Christopher S. Penn – Marketing AI Keynote Speaker

What is Podshow doing with your kids?

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Christopher S Penn

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This is a serious question. After hearing their promos for the Suck Less program, which appears to be listener demographics, I decided, what the heck, I’ll fill out the survey just for fun. So far, standard stuff – where do you live, what do you do for work, how much money do you make, all things you’d want to do to target marketing to someone. Then we get to the odd questions:

  • Are you of Spanish/Hispanic/Latino origin?
  • Please indicate your racial/ethnic background (select one or more)
  • How many children do you have: [insert number]
  • Please enter the following information for each of your children:
  • Child #1 Year of birth: [input] This child lives with me [ ]
  • How many children live with you other than the above:
  • Child #1 Year of birth: [input]

A couple of things. Why not put Hispanic/Latino in the racial background instead of splitting it out? Probably just survey design.

But this is the big one: Why do you need to know the date of a survey respondents’ childrens birth, and why do you need to know whether they live with you or not?

If I were a parent, that’s not information I’d willingly divulge to even casual acquaintances, mainly for security reasons. God knows the headlines are full of stories about kids being abducted. Certainly, it’s not information that a security-minded parent would want to divulge on a faceless survey (privacy policy be damned), especially after being asked where you live.

Even stranger, if I had kids living with me who were not mine, as a responsible custodian, why would I reveal both their presence AND their age?

What -is- Podshow doing with this information, and who gets access to it?

Inquiring minds want to know.

Updated: Download a printout of the survey here.

Comments

8 responses to “What is Podshow doing with your kids?”

  1. Zack "The Mothman" Daggy Avatar
    Zack “The Mothman” Daggy

    It’s probably to find out if adds targeted to parents are relevant. Adds for diapers, baby food, etc.

    Reply
  2. Zack "The Mothman" Daggy Avatar
    Zack “The Mothman” Daggy

    It’s probably to find out if adds targeted to parents are relevant. Adds for diapers, baby food, etc.

    Reply
  3. Nico Avatar
    Nico

    Spltting one racial/ethnic background sounds not only weird but even offensive.

    Reply
  4. Nico Avatar
    Nico

    Spltting one racial/ethnic background sounds not only weird but even offensive.

    Reply
  5. Steve Avatar
    Steve

    Yeah, that kind of skeeved me out also. I just put down 0 kids for it, because I wasn’t particularly comfortable divulging that information either.

    I understand (though it took some explaining from Jersey Todd and Jen from Bucket) that they need the mailing information to send you prizes, and I guess that’s OK. But that really needs to have a big wall between that and the survey information.

    A bigger question, though, is demographic information really useful at all? You might get geographic information if you’re mailing stuff to people, but I can’t once remember an instance where I put anything other that “Less than 25,000″ or “250,000 or more” on any survey I’ve taken. So if everyone lies on the demographic information, doesn’t that invalidate it?

    Reply
  6. Steve Avatar
    Steve

    Yeah, that kind of skeeved me out also. I just put down 0 kids for it, because I wasn’t particularly comfortable divulging that information either.

    I understand (though it took some explaining from Jersey Todd and Jen from Bucket) that they need the mailing information to send you prizes, and I guess that’s OK. But that really needs to have a big wall between that and the survey information.

    A bigger question, though, is demographic information really useful at all? You might get geographic information if you’re mailing stuff to people, but I can’t once remember an instance where I put anything other that “Less than 25,000″ or “250,000 or more” on any survey I’ve taken. So if everyone lies on the demographic information, doesn’t that invalidate it?

    Reply
  7. Bryce Moore Avatar
    Bryce Moore

    Podshow better be careful, lest they have a civil-rights complaint lodged against them for this. If this was a job application, there would be screaming from the rooftops for melding personally identifying information to any question on race.

    The rest of it is just… scary. Privacy policies be damned — they can and are changed at a whim to suit the needs of the company, with pretty much no recourse for information gathered before the changes.

    There are advertisers and sales slugs out there that would drool all over themselves to the point of needing a mop to have this much marketing information tied to a physical address.

    What’s scarier than the questions asked here is the fact that most people WILL give away this information for that infinitesimally small chance to win a trinket of some kind.

    Reply
  8. Bryce Moore Avatar
    Bryce Moore

    Podshow better be careful, lest they have a civil-rights complaint lodged against them for this. If this was a job application, there would be screaming from the rooftops for melding personally identifying information to any question on race.

    The rest of it is just… scary. Privacy policies be damned — they can and are changed at a whim to suit the needs of the company, with pretty much no recourse for information gathered before the changes.

    There are advertisers and sales slugs out there that would drool all over themselves to the point of needing a mop to have this much marketing information tied to a physical address.

    What’s scarier than the questions asked here is the fact that most people WILL give away this information for that infinitesimally small chance to win a trinket of some kind.

    Reply

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