Habeas Data

Acxiom: the company that knows if you own a cat or if you're right-handed - Telegraph

Acxiom: the company that knows if you own a cat or if you're right-handed
Somewhere in Little Rock, Arkansas, there is a database holding 750bn pieces of information on you, me and everyone we know.


By Rowena Mason
Last Updated: 8:19AM BST 28 Apr 2009
John Meyer
John Meyer says data gathering and marketing services company Acxiom is the biggest company you've never heard of Photo: AP

John Meyer is the man in charge of these sensitive details in one of the world's largest consumer information databases: approximately 1,500 facts about half a billion people worldwide.

Surely I can't be on there. I have nothing to do with Acxiom, a little-known, US-listed $700m (£500m) data gathering and marketing services company.


"Oh we do have you on our database. I guarantee you," Mr Meyer assures me. "Your name address, phone number. You have a cat. You're right handed. That sort of thing." This is true. I'm not sure if it's a lucky guess, but I'm impressed.

Mr Meyer, a brash, confident chief executive, explains that while the company has been nervous of promoting its activities in the past, he has no fear of a higher profile.

"We're the biggest company you've never heard of," he grins, with a hint of Southern drawl. "In the past we were afraid of people knowing us, but I'm trying to get business awareness and if consumers have privacy concerns I want to know."

All information on the database has been given away freely by the consumer through anything from registering for services online, to questionnaires or buying magazine subscriptions, Mr Meyer claims.

This is how Acxiom, which had a turnover of $1.38bn last year, is able to supply clients with a list of female skiing fans from Georgia, or right-handed women from Leeds.

It is also the largest player in the credit card market checking customer loan history and it can confirm whether CVs tally with job histories for employers. With a 12pc market share, its nearest competitors are therefore not market researchers like TNS and Nielsen, but information businesses Experian and Epsilon.

Mr Meyer took on the job a year ago after spending 18 months commuting from Paris to his home in Texas as head of global services for technology company Alcatel- Lucent. Under his leadership, the smooth marketeer has rebranded Acxiom as a "global integrated marketing services" company, compiling databases to conduct marketing for clients from Gap to General Motors.

"Not spam," Meyer says emphatically, wagging his finger at me. "People bristle first and then we characterise what we do as limiting junk mail, not sending you junk mail. For spammers, you're just an active email address, period. It's not how to market if you don't want to be hated."

To help soften the anonymity of cold contact, the company makes sure that the marketer at the other end of the phone or email is as close in age, class, gender and interests as possible to the consumer.

One newer use for consumer information is verifying that online exam candidates are the right student by asking four personal questions, such as: where was your father born? What breed of dog do you own? "If you answer them correctly, statistically, you are who you are," Mr Meyer says with certainty.

Smoothing down his bright yellow tie, he tells me of another technology on the cusp of becoming a highly desirable tool: location marketing

"When I walk by a Starbucks, I could get an ad for coffee to my phone," he tells me. "But most of the phone companies thought: 'That's going to scare the consumer. Now they physically know where I am, everywhere I am'." But Acxiom has developed a cunning way of using location-based marketing in public places.

"We did an opportunity with a casino, that wanted to develop a relationship with their big gamers."

When the punter checks in, many give out their mobile numbers to get messages about special offers.

"They have a private network inside the casino, so when you're leaving the casino they're giving you a special offer to bring you back in."

But isn't that still a form of tracking movement that some people could find slightly creepy?

"You as a consumer benefits. The casino benefits," Mr Meyer explains. "But it will be limited to individual forums. It's because of that fear. Are you being tracked?"

He is keen to distance the business from Phorm, the targeted advertising company that has been fiercely criticised for taking data from people online to store anonymously. Acxiom, Mr Meyer says, has a dedicated privacy officer and spends time consulting with consumer watchdogs before launching new products.

But Mr Meyer believes the future of direct marketing is in high-tech data services, predicting that the company's next acquisition will be technology related to interactive television or the internet.

It has recently conducted three pilots into the uses for product placement on US television, where the consumer can select a product, request details and buy it.

People will soon think of these forms of marketing based on information gleaned from a variety of sources as a natural, Mr Meyer argues, especially as the current tech-savvy generation grows up.

"You're using Facebook to say all kind of things that you wouldn't say in public," he says. "My grandmother thought that the phone was an intrusion into her life. Why would this person call rather than knock on the door? Now we just accept it."

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