Why My Husband Hates Predictive Modeling
My husband hates my work. This is a conundrum, for me and for him. How does a married couple deal with a situation like this? Well, what we do is: we don’t talk about it at home. That’s how marriages survive.
But it does make me wonder.
Here’s his objection to what I do. I am a database marketer. I believe it’s a good thing for marketers to understand as much as they can about their prospects and customers, and then use that information to craft targeted messages that are maximally relevant and appealing to the recipient. In order to do that on any scale—other than through face-to-face selling—I need data. I need to analyze the data, to select the best prospects, and get the message right.
But Jim objects to that. He’s a civil libertarian. Direct marketing makes him nervous. It’s not simply that he hates being telephoned during dinner—who doesn’t. It’s that he is deeply suspicious of the entire notion of collecting information about individuals, and using it for marketing purposes. Uh, oh. That’s pretty much what I do.
And the Internet has made him even more suspicious. He regularly erases the cookie files from his browser, even though that denies him the convenience of 1-click shopping at Amazon. Go figure.
Me, I love 1-click ordering. I am an admirer of Amazon’s clever use of collaborative filtering to make book recommendations customized to me—I’ve bought scores of books that way. If I could, I would have my credit card on file with all the companies I buy from regularly. I enjoy the convenience. I trust the merchants. But they won’t keep the card on file, thanks to fear of complaints from people like you-know-who.
During 20 years of marriage, Jim and I have done pretty well managing our differences on this subject. But recently they’ve been exacerbated by the September 11 disaster. Now more than ever we’re avoiding any discussion of my work. It’s the controversy over racial profiling that’s done it, beginning with the troubles experienced by the New Jersey State Police over the last couple of years, and penetrating the national consciousness with the FBI’s decision to interview 5000 Middle Eastern males.
Now, I’ll tell you: I get nervous about this stuff myself. I too am suspicious when citizens are targeted for police attention based on their race, ethnicity, gender, national origin, religion—any of the freedoms guaranteed by the Bill of Rights, guarantees that we hold dear to our American values and sense of fairness.
But here’s the problem. Profiling works. It works for marketers and it works for law enforcement. Look at Compstat, the program used in a number of cities that computerized crime statistics by precinct. After analyzing the patterns, the police were able to direct resources more efficiently by patrolling areas and time periods based on predicted levels of criminal activity. Crime dropped. Bingo. A great profiling application.
But here’s another example: Retail banks used to deny mortgages and select branch locations based on neighborhood, a practice known as “redlining.” Clearly, redlining was based on statistical profiling, and banks felt it was their right to make business decisions based on profitability projections among customer groups.
But the practice was viewed as economic discrimination, and found abhorrent. It has been successfully challenged under the Fair Housing Act, and banks were forced to revise their policies. We, as a society, decided that even in the face of predictable bad debt it was more important to us to provide equal access to banking services in our neighborhoods.
So we now have some examples of profiling that has been used for purposes we won’t tolerate as a society. What troubles me here is the emerging notion that all profiling is thus bad, un-American, abhorrent.
Consider this example: I remember an eye-opening incident from my days at Book-of-the-Month Club years ago. We were in discussions with the American Association of Retired Persons. Our objective was to gain access to their multi-million-name file to sell book club memberships. They in turn were looking for offers from clubs like ours that could be positioned as special member benefit. A classic win-win. What an opportunity! Our mouths watered. Until the AARP folks told us we had to make the same offer to everyone in their file. No segmentation, no modeling. A benefit for one member must be a benefit for all. Huh? We slunk away, incredulous. “They don’t get it,” was all we could say.
Well, my husband doesn’t get it either. Much of America doesn’t get it. And when legitimate concerns about civil liberties are associated in people’s minds with standard direct marketing practices, where does that leave us? In trouble.
It’s in our best interest to make sure they do get it. We have done a rotten job at explaining ourselves. If I can’t even explain it at home, to someone who essentially loves and trusts me to be a good person, how can I explain it in public, when I am just as likely to be seen as a spammer, a junk mailer, an intruder during dinner? We direct marketers have to get busy on the public relations front. Profiling works.