Salesforce’s Randy Wootton at ILM 2014: Avoiding Local’s ‘Creepy Valley’

Marketers have lots of disparate information about the consumers they are targeting, but if they don’t put it together in a consumer friendly way, it quickly becomes an off-putting “Creepy Valley of Local Marketing” that is counter productive, said Salesforce VP Randy Wootton in a keynote address at BIA/Kelsey’s Interactive Local Media event at San Francisco Airport.

Citing GoDaddy’s Blake Irving for inventing the “Creepy Valley” moniker, Wootton noted that “where it gets weird is when there are things that target you” and are really not consistent with good Customer Relationship management principles. It becomes especially worrisome in a mobile environment where there are no barriers.

The solution? Provide all services in the cloud, where several layers of services can be easily mediated. “The cloud is the democratization of the marketing world — although local marketers aren’t taking advantage of it yet. When you cross the creepy valley, you have a different relationship with your customers,” says Wootton.