Unisys Targets Just 20 Execs With Ad Campaign

Carl Bialik from WSJ writes, "Security company Unisys is taking niche marketing to a new level, aiming ads at about 20 top executives, delivering custom-covered issues of their Fortune magazine subscriptions, and even placing billboards where these individuals will be likely to see them, the Wall Street Journal reports." From the article: "If an executive flips over the mock Fortune cover, he or she will discover a letter — also individually tailored — from a senior Unisys manager describing challenges in the target's specific industry. The Fortune 'cover wraps' also offer personalized Web addresses, where the executives can find mock news videos that mention their names and tell how they achieved business success. To reinforce the message, Unisys is placing billboards and outdoor signs — albeit without information-chief portraits — close to the executives' offices. Some ads will even appear on video screens in the elevators of their office buildings."

Cool... or Creepy?

I'm torn as to whether this is cool or creepy. On the one hand, it sounds pretty cool because it's so individualized and personalized. On the other hand, if I was the target of this kind of marketing ploy, I might feel like I had a well-connected, well-financed stalker.

People talk about how advertising is becoming more invasive. It's everywhere. But what about when it knows who you are and maybe knows a little too much about you? Imagine a urinal that got your ID from your phone via bluetooth, analyzed your urine, and then said: "Hi, Bob. Noticed a high level of sodium in your urine. Ask your doctor about Gronkaflix XP. Better yet, I see that Doctor Finkelberg is your doctor of record. Say 'yes' if you'd like me to e-mail him the results of my analysis of your urine, Bob."

I don't know. While this Unisys campaign will impress some people as cool, it just makes me feel we're one step closer to nosy urinals.

- Greg

Here's a copy

Dear Friend,
 
I am the manager of UNISYS at the foreign remittance department.
 
In my department we discovered an abandoned sum of U.S$25M US dollars
(Twenty five Million US dollars) in an account that belongs to one of
our foreign customer who died along with his entire family in November 2002
in a plane crash.
 
Since we got information about his death, we have been expecting his next if
kin to come over and claim his money because we cannot release it unless
somebody applies for it as next of kin or relation to the deceased as
indicated in our banking guidlines and laws but unfortunately we learnt that
all his supposed next of kin or relation died alongside with him at the
plane crash leaving nobody behind for the claim.
 
It is therefore upon this discovery that I now decided to make this business
proposal to you so that the money will be released to you as the next
of kin or relation to the deceased for safety and subsequent disbursement
since nobody is coming for it and we don't want this money to go into the
bank treasury as unclaimed bill.
 
The banking law and guidline here stipulates that if such money
remained unclaimed after four years, the money will be transfered into the bank
treasury as unclaimed bill. The request of foreigner as next of kin in
this business is occassioned by the fact that the customer was a foreigner
and a Burkinabe cannot stand as next of kin to a foreigner.
 
I propose that 30% of this money will be for you as my foreign
partner, in respect to the provision of a foreign account, 10% will be set aside
for expenses incured during the business and 60% would be for me.
Thereafter I will visit your country for disbursement according to the percentages
indicated.
 
Therefore, to enable the immediate transfer of this fund to you as
arranged, you must apply first to the bank as relation or next of kin of the
deceased indicating your bank name, your bank account number, your private
telephone and fax number for easy and effective communication and location
wherein the money will be remitted.
 
Upon receipt of your reply, I will send to you by e-mail a text of the
application which you'll fill in and send to the bank's email address..
I will not fail to bring to your notice that this transaction is
hitch-free and that you should not entertain any atom of fear as all required
arrangements have been made for the transfer.
 
You should contact me immediately as soon as you receive this letter
for further clearifications.
 
Yours faithfully,
. DR HASHEEM HASEEMAPOOTOOLAH

Re:Cool... or Creepy?

While this "invasion of privacy" is a little unsettling, we're talking about 20 very high-profile people here, not John Q. public.

Also, everybody seems to be missing the other half of the story, namely how they targeted specifically this small group of people instead of wasting more money on a broader campaign. How much money did they save? How much more were they free to spend since they were targeting such a small group? How does the creativity angle work when you're targeting one guy instead of a large, poorly-defined wad?

The privacy angle here is a red herring. We should be talking about Advertising and marketing getting out of the 19th century.

whats next?

Oh wow...whats next? Toilet paper with ads for microsoft vista ?(that would be cool)

or possibly a toilet that tells you, when flushed, that crest (tm) toothpaste whitens your teeth?

And?

Is this supposed to be something new? The small/meduim sized company where I work sent out iPods with out logo etched on the back and a podcast on them to a few dozen execs in the industry. This was a year or two ago. This sort of targeted, small scale advertising was all the rage not that long ago.

Just for the execs?

If this was just for top buisness executives, why'd it get viewed by millions in this slash-vertisment? Obviously Unisys is advertising to all of us, albiet through a new and novel means.

Re:Just for the execs?

Not quite. This isn't a slashvertisement for Unisys. It's a slashvertisement for their new hip ultra-cool marketing firm (mentioned by name in TFA, but I'm not going to give them more notice here) who hope other corporate sales and marketing drones will say "hey, what a cool idea, I've gotta get me some of that hypermarketing stuff too!"

The next thing you know...

... sales execs who've actually done some homework on the dozen or so people in the entire universe likely to meaningfully purchase what they have to sell will be taking these guys on golf outings. I mean, how creepy is that? They'll probably even shake hands!

Re:The next thing you know...

What's creepy is the level of concentration of wealth, power and influence

What are you talking about? The guy with something to sell is representing products or services that are worth millions of dollars. He's not selling one single large diamond he inherited from his grandfather, The Duke. What he's selling is produced by hundreds or thousands of employees, all of whom in turn use products and services supplied by other people in the course of doing what they do. They all take home their paychecks and spend it on all sorts of other things.

Then you've got the guy he's selling to. Did you think we're talking about yachts, here, or gold-plated horse trailers? It's big-ticket IT stuff that is used to power entire business operations - upon which (at the scale we're talking about), hundreds or thousands of people will do their jobs and serve, in turn, their customers.

Just because the sales guy has a vested interest in persuading a higher-end decision maker to go one way versus another doesn't mean the decision is made in a vacuum. At that level, the decision maker is answerable to a board of directors, investors, and so on.

Like or not, large employers that do a lot of things for a lot of customers and staff use big-ticket things, like airplanes and server farms. Someone sells them, and someone decides which ones to buy. And it's rarely about just one technical dividing point or another - there's finances, support, legal issues, security reputations, and much more that figure into it. If you don't have the face time and easy relationship with someone who has to weigh all of that, you don't have a chance to convey everything you have to say.

The point of my comment is that this is the oldest story in the book, and just because some newer methods of getting a little attention and face time have evolved, the need for suppliers to woo purchasers hasn't changed one bit.

Salesmen?

If your target market is 20 individuals whom you all know by name, isn't it standard to do something like have your salesmen get in touch with them for a face-to-face discussion?

Admittedly, the personal letters are a step in this direction, but the main effect of advertising--on anyone--is simply to remind them the product exists. Convincing them to buy it falls more heavily on other forms of sales and marketing. Then again, sometimes experimental marketing produces unexpected results.

Re:Salesmen?

If your target market is 20 individuals whom you all know by name, isn't it standard to do something like have your salesmen get in touch with them for a face-to-face discussion?

If your salesmen can get their foot in the door to get an appointment to see one of such a rarified group of executives. I don't imagine they are people whose schedule is easy to get onto.

They're doing a pitch which says "see, we know exactly what your business needs are, and we have some offerings for you. Why not call us, and we'll tell you more."

I should think a personalized edition of Fortune magazine is going to catch your attention, and probably appeal to your vanity. It might have them calling you asking what you can really do for them, which probably makes the whole sales cycle a lot easier to do.

I suspect if they could close two deals (and probably a single one) from this, they would be sufficiently large to cover the costs of such a specialized marketing campaign. And, if nothing else, the other 18 or 19 have you fresh in their minds.

Cheers

Shades of... ?

Oh, great. Just fscking Great. This means we're only 20 years or less from the advertising crap seen in Minority Report [imdb.com]

...anyone got a pair of laser-proof eyeglasses I can borrow?

/P

billboards

Seems the ideas in the Minority Report (eg billboards targeted just to the person the advert is aimed at) are starting to have a basis in reality instead of just science fiction.

Unisys a security company

Since when is Unisys a security company? I know them as a computer manufacturer. Did I miss something, or are they trying to re-market themselves?

Two thoughts...

1) Since when is Unisys a "security company"?

2) Going to their website to look into #1, I not only see that is that their current persona, but also that the top headline in their News section is "FBI contracts with Unisys for combined DNA index system." So the guy worrying about being individually marketed to by his urinal may not be so far off.

May be good for execs

I think this would annoy or creep out the average person, whereas top level execs would probably love to hear how great they are from billboards or the mock videos.

Insecticide Unisys style

What happened to the old fashioned way of sending sales reps with blond bombshell "assistants" to get these 20 bozos and ply them with wine and fine food and golf outings and "business" trips to Cayman islands? Reminds me of a spoof ad for an insecticide:

User Guide to Unisys Mosquito Killer

1. Catch the mosquito and pluck its wings so it does not fly away.

2. Lay the mosquito on its back and tickle its feet.

3. When the moquito opens its mouth to laugh, dump the Unisys Mosquito Killer into its mouth.

Re:Insecticide Unisys style

What happened to the old fashioned way of sending sales reps with blond bombshell "assistants" to get these 20 bozos and ply them with wine and fine food and golf outings and "business" trips to Cayman islands?

I think, as someone else pointe out, that the issue is that, with so many companies competing for the attention of these execs and all offering blonde bombshells and trips to the Caymans, managing to get picked to be one of the companies supplying such things and hence getting contact with the execs, is rather hard. To get to that stage you first have to compete for their attention at all - and that's most likely what this campaign is about.

Ads in the building

>> Some ads will even appear on video screens in the elevators of their office buildings.

I wonder how much the IT guys at their companies pocketed to do that. ;p

(My company owns its own building, so the screens are internal. Having third party ads show up on them would mean somebody was on the take.)

If it sounds like something only a PHB would do...

... that's because Unisys is full of them.

I left Unisys recently and it was the wisest thing I ever did. Crazy shit like this and massive amounts of management yes men compared to technically skilled staff (hell, they even outsourced INTERNAL support to Bangalore..), it's not a company I would trust to secure my shoelaces, let alone my systems.

I'll dig ditches before I work for them again.

Unisys partners with HP on spying

When HP was spying on journalists, it was just a trial run for their new partnership with Unisys for spying on victims^H^H^H^H^H^H^H prospective customers.

Indeed, Unisys IS spying on these executives through a company named PHD (which suspiciously contains HP in its name)

"To guarantee the executives in question would see the billboards erected near their offices, field teams from PHD tried to figure out how they might commute to work. In some cases, such as around Citigroup's building on Lexington Avenue in New York, PHD staffers even scoped out local coffee shops and eateries to see where an executive might grab a sandwich, Mr. Von Kennel says."

Problem with targeting CEOs

I hope they didn't spend a lot of money stalking/targeting the CEO of HP. Might be a short campaign.

That'll teach them

Good.

Hopefully theese are the same executives that blindly give the ok to their marketing departments to harass me in every way possible trying to get me to buy crap I don't need or want.

Try listening to DC-area drive-time radio sometime

If you're in radio earshot of the capital beltway, you can always tell when some congressional committee or federal procurement process is closing in on a big contract decision. The local AM radio stations (and NPR sponsorship slots) will fill up with advertisements that can only be meant to influence about half a dozen people.

Re:Try listening to DC-area drive-time radio somet

If you're in radio earshot of the capital beltway...The local AM radio stations (and NPR sponsorship slots) will fill up with advertisements that can only be meant to influence about half a dozen people.

It worked with me, I love my new littoral combat ship. ;)

2nd

Wasn't this first?: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0853096/ [imdb.com]

Drawing the line

Where does advertising cross the line between informing someone of a product, and criminal harrassment?

      The measures outlined in the header seem a little extreme. Are they so sure that some of these execs simply won't cancel their magazine subscription - I mean after all if a magazine that is prepared to do this for a buck, how unbiased can the content be? Why can't this corporation contact the execs by the normal methods of telephone, sales reps, letters, etc. Why do they feel they have to bombard or "brainwash" their "targets". Are they thatinsecure about their information or product? Or are these executives so lacking of any critical thought that they will mindlessly concede before this abuse?

If it were Forbes ....

If it were Forbes Magazine, these execs would also be getting personalized :CueCats.

gif patents

When I think of UniSys I think of the submarine patent on gifs, and the "burn all gifs" campaign.

I suppose that there are worse companies to do business with...I could even hazard a guess at the names of a few. Still, UniSys isn't a company that *I* would choose to do business with unless there were not a decent alternative.

Unisys isn't a security company

They're a vanilla IT corporation. Is having the first word of the submission be inaccurate a first?

The Game

It sounds like something out of that film with Michael Douglas, "The Game".

Let me run Unisys for day...

Whoever did this ad campaign should be fired, dumped in the gutter, and blackballed from the industry. Why? Because a simple sales call would have accomplished the same thing for a tenth of a percent the cost.

Custom magazine from Reason in 2004

In 2004 Reason Magazine put the name and a satellite photo of the house of 40.000 of their subscribers.
http://www.reason.com/putting/ [reason.com]

It's a nice way of saying "We know where You live, and where Your kids go to school"

Wouldn't Want to Be Them

Wow. It sounds like these executives are really being assaulted by this advertising campaign. And I thought popup windows were annoying. Thank God I'm not the executive of a billion dollar corporation!

and in other news

Slashdot posts story that is only interesting to 20 people.

Moving right along...

that's not targeted

Ads, thats the ONLY 5 people LEFT on the planet that DO NOT HATE UNISYS, and have not had a crappy experience using their HARDWARE and heinously restrictive software and support.

Unisys is still around?

I thought they would have lost their raison d'etre by now after their GIF patent-thingy expired.

Security Company?

So they're a security company? Are they, perchance, offering information security? Something along the lines of: "If you worked with us, your personally-identifying information wouldn't be out there for every Tom, Dick and Adman to find and exploit"???

Memos, anyone?

It's obvious to them, and anyone, that it's targeted to them, so the fact it's on a magazine, should carry no more weight than a simple office memo, but far more expensive and time consuming to produce. Are their executives really that stupid and impressionable from a print ad??

Stupidist idea I've seen in awhile. Hard to believe Unisys is still dominating the computing industry, despite these brilliant ideas. Oh, wait...

Surprised?

Around 20 high-ranking executives at corporations such as Subaru of America, DHL, Citigroup and Northwest Airlines will get a surprise when Fortune magazine arrives on their desks this week. Each will find his or her own face gracing the cover.

Actually, I doubt they will be surprised since it has already been reported in the Wall Street Journal.

Unisis targeted execs 30 years ago

Back in the early 70s I worked for Burroughs supporting their largest mainframes. Burroughs later merged with Sperry to form Unisys. We had an account manager who needed to get the attention of the executives in charge of all the regional IBM systems. In those days the safe choice was IBM, but the other smaller vendors each had much better products. They simply couldn't exist in that environment If they weren't superior to IBM. it was well known that "no one got fired for choosing IBM." So, one day he sent each of these executives a baby pacifier to remind them of the security blanket they were hiding behind.

Well, I for one think this puts an end...

to the market share myth.

old news

sneaker companies were taking out rival billboards in Akron Ohio where I used to live when Lebron James was still in high school. The target audience was one, Lebron James. The message was basically please sign with us.

It's targeting more than 20 people

They are targeting more than twenty people. They are targeting twenty people and all the people who are going to pester them because SOME of the targeted advertising will be seen by their superiors. The fact that a company has one of the twenty targets should be enough to generate a buzz that requires attention to be paid to the ads.

It's a clever way of forcing you to pay attention to the sales pitch. I've had salesmen decide the best way to get through to me was to go over my head to my boss. It's too heavy handed and has never worked. This may be a better way of going over someone's head.

Good press indeed

Perhaps by reducing the number of people who see its name in print, Unisys will lower the chances of someone being reminded of "LZW" and "patent troll." This is a good thing for their corporate image. Plus, how many of today's CIOs would remember the GIF fiasco from a decade ago?

is there invasion of privacy, here?

Are Fortune's subscriber lists open to any buyer?
How did Unisys know these people even had Fortune subscriptions?

Sure, it starts small. But I don't like where it might be going...