I was talking with Paul recently about bad targeting. More specifically, about how it feels when you are badly targeted by a company. And we came up with an analogy which I think captures it nicely: out of touch themed birthday cards (typically sent by grannies). Don’t know about you, but I still receive cards from older relatives with footballers on it. You might get horses, or cars - something like this...

What I imagine is going through the granny’s brain is something like this:

‘You like football don’t you! Remember when you were 9 and it was all you ever talked about? Well, there we are then. Football! A nice football card for you.’

This is what your company is saying when its uses substandard information to make bad guesses. It’s what you are doing when your super-clever system scrapes an interest from Facebook, or re-targets after I’ve purchased something ('You like printer ink don’t you!')

Don’t let your company be a granny - it is not sweet, loving (or related by blood) enough to forgive. And it will just look a bit silly.

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