The developer of oh-my-zsh did something like this when a coworker bought me one of their branded mugs. It's very odd to get as a customer. Not bad, just not expected.
I sent over 10k personal thank you videos to my customers
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Re: I sent over 10k personal thank you videos to my customers
#32This seems at least a little unethical. At the very least, I would think worse of a company that sent a video to me that seemed personalized, but later turned out to be mass-produced. He has an ethics section in the article, but doesn't doesn't go very deep and (unsurprisingly) concludes that his own actions were perfectly fine. The root of the problem is why customers respond well to these videos: they're surprised…
Devils advocate on
Since all advertising is the practice of psychological manipulation how is this particularly different? Is all advertising unethical?
Even if the process is automated, if the end result is to evoke a nice sentiment in someone, is that really a bad thing? Wouldn't the ethics really come into play in using such tech to rip people off in a variety of ways rather than to merely say thank you for your purchase?
Devils advocate off
I think there's a strong argument to be made that the efficacy of this approach is more tied to the visual senses and novelty of it. It's not just the personalization since as you've pointed out it's no different than a personalized email.
Ultimately it's just a tool, and how people choose to use those tools is all that really matters.
A friend of mine ran a ecommerce company where for years they would physically record at least a couple hundred personalized thank you videos for people each day. While they were quite successful and people really dug them, I can tell you for a fact that such messages may as well have been automated because there's very little you actually know about your customers beyond their purchase/purchase history that you can truly personalize your message to them with.
Re: I sent over 10k personal thank you videos to my customers
#33I genuinely cannot believe someone wrote this entire article about how efficiently they lied to 10,000 people without having a single second of self awareness. The only thing I can think of is that Windsor is paying them for promotion, but of course that still doesn't explain it.
"Is this genuine? Of course, it's just as genuine as if I had a clone replace me in all personal interactions so I could get on with stuff I actually care about." How is this not a parody?
Edit: From another comment, he's an investor (https://angel.co/company/windsor-2/funding). Must have slipped his mind when he was writing the "Ethics" section.
Re: I sent over 10k personal thank you videos to my customers
#34So this is basically an ad for https://www.windsor.io/ , I guess. Wonder what sort of deal they worked out? Shame it leaves such a sense of disgust in most people here, to judge by the comments so far. They may have picked the wrong crowd.
https://angel.co/company/windsor-2/funding
He's an investor.
Re: I sent over 10k personal thank you videos to my customers
#35This seems at least a little unethical. At the very least, I would think worse of a company that sent a video to me that seemed personalized, but later turned out to be mass-produced. He has an ethics section in the article, but doesn't doesn't go very deep and (unsurprisingly) concludes that his own actions were perfectly fine. The root of the problem is why customers respond well to these videos: they're surprised…
Devils advocate on Since all advertising is the practice of psychological manipulation how is this particularly different? Is all advertising unethical? Even if the process is automated, if the end result is to evoke a nice sentiment in someone, is that really a bad thing? Wouldn't the ethics really come into play in using such tech to rip people off in a variety of ways rather than to merely say thank you for your p…
> Even if the process is automated, if the end result is to evoke a nice sentiment in someone, is that really a bad thing?
Yes, because it only evokes a nice sentiment if you lie about how it was made. Magic tricks are still fun even if you know they're tricks. This is not at all fun once you know it's a trick.
Re: I sent over 10k personal thank you videos to my customers
#36This would not be horribly hard to do without the deep fake stuff. 1000 names covers ~72% of the population. Change the video a bit so you have a cut just after the name (One that looks like it fits and you could record just the hello name part and have the other 90% be the same.
Then you send the 237 Mikes the same video but now it is not a deepfake. Once a week or month you sit down and record any new names for half an hour or so.
Longer time sure but not 10k videos long like he implies.
Re: I sent over 10k personal thank you videos to my customers
#37Similarly there is a phenomenal company called HandWrytten. It uses robots to write thank you cards with ink pens. I upload a spreadsheet of all of my contacts, with a message for each, and the robot beautifully writes out the card in my own handwriting; personal hand writing is an extra fee. Takes about an hour for 155 contacts. I keep up with hundreds of people in my job and something personal like this really goes…
This is cool technology, but I think this misses the value of the thank you card in the first place - that you gave the time and attention to each card (and by proxy, person). I guess I wonder without that expense to you, what is the value of the card to them (it's not the literal message, or the card stock)?
Then again, I often aspire to send cards and don't, so this is definitely better than nothing, especially if you personalized the messages.
Re: I sent over 10k personal thank you videos to my customers
#38This seems at least a little unethical. At the very least, I would think worse of a company that sent a video to me that seemed personalized, but later turned out to be mass-produced. He has an ethics section in the article, but doesn't doesn't go very deep and (unsurprisingly) concludes that his own actions were perfectly fine. The root of the problem is why customers respond well to these videos: they're surprised…
>Really, I think this is doing a sort of trust arbitrage. The tech exists to fake personal videos now, but customers aren't widely aware of it. You can take advantage of that difference with stunts like this. In a few years, people will know this can easily be done and the value of personal videos will drop. At some point it'll be no different to the average customer than an email with "Hi !" or a letter with faux-handwriting on it.
This was my exact thought as I read this article. The other part to this is that it comes at a societal cost: it will add another layer of distrust and cynicism in how we communicate, all at the expense of a short-term value to a handful of companies that race to maximize the value of this technology over the coming years.
Re: I sent over 10k personal thank you videos to my customers
#39I think this is no different than a photocopied signature from the CEO in a personalized letter. We have a Microsoft Certified Partner plaque with a Bill Gates signature that is a reproduction. I'm not losing sleep over it.
Next level is having that signature in blue printer ink. The next level above that is automating a pen to write the copied signature onto paper. The next level above that is to use a mechanical hand to grasp a pen and apply the same Bill Gates movements for the signature. The final level is cyborg Bill Gates itself.
Re: I sent over 10k personal thank you videos to my customers
#40This will lose its efficacy very quickly once people catch on to the trick, just like everything else in B2C marketing.
Marketing has always been an arms race of sorts.