Big brother is not the government

Here's a cut and paste from a proposal that I am writing for a client. I think that I am going to recommend against it, just because it's freaking me out.

This database is the real power of the company. The way that this works, is that we would send our entire 120,000 name mailing list to the company. 95% of the households would already be members of the company's database. The company tracks an average of 20 purchases a year for every household in their database.

Based on each household's buying habits, the company would rank our mailing list from 1 to 120,000 on an individual household basis, from most likely to buy to least likely.

We could then make a more logical determination of who to mail to and who's not worth it.

Finally and of most value, the company can create leads: households that while not on our list, are in the right demographic and are making similar purchases.

The pricing is based on not how many households you submit, but how many you get back. The rate is $40/1,000. So for example, if we sent them 120,000 names we could request the top 50,000 of ours back, plus another 20,000 of "new" names that are good leads, but not clients, for 70,000 names or $2,800.

They're tracking the purchases of 95% of the households in America.

Artistic integrity or horse sense

It's interesting how ideas collide. To hear two stories about a night of Jazz history in two days it beyond weird coincidence. It's stuff like this that makes me feel like I'm pinning strings together onto newspaper clippings out in the shed.

Seth Godin has a fantastic post today about the night Bill Evans walked off stage because he, "didn't feel like playing" and how the crowd cheered him because if his heart wasn't in it, they didn't want to hear it.

The interesting part is that last night Terry Gross did an interview with Paul Motian, Bill Evans' drummer, who attributed the same event to Mr. Evans lack of heroin.

So, I guess that the corollary to Seth's post is that it's only important that the customer thinks you are being authentic.

main drain

Friday Foto

RFBlogo version 1.0 (beta)

Did somebody say free burritos?

Link

Customer warnings

I really like McDonald's new coffee packaging, with the more expressive "contents hot" warning. Actually showing the guy scalding his tongue off... Genius! Lord knows, I don't read the little warning type, but even I couldn't miss this guy's heed to be cautious.

I'm eagerly looking forward to the new bigmac(tm) box featuring some obesse tub o' lard.

Maybe they'll make happy meal(tm) toys. Hey kids collect all six!

Diner parties, with kids

I thing this sums thinks up pretty well

My brother-in-law came down this weekend for a visit. He is the executive chef at a big resort in Northern California. Just a side note: If you have the opportunity to have a chef in the family, I highly recommend it.

We had a wonderful diner of Pork Tenderloin wrapped in bacon that gives pigs nightmares. A tomato and mozzarella salad, fresh beets and potatoes, all followed by not one, but two of these fabulous creations:

I live for, little moments...

like that.

Sorry for the lack of posts...

I was shot in the head by the vice-president.





Well... I got better.