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This Company Has Built a Profile On Every American Adult (bloomberg.com)
Reader schwit1 writes: Every move you make. Every click you take. Every game you play. Every place you stay. They'll be watching you. IDI, a year-old company in the so-called data-fusion business, is the first to centralize and weaponize all that information for its customers. The Boca Raton, Fla., company's database service, idiCORE, combines public records with purchasing, demographic, and behavioral data. Chief Executive Officer Derek Dubner says the system isn't waiting for requests from clients -- it's already built a profile on every American adult, including young people who wouldn't be swept up in conventional databases, which only index transactions. 'We have data on that 21-year-old who's living at home with mom and dad,' he says.
companies like this are also referred to as brand chasers or culture moguls, or brand identity teams. Every one of them touts the same crap, it just sounds like this one ran out of clients and is trying to court law enforcement that want to skirt the constitution.
is the first to centralize and weaponize all that information for its customers
bullshit. quantrics started this crap (technically socci too), then companies like Target, Ralphs, and Best Buy decided to bring it in house and make it proprietary, literally bankrupting them overnight.
The Boca Raton, Fla., company's database service, idiCORE, combines public records with purchasing, demographic, and behavioral data.
take a company, base it in boca or delaware, or branson, or somewhere mind-numbing data entry jobs pay nothing, and then spin it as a service that does (surprise) something that every modern corporation has been doing for 30 years. demographic and behavioral are so vague as to mean anything from "we had an elementary school focus group" to "we sit around and pay people to watch BET all day."
including young people who wouldn't be swept up in conventional databases
bingo, this is how you know its a bullshit target market research company. the blind spots of the 18-32 demographic are a gold mine businesses have been spending billions on for 25 years or longer. the truth is we really do not know why some of these audiences fail brand permanence, brand awareness, or our consumer confidence and profile metrics other than (gasp) they probably just arent interested in the product. but thats not good enough. middle manager mike needs you to buy the brand, and we need to pretend we have that solution.
'We have data on that 21-year-old who's living at home with mom and dad,'
yeah? so does everyone else. hes the fucking loss-leader and you work hard to exclude him from your brand experience. he has no pull with his parents (that ended at 17) and he has a caustic persona that can destroy the brand as any Axe bodyspray marketing team can attest to. You lump him into your 'subculture urban' market and bingo, youve just fucked an entire segment out of a product by appealing to something diametrically opposed to people with limited income. you can sell this guy credit cards and maybe some fast food...and thats about it. he downloads all his music, drives a 20 year old toyota, and plays freemium games on his iphone 4-5 waiting for his cheese to grill.
Good people go to bed earlier.
"Are you saying that received unregistered mail is recorded somehow?"
The postal office scans every piece of mail to send it at its destination. By 'scanning' they mean, they photograph each and every piece of mail (to ocr it) and they don't throw that away, it's too juicy for so many people.
Hell, back in the mid 90's I was helping on a project there to come up with a unique identifier and to build records upon that for every individual worldwide....
Way back when, they used to cut binders of phone books and scan them in for databases.
They get all the US Postal records, all states that publish/sell drivers license info...
They got info from all those little sheets you fill out when you send in a warranty card....etc.
They work with and clean up TransUnion and the other credit companies...and the credit card companies...etc.
Hell, the US Federal govt uses Acxiom to clean their databases for them, they did after 9/11 and I can guess they still are...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........