Probably Random

Phorm! the end of creative marketing

Phorm is the latest way for the marketeers to give us better ads. Basically it’s a bit like a direct marketing company reading all your mail and interviewing everyone who visits you, listening to your phone calls and monitoring what you watch on TV so that they can sell advertising space.

Personally, I can’t see anything good about this unless you’re a shareholder, for two reasons privacy and creativity.
Privacy, well it’s a bit obvious why it’s bad for that. I’m just hoping that https will lock it out because if it doesn’t… then they can read all your credit card details. So one way to get around it is to route everyting through an encrypted proxy if Tor can find it’s way through the Great Firewall of China then we still have hope that we can use the internet without corporate monitoring.

Creativity, it seems to me that such targeted advertising will suck the creativity out of the marketing industry. If you know so much about me that you know what I want and when I want it then all I need is a text link saying ‘buy a new pair of jeans’. Which means that we will all miss out on brilliantly creative ideas like the Cadburys Gorilla, the Quicksilver Dynamite the Sony Rabbits,  see all the brand names there (just some of the best of 2007) … I remember them all, and I bet none of those adverts were written with me in mind and if they had had me in mind, I doubt they would have come up with that as a response.