How To Not Be Creepy

by Joe Marchese, Jan 27, 2009, 1:45 PM

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It's a slippery slope from being an effective marketer in social media to being creepy. Showing someone exactly the right product they might want to check out can be beneficial and therefore effective -- but using certain personal information to target the ad can very easily come off as creepy. Asking and empowering people for endorsing your brand to their social graph can be incredibly effective; but attaching your marketing message to my likeness without EXPLICT permission can be creepy (see: Beacon). Rewarding people who share your brand with their social graph can be effective, but pure pay-per-post is certainly creepy.

I was on a panel at OMMA Social titled "Personal CPM" that discussed the true value of an individual to a marketer. The concept of "personal CPM" is basically that people are now publishers and that each person has a value to advertisers that could be looked at in terms of CPM. Charlene Li (http://blog.altimetergroup.com/) , moderator of the panel, has really been championing the idea of a personal CPM. I for one am in total agreement that marketers must consider the value of people as a source of media in the age of Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, but as David Berkowitz (http://www.marketersstudio.com ) pointed out, it begins to sound a little "creepy" when we talk about monetizing people and targeting based on personal information. So how can marketers be effective -- without being creepy -- in a world where people control media distribution ?

I think it's actually pretty simple not to be creepy. It's a lot like not being creepy in real life. Don't do anything online your wouldn't do in the real world. You wouldn't slap your brand on someone's back without asking that person's permission. You'd be creepy if you inserted yourself into a conversation, just because you overheard it, without being invited in. Just picture it for a minute. It really boils down to respect for people, their influence and their privacy.

It sounds simple, but not all programs treat social media marketing as the interpersonal interaction that it is. If marketers don't respect people's privacy and influence, the social media ecosystem will adjust to block out the unwelcome, creepy guests, which will set back social media marketing a number of years. Facebook can't have this, MySpace can't have this, Twitter can't have this and marketers don't want this. STOP BEING CREEPY. (Thanks, David.)

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0 comments on "How To Not Be Creepy".

1. Gerard Mclean from Rivershark, Inc.
   

   commented on: January 27, 2009 at 1:57 p.m.

   How creepy is it to leave a comment on someone's blog? Seems like the first comment is creepy, but you lose your creepiness after about 6 or 7 comments.. spaced an appropriate amount of time apart and written with a sparse amount of "OMG, you are so cool" in it.

   Technology changes; people don't. The human condition is the same bag of humanity as that which plagued people Homer and Plato wrote about. I suspect it goes back further than that. Creepy is creepy, online or off.

2. Brian Carter from Fuel Interactive
   

   commented on: January 27, 2009 at 2 p.m.

   Hilarious topic Joe.

   It's true- it's like walking up to two people in a party and saying "hey I heard you mention a tv show- we have HDTV's on sale right now!"

   You'd stare at them and hope they left.

3. Jonathan Hall from American Pop
   

   commented on: January 27, 2009 at 2:07 p.m.

   I think the social media ecosystem blocking out unwelcome, creepy guests will benefit social media marketing not set it back. This will ensure that brands will only pop up in social media conversations when they are invited and/or truly have something of value to say or to offer. Being invited to participate by Key Opinion Leaders is much more valuable than annoying people on a large scale.

   Case in point - how about pop-up windows going away for the most part after "Pop-up Blockers" became common place. This freed up resources to explore more meaningful ways to reach people online. If it wasn't for people demanding protection from this intrusion, digital marketing would be much more crass and annoying right now.

4. Gretel Going from Channel V Media
   

   commented on: January 27, 2009 at 2:07 p.m.

   Fantastic article. When I talk to clients about social media, my two rules of thumb are always: "Act like a normal human being." Or, "No need for the multiple personalities--be the same person online and off." I'll have to introduce a new one that takes the creepiness factor into consideration...

5. Jim Bonfield from Online Advertising and Search
   

   commented on: January 27, 2009 at 2:10 p.m.

   So true. I was recently SPANKED for making these mistakes. TORN apart by an all girl video game player's blog site. Read my public shredding here... It's ugly. Lesson learned for me. http://community.livejournal.com/girl_gamers/4505282.html

6. Chris Middings from Seventh Generation
   

   commented on: January 27, 2009 at 2:12 p.m.

   Creepy also, um, creeps.

   What seemed creepy a few years ago (Google is "reading" my email?) seems commonplace today.

   The volunteering of private information also changes over time. Look at what people now share on Facebook, et al. and you might find some of it a little creepy. A few years ago, all of it might have seemed creepy.

7. Linda Lopez from Independent
   

   commented on: January 27, 2009 at 2:23 p.m.

   Funny, before reading your article, I had just opened an email from someone I didn't know, whose list I hadn't subscribed to, on a topic I was only marginally interested in, and with a subject line that was designed to get my attention but bore little relationship to the body of the email, and I thought, "How creepy."

   It still amazes me how many people email me, or invite me to connect on LinkedIn or Facebook, without bothering to introduce themselves and give me some idea of how they got my name. Unless I'm really busy, I try to always call them on it, because bad manners make it bad for everyone.

8. Adam Singer from Pierson Grant Public Relations
   

   commented on: January 27, 2009 at 2:25 p.m.

   Agreed with not being creepy. I am having more of a problem with targeted advertising being more annoying than creepy. As I wrote on Louis Gray's blog with my critique of Facebook:

   From:
   http://www.louisgray.com/live/2009/01/face-it-facebook-needs-facelift.html

   Facebook advertising is broken - both for advertisers and users:

   Many have reported that Facebook advertising results have been lukewarm at best. The ads they serve me are pretty terrible as well. I'll give you a quick example: I am single, so Facebook tries to serve me ads for dating sites. I have no interest in using online dating services, thus the ads are irrelevant to me. Facebook has the option of giving feedback on ads, so each time a dating ad is served, I actually take the time to give them feedback that the ad is irrelevant to me and vote it as such.

   Concurrently, they serve me ads about marketing and music, things that are of interest to me and actually a good fit. So not only do I click the relevant ads, I go a step further and give them feedback that these are good ads, please serve me more of them. Yet I am continually served dating ads. I have a hard time taking them seriously as a marketer when they clearly have a system in place to improve the user experience but don't bother to use it.
   

9. Joseph Guerriero from DMD Mobile Holdings
   

   commented on: January 27, 2009 at 4:38 p.m.

   This "creepiness" issue is just the beginning. I believe the privacy discussion is going to heat up in the coming months. I recently asked a group of recent college grads whether they read the ads on Facebook or MySpace. Each one of them said "no" and that they found ads "intrusive". One likened the ads to having a phone conversation, hearing a beep and having a promotional message in their ear from the latest and greatest from Toyota. Which got me thinking about how all these social media networks are going to make money. We've all read and heard how the ad model might not be working. Perhaps social media is just the 21st century version of a utility - like Con Ed and the wireless carriers - with cooler functions that need to be monetized through subscription. The fight for marketshare will be won by those networks with the best/coolest applications (see LinkedIn's new pricing structure). Will Facebook's 150 million users all pay? Probably not but if 50 million pay $20/month...not bad! Don't laugh. We don't bat an eyelash when it comes to paying the monthly mobile bill which I'm sure in most instances is far greater than $20/month...

10. Paula Lynn from Who Else Unlimited
    

    commented on: January 27, 2009 at 5:24 p.m.

    Just a wild question. Just how awful would our lives be and could we ever function without social media sites? Email - ooooooooo, so 2001 !

11. Jennifer Kushell from YSN/YS Interactive
    

    commented on: January 28, 2009 at 3:43 a.m.

    I love that you turned this great OMMA Social moment into another one of your great articles Joe. It was very cool to finally meet you in person after reading god knows how many of your articles over the years. Keep it up...and thanks for putting the creepy people on notice!

12. Wendy Austin
    

    commented on: January 28, 2009 at 4:47 p.m.

    In regards to the creepiness factor, what about social responsibility? When you know that a large portion of your subscribers are underage children, is it socially responsible to show sexually provocative videos telling them they will have a better sex life if they go vegan? In one video, women are humping pumpkins and rubbing celery between their legs. Creepiness factor just became possibly illegal factor.

13. Carrie Seifer from Millennial Media
    

    commented on: January 29, 2009 at 5:25 p.m.

    We at Meetup could not agree more. It's exactly what we're asking of brands who want to sponsor our face to face groups. We're training brands to be useful to the community, to support them and do things for them. And we've seen great results for both the community and the brand when it's done this way. So thanks for spreading the good word.

14. Latease Rikard from LMR Publishing
    

    commented on: January 31, 2009 at 1:38 p.m.

    Awesome information. It inspired me to write a blog post along similar themes.

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