Free Calls, But At What Price – Part 2
Source: www.voip-news.com
Remember earlier in the week when we buzzed about the latest plan from Pudding Media to provide free calls … at a price? The news definitely set everyone buzzing, igniting a debate on if people were for or against the new concept. CK from the popular marketing strategy blog sounded off on it this week too, and we’re definitely of the same mind.
“Please tell me this will go away. Or mocked immensely and then go away (so that unlike Britney, it doesn’t come back).
According to the company’s CEO “Pudding Media had considered the privacy question carefully. The company is not keeping recordings or logs of the content of any phone calls, he said, so advertisements only relate to current calls, not past ones, and will only arrive during the call itself.”
So you bother me DURING my call? When I’m actually trying to have the conversation?
The CEO also thinks that young people, the group his company is focusing on with the call service, “are less concerned with maintaining privacy than older people are.”
Whether or not young people want privacy isn’t the issue–an arrogant assumption, btw–the issue is that you’re a grown-up preying upon them in the name of “targeted advertising.”
And that’s really creepy.
I’ve said it oh so many times before, but here goes once more: Marketers, just focus on creating, innovating and maintaining exemplary products, services and experiences. You’ll be amazed how your markets will gladly give you their time, money and loyalty without your needing to waste precious ad dollars stalking them.
They might even call you.
PS: The way this company validates this model? They pass the buck with this gem, “Pudding Media executives said that scanning the words used in phone calls was not substantially different from what Google does with e-mail.” Gotta love it when a new company defends themselves by using another company’s pesky practices…instead of promoting itself on its own merits.”
So obviously everyone has to come to their own conclusions on how they feel about this intrusion – it’s all a question of where you draw the line.
