February 18, 2007

Creepy Safeway/Coke Zero Coupon

Dr. M just returned from Safeway, where she was presented with this coupon after she checked out:

Somewhere, some advertising team was paid a jillion dollars by Coke and/or Safeway to come up with a campaign that basically says, "Hello, we are stalking you! LOL!"

Dr. M is thoroughly disturbed by this, and may avoid using the coupon just to keep Skynet off her trail.

This is an extremely dumb campaign. Plenty of people use Safeway cards, and either don't realize or are content to ignore the fact that the cards are being used to track their purchases and create shopper profiles for them. Calling attention to it like this, and intentionally adding an explicit creepiness factor, is an amazingly bad idea. In the words of Jerry Seinfeld, "Who are the advertising wizards that came up with this one?"

Posted by hb at February 18, 2007 12:08 PM

Comments

the question I'm afraid to ask is, did she buy coke during that trip, or did they just decide to grace her with a coupon based on all of the previous coke purchases? because that means something hooked up to the register has access to all your buying habits, not just some faceless marketer working in a phonebank or basement somewhere.

Because, I'm totally cool with thanks for buying 15 cans of cat food at the same time, here's 50 cents off your next purchase for buying so damn much at once.

Posted by: C on February 20, 2007 09:39 AM

She did buy Coke Zero during that trip, but I'm also convinced that the register has access to your shopping profile.

Posted by: matt on February 20, 2007 10:01 AM

Well, there are a variety of ways to "get anonymous" with your Club Card. This one's probably most famous:
http://www.cockeyed.com/pranks/safeway/ultimate_shopper.html
(Was in Wired a few years ago.)

Posted by: bd on February 26, 2007 02:08 PM

i continue to use my mom's old landline # when i shop at safeway or albertson's, even though she hasn't had that number for years. no one's tracking me! except for how i pay with a CC or debit card...still totally getting tracked.

Posted by: michele on February 26, 2007 02:14 PM

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