Insights
Time to rethink your passwords
Make the hackers work a little harder…turn your eight character passwords into 12 characters or more. With current technologies eight character passwords can be defeated in two hours, but it will take over 17 years to get past 12 characters. Security experts also advise you to not use real words, and to use full sentences. More great tips in this article.
Marketers…this is a good thing to know if you’re updating your mobile site and websites, and you’re currently requiring a password for login. Some sites aren’t friendly to long passwords. Another good idea is to proactively make your customers aware of this. Get a message out to them, prompt them to update their password, and post password best-practices on your login screen.
The Lay’s® Locavore Alert … a real potato farm could be coming to your town!
High noon at the Lay's event in Chicago
Come out from behind the two-way mirror
That coupon you just downloaded could be a window into your world. When you viewed it online, the barcode on it was dynamically generated with what could be very personal information about you. When you take it into the store to redeem it, the retailer could instantly know the search words you used, where you got the coupon, where you live, and a host of other details that can help them target you better.
16 years after the first cookie was planted on a computer, the business of capturing and profiting from online behavioral data has exploded, and grown to include mobile user data. There’s an attitude amongst us marketers that lack of privacy is the trade-off that consumers make for their access to content on the internet and on mobile phones….and that we have every right to spy if it means we can make faster and more relevant offers to specific individuals.
But please, let’s regulate ourselves before the regulators step in. We’re intrigued by a company called Media6Degrees Inc., who is pushing the envelope. The folks at Media6Degrees envision the day when financial institutions can make judgments about you by who you associate with online. According to this Wall Street Journal article, “The idea is that the creditworthy tend to hang out with the creditworthy, and deadbeats with deadbeats.”
How many times do we need to learn…what the consumer doesn’t know can hurt you. Protect your brand and think twice about how you’re using this data. Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should.
deliver and deliver.com
I have been receiving the magazine called deliver a magazine for marketers, and I really enjoy it. The magazine offers marketing insights and tips on how we can really hit it home when it comes to our client/customers’ needs. It has articles that talk about different topics like, social media, direct mail and even the latest technology – all from the marketing point of view. Each issue touches upon different topics. As I started reading the current issue, I came across a line that really hits home for me personally, it stated “No matter what you choose to read, you’ll see that print is definitely not a goner. It’s evolving as new technologies emerge.” I highly recommend subscribing to either the printed magazine or the online version.
Slow Goodbye to PCs
Are PCs really on the verge of extinction? I do have to concur that the desktop PC at our house is a lonely appliance. With several laptops and wireless Internet access, plus a smart phone in every hand, our family only uses the PC when efficient and rich capabilities are needed. But that represents only about 5% of our home computing time.
According to this article on CNNMoney.com, consumers prefer multi-function, mobile, connected appliances; but the author stops short of predicting the end of PCs. I agree. I will only give up my PC when I can be just as productive with something else. Personally, I’m holding out for a smart tablet that has a built-in but detachable smart phone, featuring a digital camera to rival an Olympus E-3, plus a holographic, full-sized keyboard enhanced with voice recognition and image-to-text converter. Until then, I’m probably sticking with my dust-catching, space hogging PC.
Growing Peer Influence at the Retail Level?
While I don’t shop a whole lot, I have noted that my retail experiences lately have been unusual…not because of the stores or the brands I’m buying…but because of the behavior of my fellow shoppers.
On a visit to a home improvement center, I was stopped in the parking lot by a puzzled looking lady who had a cart full of cabinet and tile samples. “What do you think,?” she asked me. This question turned into a quarter hour conversation as we compared our remodeling experiences and design preferences. Apparently just talking things through eased her mind and she left more confident of her choices.
Then there was the group of ladies I saw huddled around the yogurt at the grocery store yesterday. Pretending to consider which egg brand was worthy of a trip home with me, I eavesdropped on their discussion. They covered probiotic vs. Greek vs. store brand yogurts…concluding with one woman’s endorsement of a yogurt available at Trader Joe’s. To my amusement, the advice of one shopper had two of the ladies decide to forego their yogurt purchase entirely.
Later that day at the mall, a fellow shopper conspiratorially advised me that, if I wasn’t in a hurry, the book I was considering was available from Amazon for a fraction of the cost.
Peer influence can make or break the sale, and most of this influence happens offline. Interactions with fellow retail shoppers seems to be happening much more frequently for me, lately. It has got me wondering…what has changed? Could it be that our fluency with online social networks is reshaping our offline shopping behavior in a significant way? Is the ease with which we solicit peer opinions at the retail level growing? If so, how should savvy retailers harness this at the store level?
