Getting the dirt on your customers
Unilever uses the tag line ‘dirt is good’ to sell its laundry detergent Umo. For its new promotion campaign, it seems to have taken this idea one step further by going out and getting some dirt on its customers.
As shown in this video, Omo is using hidden tracking devices in laundry detergent boxes to track unsuspecting shoppers and find out where they live. So Omo’s staff can just turn up on your doorstep unannounced with the prize (a free video camera and a fun day out). According to the promotion, this means customers do not have to look for the prize because ‘the prize finds the consumer’.
At Knowhere, we get pretty excited about location tracking, and we generally support others who share our passion.
For example, we even cheered for those in the business of tracking rubbish. But Omo’s promotion may be the exception.
As expected, Omo’s promotion has already attracted some genuine privacy concerns. We would never run a promotion that tracked shoppers without them knowing. But even if we overlook the privacy issue, we still can’t see how this promotion can be a good investment.
Omo’s promotion company tried to play down the cost of this tracking technology, saying that it costs ‘less than $1 million, out of the overall marketing budget of about $23 million’. But why spend $1 million when you can get the same results using data from supermarket loyalty cards?
Out of all people, we should be the most passionate supporters of location-based technology.
But it seems wrong to spend $1 million on tracking technology just so you can give away some prizes in a one-off promotion.
Sure it is important to stand out from the crowd, but you can do it without spending $1 million.
Check out how we helped the Heart Foundation to promote its fund raising campaign – we did it with just a couple of GPS-enabled cell phones and our tracking platform.
As for Unilever, if you want to incorporate location-based technology in another campaign, contact us first. A chat with us is free and it could save you a million!