Stalker in a Box?

RFID and GPS technologies can provide many benefits to business, especially in the areas of inventory management, logistics, and marketing. Many consumers, however feel threatened by the potential intrusion and loss of privacy. Typically it is quite easy to discard the "tag" if one can find it and if it does not have GPS capability it cannot "follow you home." However a promotion for laundry detergent by a Brazilian company may go to far. Here are some outtakes from the Advertising Age article:

Starting next week, consumers who buy one of the GPS-implanted detergent boxes will be surprised at home, given a pocket video camera as a prize and invited to bring their families to enjoy a day of Unilever-sponsored outdoor fun.
Of course, Brazil has a high crime rate, and not everyone is going to open the door to strangers who claim to have been sent by her detergent brand to offer a free video camera. Bullet has thought of that. If the team tracks a consumer to her home but she won't let them in, they can remotely activate a buzzer in the detergent box so that it starts beeping. And if the team takes too long to arrive, and the consumer has already opened the box to see if she's a winner or just do laundry, she'll find, along with the GPS device and less detergent than expected, a note explaining the promotion and a phone number to call.
In a big web component, the site experimentealgonovo.com.br (Portuguese for "try something new") goes live in August, and will include a map showing roughly where the winners live, pictures of each winner and footage of the Bullet-Omo teams hunting down the GPS-enabled detergent boxes, knocking on doors and surprising consumers.
While I appreciate the innovation behind this, I'm not sure that I'd want where I live shown on a map or a "beeping" box of detergent on my shelf. It will be interesting to follow this campaign as it unfolds.

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