This blew my mind–and not in a good way.
“In the creepy brave new world of marketing, a woman who logs onto Facebook during her fertile phase can expect to be barraged by ads for new consumer products that are absent on non-fertile days. It is not happening yet, but it is technically possible and it is hard to see who has the power to stop it.”
Aldous Huxley? Meet Don Draper.
Image via Shutterstock. Used with permission.
Dr. Nigel Barber, an evolutionary psychologist who writes at Psychology Today describes new research that shows how and why advertisers could access and use a woman’s fertility signs (via health monitoring apps) to developed fertility cycle-based targeted marketing campaigns. Here’s an excerpt from Dr. Barber’s piece…
“…University of Texas marketing researchers Kristina Durante and Ashley Rae Arsena found that women are also flightier in respect to choices of a variety of consumer products from candy bars or lipstick colors to high-heeled shoes. They opt to try 15 to 20 percent more products when fertile(link is external) compared to the low-fertility phase of the cycle.
This is not a huge difference, but it might help a new consumer brand for women to get an edge against established brands. From a marketing perspective, the fertile phase of the cycle is a time not just to introduce new products but to offer women premium brands at a time when they are most likely to trade up. Hence, the buzz amongst marketers.
We are accustomed to being tracked on the Internet by scores of companies who collect our data. Now these big-data operations are trying to link our online keystrokes with what is happening inside our bodies.
How is this even possible? One source of vulnerability is the growing popularity of wearables, such as physical activity monitors and smart watches that connect to the Internet. Some of these devices automatically record health data, such as pulse rate and temperature. As users of the “rhythm” method of birth control know, temperature rises during ovulation, giving the marketers one good clue to a woman’s reproductive condition. Some women volunteer information about their reproductive condition by using cell phone apps that track their menstrual cycle.
In the creepy brave new world of marketing, a woman who logs onto Facebook during her fertile phase can expect to be barraged by ads for new consumer products that are absent on non-fertile days. It is not happening yet, but it is technically possible and it is hard to see who has the power to stop it.“ READ THE REST OF THE ARTICLE HERE.
UPDATE: POPCAK NOTE: People are writing to take me to task for referring to NFP as the “rhythm method” I DID NOT WRITE THIS ARTICLE. It says so in the bolded section above. This is an excerpt from a larger article by Dr. Nigel Barber at Psychology Today. I didn’t call it the rhythm method. He did. I too look forward to the day that secular writers don’t confuse the two.