Invasive Marketing?

We all know the implications of an increase in seemingly tailored marketing. Advertisements are geared toward consumer interests and the prevalence of smart phones make shoppers sitting ducks for marketing sharp-shooters. Rob Martin, the principle and managing director (or "strategist") at MM2 Public Relations, identified two main factors as to why the consumer-marketer relationship has become more of a two-way communication model resembling a typical teenager-parent relationship:

1. The shift in media influence (from print to radio to TV to internet to smart phones)

2. Consumer interactivity (consumers are dictating the way things are going)

Integrated marketing, or the combination of PR, marketing and advertising, utilizes mediums to reach its audiences. Depending on the primary target, these ways of reaching people can vary. However, according to Martin, 1/3 of Americans own smart phones and 40% of non-wners want to buy them in the near future. "The smartphone has changed everything and this be the most influential medium there is," he said, "the smartphone is becoming the water-cooler of the future."

So now that we have the ability to personalize messages sent to consumers and track them down in a mall to alert them that there is a sale taking place in a store near their location that they visit "x" number of times  and purchase an average of "x" items from its online store per month, how personal is too personal? When does integrated marketing become invasive marketing?

When creepiness outweighs convenience and individual privacy is at risk, companies must be considering just how much permission they have to essentially stalk consumers. Daily email and catalog deliveries have evolved into direct conversation through Facebook and Twitter or push notifications of special offers as well as which of your friends have purchased the same item. Community seems to have gone digital. Communicating face to face with others appears to be a part of the past while many rely on social  interactions with strangers on the internet. At some point in the near future there must be a digression from this intensely invasive strategy during which companies and their integrated marketing teams must reevaluate principles of privacy.