A Tactical Omnichannel Misfire? Marketing Intel gone awry?

In the effort to gather as much information as possible about its customers, companies are turning to technology to gather this data in ways that go well beyond the transaction. Whether its preferences, habits, demographics, location, etc.; companies are finding new channels to capture this precious business intelligence and to continue to engage with the customer after the sale, but could this backfire? The upcoming launch of Hello Barbie is receiving pushback similar to that faced by Samsung with their Smart TV’s recent privacy snafu. This new talking Barbie takes CRM and marketing intelligence to a whole new level. The doll records the child’s voice, on command, and sends it up to the cloud to be analyzed to make future interactions with the child more intuitive, but what else are they doing with that information? What message are they giving back to your child? According to CNN Money, Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood reports that some parents find the doll “too creepy”. Is this an example of companies jumping too far too fast? The adoption of voice recognition software in products give them the ability to know when to begin to record user data, in this case, audio voice recordings, and send it to the cloud for analysis. This ability certainly seemed like a logical next step in capturing customer data to create a perfectly seamless customer / product experience with the customer’s “identity” in mind, but consumers are leery. Companies are facing resistance and privacy concerns from consumers that believe they are collecting too much information. Samsung’s recent Smart TV was also accused of eavesdropping on it’s customers and experienced considerable blowback with some lawmakers threatening to ban the smart TVs all together. It will be interesting to see the push and pull as omnichannel seeks to break down barriers between the customer and the world while privacy/security issues seek to build them back up.