Free Tip for Cooking-Lager Marketers
Published February 6th, 2007, 12:22am in Marketing.Next time you spend $30 million setting up your own private YouTube and securing 5,000 words of rhythmic, measured praise in The New York Times Sunday Magazine, DON’T kill all the hype on Monday with a PATRIOT Act-compliant registration process that demands the real names, locations and birthdates of curious visitors so that they can be verified against United States drivers’ license records. It completely freaks people out.
Nobody should have to provide personal information just to access an entertainment site. But then again, Bud.tv is more than that — it’s an alcohol site as well, and with that come certain restrictions. In a sense, the Aristotle Integrity system is like being carded at a bar. It keeps minors out, and I’d bet Anheiser-Busch is under obligation to do just that. (Tho’ carding on the internet has different implications, I know. You can usually count on the meathead watching a club door to forget you ever existed.)
But my point is this: If you read think d2c’s post about this, which you’ve linked to, you’ll see that Aristotle does provide ‘PATRIOT Act-compliant registration,’ but it also provides ‘compliance with age verification laws.’ I think that speaks more to Bud.tv’s intentions, so you might be taking things just a tad bit out of context.
Here’s the full text from Aristotle via think d2c:
“Integrity is an international fraud prevention, age and identity verification service that integrates a government-issued ID database check, algorithms and web-based signature capture. The service provides merchants and government agencies with Patriot Act compliance and compliance with age verification laws and guidelines.”
Not everyone surfing the net is a mature adult, and I can only imagine the backlash AB would have gotten if their new content went up without age restrictions. To them, this was probably the most foolproof way of doing it.
I admit, I did enter my info so I could see what Bud.tv had to offer. And after this article (http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,72515-0.html) I was definitely reluctant to do so. But what’s the solution?
I understand Anheuser-Busch doesn’t want to be accused of marketing to underage drinkers, but I’ve never seen an alcohol marketer so completely destroy their own campaign’s viral potential from the get-go. Have you ever seen a beer site (or any website) that checks public records before you can access it? Guinness asks a few questions on their opening page but they include a “Find out why we ask these questions” link. Yes, this age verification is easily thwarted, but that’s how things work on the internet, and all the marketing money in the world isn’t going to change that.
If Anheuser-Busch was forced to go stringent on the age verification by public interest groups, they could have at least found a way to spin it effectively. Make it seem elite or a privilege to watch monkey videos on Bud TV. Implement a mysterious invite system. People give up their information to sites they trust all the time, but they don’t give it away to every visionary beer-selling experiment that comes along.
Now, see, that’s a good post. Well said.
Thanks for checking out my site. I just wrote a little piece on my company’s blog about some of these issues. At some point web identity is going to need to be solved but its probably going to be at a deeper level.
What do you mean by ‘deeper level,’ Daniel? Can you explain?
Oh, and I RSS subbed to your THINKblog. Looks like some good reading. Thanks.
I think he means the notion of building an “identity layer” into the internet (aka identity 2.0). Lawrence Lessig had a good metaphor. Using a universal identification system would be like a driver’s license. Not mandatory, but it’d be damn hard to go anywhere without it. Here’s the relevant chapter from Code 2.0 (currently reading: long and full of snoozy legal-type stuff, but around interesting web-type stuff so worth it).
Lauren is right, identity needs to be solved at a more fundamental level than just whatever individual websites decide they need. Its old, but this is an excellent presentation by Dick Hardt on Identity 2.0. No snoozy there!
Thanks for the RSS add. I don’t do much original commentary but I do try and clip stories on a regular basis.