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Digital Tattoos and Our Village Roots
In February 2013, businessman and academic Juan Enriquez did a TED Talk about our online identities. In his TED Talk, Enriquez says that everything we do online is permanent and becomes part of our "digital tattoo." Most people call the trail they leave online their "digital footprint," but I think "digital tattoo" is a lot more accurate. Footprints fade, but tattoos are permanent. Enriquez says tattoos tell a story, and whether the story is meaningful or just a mistake, it's permanent. The same goes for digital tattoos. Digital tattoos are how we identify ourselves.
When I first watched this video, most of it was not surprising. The news is full of stories notifying the public of how companies are tracking them online; app permissions often ask for access to your information; and career experts are always warning about how employers screen job candidates by looking at their social media pages. In a few of my marketing classes, we've even talked about the information companies gather and sell to each other for target marketing purposes. I could talk about how creepy that is and how important it is to protect your privacy, but I'm actually going to talk about how cool it is that our information is out there for companies to collect.
Consumer information is extremely valuable to companies, and target marketing has grown in popularity in recent decades because knowing about current and potential customers is the best way to sell to them. People aren't going to pay attention to something that isn't relevant to them. Target marketing involves gathering enough information to be able to group consumers into segments, or target markets, that have enough in common for marketers to be able to customize their efforts to appeal to each segment.
What I find really fascinating is the connection this concept has to social media marketing. In his book Social Media Explained, Mark Schaefer explains that social media marketing is simply bringing society back to the days before mass media, when commerce was done person-to-person and customers could form personal connections with vendors through everyday interactions. Back then, your village tailor or grocer knew as much about you as your friends would, and it wasn't considered "creepy." The truth is, people crave that human interaction that helps them establish rapport with whomever they're doing business with. Deep down, we all want to feel special and known. That's the gift social media marketing is giving us, only now these interactions and relationships can occur between people who are hundreds of miles away from each other, making the world into a global village.