps to build clarity and maximize the chance that the brand will be recognized and found desirable. Read More on Engaging Customers’ Brains in this Millward brown PDF.

Bold Moves Online

There’s been a frenzy of activity over the last week with the world’s top companies moving aggressively to snap up companies that broker online ads. Most people believe that online advertising is just about to hit its next inflection and recent moves by Google, Yahoo!, WPP and Microsoft are aimed at consolidating their position in this important area. If Google, buying Double Click, came as a bit of a surprise, Yahoo! consolidating its hold over Right Media Inc was only logical. WPP showed urgency and moved in to snare Real Media, and Microsoft spent top dollar for its biggest ever acquisition by spending $6 billion over AQuantive shows us how the future will pan out. What’s interesting in the AQuantive deal is that Microsoft will also own Avenue A Razorfish, the largest online advertising agency that has strategic planning, client servicing and creative capabilities.

Visa’s WOW Card

We have been writing a lot about brands, especially banks, entering virtual worlds like Second Life and World of Warcarft (WoW). So we decided to give Visa’s entry into the WoWland a pass. But the blogsphere has been abuzz with the announcement, so belated no doubt, but here’s all that we could glean from Visa’s announcement. WoW has over 8.5 million users, who get a reward of $0.01 on every dollar they spend in the real world that they can use to pay their $14.99 subscription. The card issued by The First National Bank of Omaha for Visa and will come with a strong WoW branding. Read more.

Welcome To Disclaimer Land

Washington Mutual has built a beautiful little site in the form of a fairy tale to showcase its Mortgage Plus plans. The site designed by Avenuea Razorfish is a gorgeous pop-up book that takes you through WaMu’s mortgageland. There are a couple of spoilers in this lush flash experience. A large disclaimer pockmarks the bottom of the home page. And an orange tab on the right hand top corner asks people to apply now, with a toll free number in tow. Wish The Happiest Way Home could come without the villainous T&Cs.