marketing – Terence Eden’s Blog

Corporate Blogging is Hard; Open a GitHub Issue Instead

@edent — Fri, 26 Jul 2024 11:34:02 +0000

(Inspired by this conversation between Jukesie and Himal)

Lots of companies encourage their staff to blog. It's free PR! It makes them look like they're on the cutting edge of technology! It helps with recruitment!

It can also be a corporate nightmare. What if the developer says something stupid? What if it accidentally reveals something top secret? What if the CEO doesn't like it?

And so, gradually, any free-wheelin' developer blog gradually succumbs to the tender mercies of the comms team. It starts with help editing and clarifying the writing. Then it turns into massaging the tone-of-voice. Before too long you have to wait for a slot on the corporate comms grid. And then you need seven levels of sign-off just to post something anodyne like "5 reasons we switched to Rust".

*sigh*

So, maybe once or twice, I cheated.

Rather than writing a blog post called "An interesting issue configuring GLaDOS with YAML" I opened an issue on our public GitHub repo.

Oh, sure, it wasn't as "bloggy". And I still made sure not to discuss anything secret or sensitive. For some of the more contentious issues, I ran it by a few trusted colleagues first. But, for all intents and purposes, it was a blog post. Nerds got to reply in the comments, people shared it on HN, people quoted it on social media.

I've since left that sort of restrictive environment. I still see my old team occasionally publishing a useful blog post. But I keep my eyes on their GitHub issues to see the real story!

What's the moral here?

Should you bypass your employer's strict social media policy? No, absolutely not. Should you ensure that your GitHub issues are well-formatted, interesting to read, and useful to others? Yes.

Algorithm Induced Alcoholism

@edent — Wed, 09 Nov 2022 12:34:38 +0000

I like beer.

I like the Internet.

What if I could get beer using the Internet?!?!

A few years ago I purchased a mixed crate of beer online. I unticked all the checkboxes for marketing messages - but incautiously allowed them to send me special offers.

Every couple of months, they'd send me an email offering discount beer. And I'd ignore it. Mostly because I was still slowly working my way through the last crate.

But one day their marketing algorithm obviously decided that I was about to become a lost prospect and sent me an irresistible offer. "We miss you! Please enjoy a crate of 36 craft beers for £40."

Nice! I certainly won't look a gift-beer in the bottle. So I grabbed the bargain and stuck the tinnies in the cupboard.

And then the algorithm went haywire.

Every day - every single day - since placing my order, I've received a marketing message from the company. "Don't miss out on this exclusive case!" or "Our top beers - hand picked for you!" or "URGENT! Last few cases remaining at this price!" or "The ULTIMATE taste test - which will you choose?" or "20% discount if you order TODAY" or "Christmas is coming - stock up now!"

I get it. The CRM has detected that I'm a live prospect and willing to spend money - therefore they must capture my value before I churn. I don't know if they know how quickly I can drink 36 beers. I don't know if they know how much shelf space I have. And I don't know if they know that I dislike being bombarded with adverts.

What I do know that they know is the UK rules around advertising of alcohol promotions.

When it comes to consumer promotions with a multiple purchase mechanic promoters need to ensure that the number of items that need to be bought does not encourage consumers to exceed Department of Health guidelines for safe drinking and they should keep up to date with these guidelines. They should also ensure that the duration of the promotion is long enough to allow consumers to participate without drinking excessively or irresponsibly

Interestingly, all the marketing emails came to me in the evening. Presumably because the guidelines also say:

Alcohol promotions that could encourage a style of drinking that is unwise, for example encouraging people to drink at breakfast or early in the day, are likely to be problematic

There's an old complaint about being shown adverts for things you've already purchased. It is mostly down to lazy marketers using retargeting and is usually little more than an annoyance. But continually messaging people encouraging them to buy alcohol feels like it could cause harm.

Alcohol can be addictive. As can A/B testing your customers to see which messaging resonates with the target demographic. Advertisers - know your limits!

I know you might think I'm exaggerating - but here's a fortnight's worth of emails from online beer merchant Flavourly:

I hadn't checked the inbox for a month, hence the build-up of crap before I could unsubscribe.

if ( gender == "female" && married == True && age >=30 ) { hasChildren = True; }

@edent — Wed, 12 May 2021 11:21:11 +0000

Marketing really is crap. Recently, SE Railways sent this piece of email drivel to my wife:

We don't have any kids, thankfully - and are not having any in the future. My wife was literally recovering from a sterilisation procedure when the email arrived. So it seemed a bit weird that they'd send her a message like that.

My wife has never booked a child's fare. She's done nothing to indicate to them that she has spawned. They know that she's married and female, because she set her title to "Mrs". They got her date of birth from the ID checks they carried out - we think.

As far as we can tell, they've unilaterally decided that all married women of a certain age must have kids. Or, perhaps, they just lazily sent the message to all women?

So, she spoke to them, to ask why this specific piece of guff had been sent to her. All they'd say was the rather nebulous statement that the emails was a "targeted email sent to a number of passengers [...] When passengers use our services we're able to use this data to help us target communications effectively."

Not really answering the question. But they decided to bung us £20 of M&S vouchers for the "upset".

Even the most modest of interactions with a company will be data-mined for trivial details in the vague hope of getting you to spend more money.

Here are a few tips if you want to avoid getting microtargetted like this:

Consider using a gender neutral title like Mx - or earn yourself a doctorate.
Use an initial rather than a first name. Names can be used to determine likely age.
Don't answer any demographic questions which aren't necessary to the provision of the service, or have a legal/regulatory basis.
You generally can't unsubscribe from service emails, but you can close your account once you've finished your transaction. Digital hygiene is essential!

Of course, if you complain about a mistargeted email, that's another data-point they have about you!

Stop adding email tracking links to phone numbers!

@edent — Thu, 20 Feb 2020 12:55:36 +0000

My Chinese takeaway delivery was late. Very late. I flipped open the confirmation email sent by Just-Eat to double-check I had all the details correct. At the bottom was a "click to call" link. Hurrah!

I clicked dial, and this is what filled my screen:

An absurdly long phone number. Bemused, I went to inspect the link I'd clicked. This is what it showed:

The tel: URl scheme is brilliant. You can write something like:

Call Me!

And when you click on Call Me! your phone dialler will pick up the phone number and offer to place the call. Nifty!

In this case, the crappy marketing system is adding Urchin Tracking Module parameters to every link. Including the phone numbers.

tel:02083178830?utm_medium=ecrm
&utm_source=email
&utm_campaign=TRAN
&utm_content=UK_TRAN_01_0_ORDER-CONFIRMATION_E_V01
&campaign=TRAN
&adgroup=UK_TRAN_01_0_ORDER-CONFIRMATION_E_V01
&utm_term=restaurant_phone_3_3

To be clear - this is useless. The user clicks on the phone number, the device passes the URl directly to the phone dialler. An HTTP request is never made and those parameters are never sent to a server.

Now, in fairness, perhaps my Android dialler should probably be smart enough to recognise the cruft at the end of a phone number and discard it. This is Postel's Law in action.

Except... My reading of the RFC says that the dialler is handling things correctly.

If the reserved characters "+", ";", "=", and "?" are used as delimiters between components of the "tel" URI, they MUST NOT be percent encoded. These characters MUST be percent encoded if they appear in tel URI parameter values.

For example, if I wanted to dial +447... I should use tel:%2B447...

The dialler sees the unencoded ? and treats it as a delimiter. It then sees utm and assumes the letters are part of the phone number. Just like you can dial 1-800-FLOWERS, you can write tel:1-800-FLOWERS and have it go through to 1-800-356-9377.

utm medium on a telephone keypad is 886633486 - which is exactly what appeared on my phone screen.

So, if you're writing link tracking software, please make sure only to add parameter to URls where it makes sense.

In the time it took me to write this post, my meal got delivered and it was delicious!

Is it creepy when brands pester you on social media?

@edent — Sat, 16 Feb 2019 11:04:12 +0000

You're sat in a pub, chatting with your mates. You start to moan about how the cheap lager they serve gives you a headache. All of a sudden, a stranger runs up to you and says:

"Oh no! Headaches? Have you tried the refreshing taste of Pepsi® Cola? It's the Flavour That Keeps Giving™!"

I suspect you would complain to the bar manager and then find a new watering hole. You might, perhaps, tell the stranger never to contact you again.

And, yet, this is what happens fairly regularly on Twitter. I was complaining to my ISP (Virgin) when a different ISP (Sky) butted in to the conversation to sell their wares.

WHAT THE JUDDERING FUCK? Why would anyone want a brand hijacking a conversation like that? Is that sort of unsolicited electronic marketing even legal?

How are they doing this?

Companies like Sky are using BrandsEye to mine social media to send you unsolicited advertising.

Their whole shtick is "find people complaining about your competitors - then bombard them with adverts." Innovative… And no mention of legal obligations or data protection.

In fairness, BrandsEye have a privacy policy where they promise "We will treat your information as confidential." Except for all these people we're happy to give it to. Interesting use of the word "confidential" there!

They do let you opt-out of their creepy marketing database (not that I ever opted in).

So I dropped a Subject Access Request to privacy@brandseye.com - to see what fascinating insights they had on me. It was truly pathetic.

What data did they have on me?

A few days later, they sent me 104 JSON files of my data. Some only contained a single tweet, like this one:

Here's the full data in the file:

[{
    "link": "http://twitter.com/edent/statuses/878697839135731714",
    "published": "2017-06-24T19:34:24.000+0000",
    "authorLocation": "Oxford, UK",
    "authorTimezone": "London",
    "city": {
        "name": "Oxford"
    },
    "region": {
        "name": "England"
    },
    "country": {
        "name": "United Kingdom"
    },
    "language": {
        "name": "English"
    },
    "category": {
        "label": "Consumer"
    },
    "gender": {
        "label":"Male"
    }
}]

Not much, is it? My location, gender, and that I'm a "consumer". What amazing insights they must be generating for trusted brands. FFS…

Other files held dozens of Tweets. Often on a single theme. Here's one which is just me talking about buses:

[{
        "link": "http://twitter.com/edent/statuses/1062220277738860544",
        "published": "2018-11-13T05:47:03.000+0000",
        "extract": "@mskarengibb it is about a 30 minute walk into the city centre. Or, there's a bus stop just outside the venue. Google Maps will show you which bus to catch.",
    },
    {
        "link": "http://twitter.com/edent/statuses/1061890559864963075",
        "published": "2018-11-12T07:56:53.000+0000",
        "extract": "@mskarengibb you'll need to go into the centre of Oxford and catch the busy from the Gloucester Green bus station,\nOxford OX1 2BX\nhttps://goo.gl/maps/kdJYicoRbpB2",

    },
    {
        "link": "http://twitter.com/edent/statuses/1012358934521372672",
        "published": "2018-06-28T15:35:53.000+0000",
        "extract": "@TfL please can I get a response to this?\nHaving a bus stop listed in the wrong location is very annoying. Thanks.",

    },
    {
        "link": "http://twitter.com/edent/statuses/1011984324982394882",
        "published": "2018-06-27T14:47:19.000+0000",
        "extract": "Some idle thoughts while I wait for a bus…\n\nDo you notice when you receive a \"Nudge\"?\nIf so, how does it make you feel?\n\nI'm talking about those messages which include things like \"95% of people pay their bill on time\" or \"people in [your postcode] tend to donate £X\" etc.",
    },
    {
        "link": "http://twitter.com/edent/statuses/1011857722038505472",
        "published": "2018-06-27T06:24:14.000+0000",
        "extract": "*sigh* How do I view the latest NaPTAN database & see who is responsible for incorrect information?\nI assume it is TfL's responsibility to update bus stops in the capital. https://twitter.com/OxfordBusCo/status/1011285002162667520",

    },
    {
        "link": "http://twitter.com/edent/statuses/1011277489212198913",
        "published": "2018-06-25T15:58:36.000+0000",
        "extract": "@OxfordBusCo this *still* isn't fixed. Signs up at the bus stop - but your app is still wrong.\nI reported this a month ago, you keep promising to correct it.\nCan you please tell me what's going on? https://t.co/2yIR2tJrMM",

    },
    {
        "link": "http://twitter.com/edent/statuses/1008732886378471424",
        "published": "2018-06-18T15:27:16.000+0000",
        "extract": "@OxfordBusCo the Marylebone Road bus stop listed in your app is wrong. When will it be fixed? https://t.co/QseqgIY29e",

    },
    {
        "link": "http://twitter.com/edent/statuses/1008618346651242496",
        "published": "2018-06-18T07:52:07.000+0000",
        "extract": "@OxfordBusCo it is now Monday, and the app still isn't fixed.\nYour website says one thing, the app says another, the physical bus stops say a third.\nYour customers are confused.\nPlease tell me when this will be fixed? https://t.co/s9md2f8Nfq",

    },
    {
        "link": "http://twitter.com/edent/statuses/1006518900278906880",
        "published": "2018-06-12T12:49:40.000+0000",
        "extract": "Do you like open data? \uD83D\uDCCA\nLove statistics about bus travel? \uD83D\uDE8C\nCrave files in Open Document Format? \uD83D\uDD13\n\nDo we have a website for you! \n\nhttps://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/bus01-local-bus-passenger-journeys https://t.co/OXmOBHiBOS",
    }]

I can only assume that a bus company wants to know what sad, middle-aged blokes think about buses in Oxford. Hopefully my dazzling Tweets will provide value added insights into their corporate synergies.

How are they doing this?

BrandEye's website claims that they use "a proprietary mix of AI and crowdsourcing".

I'm going to call shenanigans on that. As far as I can tell, they're using the bog-standard Twitter API to mine keywords and locations. They might be using some basic Natural Language Processing to weed out the obvious errors. But judging from their LinkedIn page, their "crowdsourcing" is cheaply paid students in Kenya, and freelancers in Jordan, Venezuela, Mauritius, and Mumbai.

It's the old SpinVox trick - sell AI magic to customers, and get Mechanical Turks to do the real work.

Is this creepy?

OK, so BrandsEye don't appear to be doing a great job of mining social media. But is what they're doing ethical or useful?

On the one hand, I spew my tweets out into the ether. Anyone with an Internet connection has the technical capability to read them. But, those Tweets contain my personal data - be it my text, location, or images.

We've moved to a world where companies have to get an explicit opt-in to process our data and to use it for marketing.

I would argue that I have not opted-in to Sky's marketing. I have given no consent for them to send me electronic spam - no matter how highly targetted. Similarly, I haven't told BrandsEye that they can process my personal data. It isn't my job to opt-out of every half-baked business; it is their job to convince me to opt-in.

Even if the law were different, and companies could spam with impunity, is this an effective marketing strategy? Superficially, I get the appeal of searching for people complaining about your competitors - and then targetting them. But does it work?

Using special AI Algorithms and BlockChain Technology, I spent half-an-hour looking through Sky's BrandsEye-powered marketing Tweets.

It looks so needy and pathetic. Hundreds of spammy message. The only replies to Sky seem to be telling them to piss off. I'm sure once in a while they hit a receptive mark - but is it really worth annoying so many people?

The future is not brands sliding into your conversations like they're your mates.

Who Owns The Customer?

@edent — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 13:33:39 +0000

Where in the value chain are you? This is a question that we're constantly being asked. When a customer is doing something, who is she doing it with? Who is she doing it for? With whom does she hold the relationship. Above all - Who Owns The Customer?

This sort of thinking always bothers me - I don't see anyone as owning the customer. Yesterday, on the train home, I saw a person using Facebook on an Apple laptop with an internet connection provided by Vodafone. Who owns that customer?

The Question

So, I asked the question on Twitter.

The Response

Here, in no particular order, are the replies I received.

The Conclusion

So pretty mixed response. The argument can be made for all of them. We rarely buy product X from Brand X's store using an X authorised credit card. All our transactions - monetary or otherwise - are facilitated by multiple vendors. Each one of whom is working against the others for our attention and our money.

The question is, of course, nonsense. It is the customer who owns the relationship with the business. At any time they can terminate their contract with a company. A company can rarely terminate their relationship with a customer.

The best thing that companies can do is to work together to ensure that there is a seamless and pleasurable experience for the customer.

Facebook and Apple could work together to make sure the site works properly.
Facebook and Vodafone could work together to ensure billing can take place smoothly.
Vodafone and the Train company could work together to ensure there's adequate signal coverage.
Apple and Vodafone could work together to ensure the HSDPA dongle works.
The Train company could work with Apple to ensure customers can fit their laptops on to the tables and can recharge them.

Almost any combination results in a better experience for the customer. It also means the customer is less likely to mistakenly blame one company for another's failings.

I don't believe that a rising tide lifts all boats - but if businesses don't get their act together their customers will simply drift away screaming like a sullen teenager "YOU DON'T OWN ME!"

Bluetooth Spam from Coca-Cola

@edent — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 13:29:00 +0000

Bluetooth spam. It's been debated for a long time, but it looks like it's becoming a reality in the UK now that the ICO say marketers do not need opt-in consent - although the DMA differs in opinion.

I was quietly sat in a London restaurant when my phone bleeped into action. Would I like to receive a Bluetooth message from "Coca-Cola".

I was curious and I accepted the message - I fully expected it to be a prank and that I would receive Tub Girl or worse...

What I actually got was an image, an MP3 of the Coke theme and a 3GP movie of a Coke advert. (I figure if they're spamming them to all and sundry, I can distribute them as well...)

It's an effective advertising campaign. While I don't care for the mp3, I'm sure lots of kids will enjoy it. I even thought that the video was rather funny.

I'm in two minds about this....

1) I did consent to receive the advert. If I'd clicked "no" I wouldn't have been bothered by it again. It's pretty much the same as a Big Issue vendor asking if I want to buy a copy.

2) On the other hand, if every shop was blasting out messages, I'd be a bit pissed off. Rather than a couple of Big Issue vendors, I'd be assaulted by a team of chuggers.

However, in this case, I can solve all my problems by turning my bluetooth off or setting it to non-discoverable.

For now, it's not a problem. It's low volume and trivial to avoid. But what happens when someone starts hacking your non-discoverable phone and starts sending offensive images in the name of "Pepsi Cola"?

What would King Harald make of it?