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Corey was a bit freaked. He received a box in the mail containing a razor and shaving cream. The box said, “Happy Birthday, from Gillette.” Whiskey tango foxtrot?
Corey has bought a few Gillette products in the past, but he really can’t remember filling out an a form providing them with this information.
The Consumerist had a pretty good idea of how, but decided to send his question in through Gillette’s website to see what they would say.
We sent his in his question through Gillette’s website.
What they had to say for themselves, inside.
October 6, 2006
Dear Mr. Popken,
Thank you for contacting The Gillette Company.
We are always concerned when a complaint is received and appreciate your bringing the matter to our attention. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. We have an outside source that provides us with this information.
Again, thank you for taking the time to contact us. Please let us know if you have any additional questions or comments.
Mai X.
Consumer Service Associate
010823372A
“We have an outside source that provides us with this information.” — This seems to confirm our suspicions: Gillette knows you bought products from them. They bought your date of birth from a third-party information broker. Gillette combined the two and sent you a birthday surprise.
While odd, Gillette is within its legal rights to do so, as they have a pre-existing business relationship with you.
Hey, it’s a free razor. Just make sure the paranoia doesn’t affect the steadiness of your hand.
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I’ve gotten several of these, from Gillette and Schick, related to my birthday and just randomly. It all started, in my estimation, around the time of the war in the number of blades. They give you the razor and a blade or two free, but the real reason they do it is to get you hooked into buying the high-margin blades.
I also started getting products from them after registering for the Selective Service.
I got a Gillette on my 18th birthday too.
For some reason Parliament cigarettes constantly send my often useful items. I can’t figure it out. I haven’t smoked for 10 years and when I did it was never Parliaments. Yet I get something new from them every 3-4 months. T-shirt, waterproof cases (presumably for cigarettes), pens, calendars.
Yep, they sent me a Mach 3 and some blades for my 18th too (6 years ago). Brilliant marketing strategy, that; I ended up buying their blades for about 4 years until I bought an electric.
Hey, I want a gift too.
Freaky or not, who cares, give me the free stuff.
THAT HAPPENED TO ME TOO!!!!!! around my 18th birthday 2 years ago…. it was weird… but i was happy that i got free stuff!
Someone told me that Gilette does animal testing so I don’t use their products.
They probably bought their data from a commercial data provider.
I got two Mach 3 Turbos from Gillette in the mail for my 18th birthday. One was addressed to William Griffin, and the other one to Paul Griffin. My name is William Paul Griffin (but I go by Paul).
I am confident my school sold address lists to advertising companies because I frequently received school-related junk mail in pieces of two, one addressed to William, and one addressed to Paul.
I guess it gets a hair stranger because I had other friends in high school who never received a Gillette razor for their 18th, yet I know I had never purchased a Gillette razor prior to that point.
I still haven’t opened the second box, but I am using the Mach 3 Power.
I to got one of those for my 18th birthday.
Which was two years ago, Nice to see that they are keeping with their tradition
Same thing here – free razor on my 18th (15 years ago; oh god I’m old now). It was definitely from Selective Service data.
The only thing I got in the mail after registering with the SS was draft notice…
A worse-case situation happened to my wife & I recently. We received a flurry of mail ads for a local private K8 school. The problem is that we have no children.
My first reaction was “how did I get on this list?” Then it occurred to me that this is a familiar experience for parents who receive complimentary baby formula and diapers in the mail after giving birth.
It was almost exactly 5 years before that we had gone through an extensive (1AI,3IVF), expensive (>$100K) and ultimately failed series of IVF treatments to try to have a child. We eventually discoverd that we would never be able to have any children together.
Apparently some element of our treatment got sold and this school bought it and extrapolated the presumed age of a prospective school customer. Needless to say dredging up this low point in our lives did nothing to engendered warm feelings for this school let alone create a potential customer or endorser.
I actually heard they get this information from hospital birth records when newborns arrive, which would explain how they know it’s your 18th birthday and they could possibly send it to your original address when you were born, but it still seems a bit unlikely to me though. The reason that it is plausible is because I believe Gerber has been doing marketing like this sending free baby formula samples and stuff to new parents.
I’m about as equally skeptical of selective service selling any information though. Not that they wouldn’t benefit from selling the information, I would just imagine that as being a liability in the long-term when they give access to someone’s information and have some sort of stalker incident or something.
They’ve been doing this before most data mining even came into existence. I heard once, I think it was in a marketing class in college, that they actually get this from birth records since they are public domain I believe and then match those with an address. 18 years later, razor sent. Only hole in this is if people move. I know I got a razor on my 18th birthday and I was still in the original residence from when I was born so I can’t tell from personal experience, but the method is sound because I’m pretty sure Gerber does the same thing with new parents and sending them samples of baby formula and so on even when the parents seemingly never signed up for anything or gave their name out.
Now thats a bit scary! Gillete is owned by Braun which is a german company. Germany who opposes everything we do to protect our nation has full access to the peraonal info of all potential draftees!!! pardon me while i line my head with aluminum foil to keep “them” from eves dropping on my thoughts
I received one for my 18th birthday too! My initial reaction was cool, got a free razor. Fast forward 10+ years, I look back and now I feel a bit violated. I would think a person information that’s under the age of 18 would be off limits. Their marketing did work as I still use Gillette products to this day.
Yep, consumer tracking at its finest. I recently did a report on this kind of thing. Reader, remember: the following info is dated as of January 2012. It has likely gotten worse by the time you read it.
Most iPhone apps gather and send information off phones to be used by marketing services. This includes everything from Pandora to Angry Birds. Some of the time, that’s your location data, other times it’s info gathered through accessing your various accounts, and occasionally the info they send is guessed at based on your Internet-use records or other phone-use information. Companies sell that data to advertisers and match it with online accounts and IP addresses to customize your advertisements, and apparently, real-world gift giving.
Facebook is notorious for tracking its users through “like” buttons and other social media. Facebook users needn’t even click on the “like” button in order to be tracked; hosting a tracking cookie on your computer is enough. Speaking of cookies, tracking software, specifically the variety called a beacon, can be used to record everything you type on a site.
What probably happened in these particular birthday situations was this:
1.) Gilette’s “third-party source,” was capable of matching disparate information like names and addresses through IP Addresses and social-media accounts, or else;
2.) It purchased such information from other online account services, which could have included Facebook, Apple, Adobe, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, or especially the Selective Service. Otherwise, the source;
3.) May have used “scraped” data, which means that the source probably hired a somewhat low-profile firm to set up an account with a social media site and gather freely accessible data from your public profile. It also may have;
4.) Used those iPhone apps I mentioned, or any other part of the iAds Network.
Do not be fooled into believing that you must be highly internet-active to become a cog in the system. I have a private Facebook page, with little personal data, and have never once purchased a Gilette product or anything else online. If just once you have put personal info on an Internet-enabled computer, let alone published it online, you may consider said info to be perfectly public.
Since Gilette would be foolish not to manage the public relations info of its products and methodology, this post and, frankly, entire blog, will probably be viewed by a company on official Gilette business. If you are that reader, I say this: Thank you very much for your gift, it will prove most useful. Do not, however, believe that I will either be fooled into purchasing more of your products because of your benevolence, or scared away from purchasing your products because of your methodology.
To the by-now-paranoid readers out there, remember: they want your money legally, not by force. They want to convince you to buy stuff from them, and if they know that if they scare away your business, they won’t get any of it. Good merchants, from the High Middle Ages of Europe to the Ming Dynasty of China, have always had a talent for finding out the things people desire. This is a marketing gimmick, nothing more. (And an unusually useful one at that.)
For further reading, check out “What They Know” on the Wall Street Journal’s website (no, I’m not affiliated with them: I’d have too moderate a stance on economic issues for that) A Google search for “tracking beacons,” “consumer tracking,” or “targeted advertisements,” would be well worthwhile, as would “iPhone Apps Send Location Data.”