Cookie Monsters

A few months ago, I interviewed Saroya Darabi, founder of the fashion and shopping website Zady.com, for a VMSD article.

I also visited her site. And almost immediately thereafter, Zady ads began popping up on my screen.

Zounds! I’m being watched. Someone knows what I’ve been doing. What sorcery is at work here?

Turns out, it’s not sorcery, it’s common, everyday “cookies” – the bits of data that browsers send to tell a website that I’ve been snooping around. And I would have known that if I’d concentrated harder during one of those sessions at the NRF Expo, circa 2002, on how the World Wide Web will change commerce as we know it.

So I’m probably late to the game with my astonishment. But it is astonishing what fantastic possibilities there are for marketers. Shoppers’ preferences and buying habits are stored. Their shopping baskets of prior orders and items of interest are eternal parts of their profiles. It’s like walking into a store for the first time in a long time and the sales associate remembers your size and color preferences and buying history right off the top of her head.

If you’ve been in the store, even just to use the restroom, they know who you are.

Of course, all that is not wizardry to this digital generation, it’s pretty run-of-the-mill. They love all this about the Internet – its convenience, immediacy, portability and the feeling that it’s talking directly to them. And in a sense, it is. It’s amazing how technology with the potential to talk to billions of people at once can also seem to be communicating with just one person, privately and intimately.

But it’s not private all all. In knowing everything about us – our browsing histories, buying histories, job resumes, people we’re dating, people we’ve broken up with and friends followed – some systems also store our passwords, log-in choices and credit card numbers. And all of it can be breached.

Retailers used to worry about shoplifting and shrinkage – a $44 billion problem for the entire industry last year. The epic security breach Target suffered at the end of 2013 cost the company $10 million in settlements alone, plus untold amounts in public relations efforts, lost sales and the costs to fix their systems and regain stray customers who’d wandered off.

Like Prometheus, you retailers hold the power of fire in your hands. It can truly be a gift from the gods, the most potent way to extend your brands to the farthest corners of the world or the closest corner in your neighborhood. It’s a powerful game with the potential for great rewards, but it’s a power that must be tended carefully.

When the fire gets too hot, cookies burn and all you have left are the ashes.

As a journalist, writer, editor and commentator, Steve Kaufman has been watching the store design industry for 20 years. He has seen the business cycle through retailtainment, minimalism, category killers, big boxes, pop-ups, custom stores, global roll-outs, international sourcing, interactive kiosks, the emergence of China, the various definitions of “branding” and Amazon.com. He has reported on the rise of brand concept shops, the demise of brand concept shops and the resurgence of brand concept shops. He has been an eyewitness to the reality that nothing stays the same, except the retailer-shopper relationship.