Location, location, location

At first, it used to startle me a bit, but that was years ago.

Now I pay it no mind when, three minutes after I make the decision of the century and pick the navy heather L.L. Bean fleece rather than the darkest violet, an ad appears in the middle of my Twitter feed showing something that looks suspiciously like the fleece I just ordered, and inviting me to buy it. Me? I skip right by it. Gotta see what Lawrence Tribe has to say or my mad crush Lawrence O’Donnell is up to, tweet-wise.

And if a picture of pair of brightly colored Asics appears in the corner of my eye like an eye floater within seconds after I pushed my virtual shopping cart containing a couple of pairs of brightly colored Asics out the virtual door of Zappo’s, well, sure, like anyone else, I have a moment of hesitation when I ask myself, “Am I losing it, or didn’t I just order that???”. Mostly I ignore it.

Oh, sometimes it bothers me a bit when a banner ad for one of my clients shows up in the middle of an article I’m reading. Of course they want to cultivate me. I just downloaded a bunch of stuff from their web site. Still, I feel a bit guilty – even when I wrote the content of that banner ad. Shouldn’t I let them know that they need to tweak their algorithm so that their ads only pop up for live ones, not for freelance content producers. Please, I ask, figure out a way to distinguish me from someone who’s actually interested in cloud-based B2B software that solves some business problem or the other.

Of course, when it’s a client’s competitor that’s bombarding me with ads, I’m delighted. Waste o’ money, suckers! I just wanted to see that ebook because I’m writing an ebook on the same topic and want to make sure I haven’t missed any important points. (As an aside: my ebook’s better than your ebook. Nyah, nyah, nyah!)

I actually don’t mind it when Amazon suggests a companion book or a CD. Not so much when it’s any thing else that I just purchased. I don’t care that everyone else who bought the long-handled toenail clippers also bought the 30” foot scrubber with pumice stone.

Anyway, while I may not like it, and hope I don’t ever get very far sucked into it, I understand that online marketing is the shizzle.

But then there’s the invasion of the location snatchers.

I may have been targeted by it before, but I really noticed it the other day.

I was strolling around the North End (Boston’s rapidly yuppifying Italian section) the other day with my friend Jennie, enjoying a supremely spring-like afternoon, when we decided to stop in at Polcari’s Coffee, an ancient and funky little hole-in-the-wall shop that sells coffee, spices, Italian candies, and a few odd bits and bobs.

Among those bits and bobs were colorful little kitchen scrubbers. My old colorful little kitchen scrubber has sort of withered on the sink. It still scrubs, but it’s somewhat curled up and dead. So I decided to spring for a new one, which I paid $3.19 cash money for. No cashless purchase life for me when it’s anything under twenty bucks.

If I’d given it a thought, I would have felt that I hadn’t left a trace at Polcari’s Coffee. I didn’t pay by credit card. I didn’t pay by debit card. I didn’t give up my email address to get on their mailing list. I can’t imagine that this throwback of a store would have had one.

Anyway, by the time Jennie and I had strolled over to Caffe Paradiso- despite the yuppification, the North End still has great Italian restaurants and coffee shops -  for an iced mocha (and, yes, to split a piece of chocolate cake), I saw that I had a message on my phone asking me to take some sort of Polcari survey.

I didn’t click through to see what it was, but I was a bit weirded out.

This couldn’t, after all, be a coincidence. Stop into Polcari’s for the first time in decades; get pinged on my phone by some Polcari or another.

And then it came to me: location, location, location.

The marketing gods smiled down on my Samsung Galaxy 6, powered by Verizon – or the other way around – and picked up my coordinates so that the Polcari folks would know that I’d been in their shop.

First off, I’m stunned that Polcari’s would be doing this sort of marketing. Honestly, there is nothing hip, techie, or happenin’ about this place. Other than that kitchen scrubber – I don’t remember these being a thing back in the day; we just used Brillo pads and Tuffies  – this store hasn’t changed a bit since the last time I was in there in 1987. Except they apparently had.

Every once in a while, I read some article raising the alarm about the creepy ability of “them” and “it” to track us, to pinpoint our locations, our comings and goings, thanks to our oh, so very smarty-pants smartphones. Mostly, I’ve dismissed these alarms. I mean, I’m not involved in criminal activities. And the government, bad as it may be these days, isn’t yet sending drones to take out those thinking thoughts of resistance. At least not as far as I know. (Could the NSA, at this very moment, be monitoring my key strokes? If so FU!)

Often, after I’ve made an online purchase, I get an email asking me how the transaction went, or to write a review of, say, that $14.99 long-handled toenail clipper. Mostly I ignore these, but I understand that the price of online shopping is that they have your email address

I’m a lot less keen on stores picking up on my location and bombarding my phone with follow-up messages.

From now on, if I’m out and about, location will be off. Need to know basis only, marketers, and you just plain don’t need to know.