The household cleaning product giant Unilever has secretly
placed GPS tracker transmitters in laundry detergent boxes to
track consumers to their homes. With an array of electronic
sensors, team of Unilever agents can now pinpoint the exact
location of the GPS trackers and walk right up to your front
door. They can even remotely set off a beeper inside the box
using radio electronics.
The point of all this? It's part of Unilever's new marketing
campaign to convince consumers in Brazil to purchase more boxes
of Omo laundry detergent.
The GPS trackers, you see, are only embedded in "prize winning"
boxes of Omo detergent. If you happen to buy one of these GPS
tracked boxes, you're a "winner" and Unilever agents then show
up at your door with a video camera crew and a prize.
I'm a winner? Really? Who are you people, anyway?
Unilever stalks its own customers This new detergent marketing
contest was detailed in an Ad Age article called Is Your
Detergent Stalking You?
(http://adage.com/globalnews/article...)
That article explains that Unilever "...has teams in 35
Brazilian cities ready to leap into action when a box is
activated. The nearest team can reach the shopper's home 'within
hours or days,' and if they're really close by, 'they may get to
your house as soon as you do.'"
This creepy "Big Brother" marketing idea is apparently exactly
the kind of thing the Unilever company approves of: Spying on
your customers. Unilever, by the way, is the parent company that
brings you brands like Lipton tea, Skippy peanut butter, Axe
cologne, and the infamous Slim-Fast sugar drink that's somehow
positioned as a "weight loss" product.