Email Targeting Knows I lived In Romania

I've long been a proponent for email targeting in advertising. While it may seem invasive for Google to let me know about airline prices while I'm emailing my buddy about going to Vegas, its also unbelievably convenient. I'm on the side of offering more information to advertising companies because the Web will only develop as a personalized medium when consumers allow it to. And bottom line, anyone who has ever had a credit card has already given up more personal information than any ad targeting company will collect.

Having said all that, I was truly amazed this morning to find this email in my inbox..."Been Looking For ROMANIAN Products?" The capitalization of Romanian is a dead giveaway that my email somewhere crossed with Romania as a trigger. I have no idea who Idakoos is or who they've contracted for their emails, but this is unbelievable Out of left field I'm getting ads for t-shirts that say "Everyone Loves A Romanian." This is amazing because not only am I part Romanian, but I also lived there for 4 months last year. I hadn't emailed or spoken to anyone about this experience in months, and then this email shows up.

Well done Idakoos. However you found me, I'm damn impressed.

CARAT CARAT CARAT!!!

What is there really to say? We’ve all seen it, we’ve all talked about. Carat and there email blunder…..opening lines of the story below:

E-mail Blunder Alerts Carat Staff to Major Restructuring
Top HR Exec Accidentally Sends Out Talking Points About Upcoming JobCuts Published: September 03, 2008

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Struggling media agency Carat is planning a major restructuring of its U.S. operations, including an undetermined number of layoffs -- news it accidentally released today via a memo the agency's top New York-based HR executive e-mailed to the entire agency that appeared to be intended only for senior managers.

In a rare, uncomfortable look into the preparations for employee layoffs, management informed its rank and file of forthcoming layoffs and other changes in Microsoft PowerPoint and Word documents full of "message" points on how people should be told of their fate and what should be said to their still-employed colleagues, clients and vendors. According to one source, the memo was sent to all staffers before the mistake was realized, and it was pulled back by the IT department. The documents, obtained by Advertising Age and posted with this story, detail talking points for managers as they talk to clients, vendors, the press and employees as Carat tries to navigate the fallout from the news.


For full article, click here.