Do you ever feel like almost every interaction you have with new people is part of some big marketing strategy? I never used to, but that's changing. Everything seems to be marketing related these days. Not only did we have a day called Black Friday last week—something I had never heard of until this year, but now we have Cyber Monday—the day when all of the online Christmas shoppers are supposed to be hunting for the best deals online. It's almost unbelievable how easy it is for a marketer to come up with such terms and then watch it trickle down into the culture.
In addition to the new Christmas shopping terms, our computers are flooded with spyware and cookies—mostly so advertisers can snoop on us to figure out how to target us with specific ads that we might be interested in. Every time we use a membership card at bookstores, department stores, or grocery stores, our buying habits are stored in databases and used to target us with advertising. When we fill out financial forms, we list our birthdays and our banks or financial advisors send us birthday cards—done with the intention of making us think they care enough to remember such a thing, when in reality, it's another marketing tool. When we trade business cards at trade shows with prospective clients, it inevitably leads to more junk e-mail and faxes asking us to buy things we have no interest in buying.
It's enough to make a person paranoid. But what's the old saying? Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you.
