In an interesting marketing play, Instagram on Thursday (Dec. 12) announced that it would offer a new service—to be called Instagram Direct—where its users could send messages and images to small subsets of their friends and families. At the news conference, Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom tied the rollout to the holiday, saying "As we as we enter into the holidays, it's a perfect time to be able to share with a small group or someone you love." That's true, as long as the someone you love includes marketers who will getting quite a Santa sack full of personal information about you and your friends.
The dirty not-so-secret secret with all of these social programs is it's always been about how much data can be collected from consumers, to be turned around and used to send increasingly personalized sales pitches. (Kind of gives Secret Santa a whole new meaning.) The two motherloads of shopping data are not-coincidentally both involved in this Instagram deal: photographs (and their associated metadata) and relationship connections. Why relationship connections? If you're a consumer goods manufacturer (think Toyota, Nike, Nabisco, Sony), a retailer (think Walmart, Macy's, Target, Amazon) or a marketing firm (think Genghis Kahn, Idi Amin, Mussolini), how much is it worth to you to know which consumers are close friends or close relatives with other specific consumers? As a major gift-giving occasion comes up for the first consumer, how would you like to be able to send highly-customized pitches to those people who are close friends/relatives of that consumer?Read more...