DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF: But where did all this information come from? How did political parties and advocacy groups know whom to reach with what message? The answer to that question begins here. The Acxiom Corporation of Little Rock, Arkansas, is one of the biggest companies you’ve never heard of. Somewhere in these acres of blinking computers is carefully guarded data about you, not just your name, address and phone number, but probably also the catalogs you get, the cars you’ve bought, and maybe even what shoes you wear and whether you like dogs or cats. Acxiom’s information is culled from census data and tax records, those product surveys you answered and customer records supplied by corporations and credit card companies that are Acxiom clients. Acxiom sifts all this data to produce lists of target consumers for their clients.
PETER SWIRE: If you’re a company, a bank, a retailer, what you would do is say you want left-handed people of a certain ethnic group, and they’re going to be able to do a list for you. You can get marketing lists of Hispanics who make between $20,000 and $40,000 who are U.S. citizens. You can get marketing lists of people who suffer from incontinence and have bought those kinds of products in the pharmacy. You can get all sorts of things that can be very narrow.
DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF: Acxiom divides all consumers into one of 70 different types they call “lifestage segments,” encompassing everything from what hobbies you have to what products you buy, where you live to what you believe in. According to Acxiom, I am a “shooting star”: 36 to 45, married, wake up early and go for runs, watch Seinfeld reruns, travel abroad and no kids yet. We’re working on the kids part, but Acxiom probably already knows that. Their computers are programmed not only to figure out who we are now, but where we are going and when we will get there. What Acxiom is promising is nothing less than the solution to clutter: Send us ads only for products we really want, and anticipate just when we will want them.
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