The Corporate Gaze And The New Aesthetic
A great piece, and timely to read after writing my notes on targeting yesterday.
It crystallises an issue with targeting (and “big data”). Predictive analytics, targeting etc aren’t trying to sell things to you. They’re building a version of you from the available information and taking the decisions that would sell something to that. Their effectiveness depends on how close their data homunculus is to you.
This is why the metaphor of the ‘uncanny valley of marketing’, which I nicked from Russell Davies, feels right. When you see crap gmail ads, Klout recommendations, terrible Twitter recommendations etc. you are in fact glimpsing an artificial version of you, the you as seen by the “corporate gaze”. Repulsion and laughter are quite appropriate reactions.
