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Defeating Synthetic Identity Fraud

I’ve talked about synthetic identity fraud a lot in the Bredemarket blog over the past several years. I’ll summarize a few examples in this post, talk about how to fight synthetic identity fraud, and wrap up by suggesting how to get the word out about your anti-synthetic identity solution.

But first let’s look at a few examples of synthetic identity.

Synthetic identities pop up everywhere

As far back as December 2020, I discussed Kris’ Rides’ encounter with a synthetic employee from a company with a number of synthetic employees (many of who were young females).

More recently, I discussed attempts to create synthetic identities using gummy fingers and fake/fraudulent voices. The topic of deepfakes continues to be hot across all biometric modalities.

From https://www.candynation.com/gummy-fingers

I shared a video I created about synthetic identities and their use to create fraudulent financial identities.

From https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDrSBlDJVCk.

I even discussed Kelly Shepherd, the fake vegan mom created by HBO executive Casey Bloys to respond to HBO critics.

From https://twitter.com/KellySh33889356.

And that’s just some of what Bredemarket has written about synthetic identity. You can find the complete list of my synthetic identity posts here.

So what? You must fight!

It isn’t enough to talk about the fact that synthetic identities exist: sometimes for innocent reasons, sometimes for outright fraudulent reasons.

You need to communicate how to fight synthetic identities, especially if your firm offers an anti-fraud solution.

Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=607428.

Here are four ways to fight synthetic identities:

Checking the purported identity against private databases, such as credit records.
Checking the person’s driver’s license or other government document to ensure it’s real and not a fake.
Checking the purported identity against government databases, such as driver’s license databases. (What if the person presents a real driver’s license, but that license was subsequently revoked?)
Perform a “who you are” biometric test against the purported identity.

If you conduct all four tests, then you have used multiple factors of authentication to confirm that the person is who they say they are. If the identity is synthetic, chances are the purported person will fail at least one of these tests.

Do you fight synthetic identity fraud?

If you fight synthetic identity fraud, you should let people know about your solution.

Perhaps you can use Bredemarket, the identity content marketing expert. I work with you (and I have worked with others) to ensure that your content meets your awareness, consideration, and/or conversion goals.

How can I work with you to communicate your firm’s anti-synthetic identity message? For example, I can apply my identity/biometric blog expert knowledge to create an identity blog post for your firm. Blog posts provide an immediate business impact to your firm, and are easy to reshare and repurpose. For B2B needs, LinkedIn articles provide similar benefits.

If Bredemarket can help your firm convey your message about synthetic identity, let’s talk.

Drive content results with Bredemarket Identity Firm Services.

Why Does Outsourced Content Marketing Work?

WHY does outsourced content marketing work?

Because an outsourced content marketer can help you address gaps in your content.

For example, maybe you have NEVER posted to your company LinkedIn page.

Why does outsourced content marketing work?

An outsourced content marketer can help. After all, that blank company LinkedIn page isn’t going to fill itself.

Let Bredemarket work with you to create your content.

See “How Does Outsourced Content Writing Work?”

How Does Outsourced Content Writing Work?

How can your technology business work with an outsourced content writer?

Perhaps you should first ask WHY your technology business needs an outsourced content writer.

The need for content

Do your technology business website and social media channels DESPERATELY need written content?

Is your website a dreary collection of facts and awards that don’t address what your prospects REALLY care about?

Unnamed firm. Will this increase revenue by 50%? If not, so what?

Have you NEVER posted to your company LinkedIn page?

Unnamed firm. What does this LinkedIn page tell prospects?

Is your online presence a ghost town?

From https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ix8ocFEMa1o.

There may be a variety of reasons for this. Perhaps your current employees are too busy doing other things. Or perhaps writing terrifies them so much that they think ChatGPT-generated content is actually a GOOD thing. (Read the content. It isn’t good.)

So you’re thinking about outsourcing the work to a content writer. One who has created content for multiple technology firms, including 9 returning clients. Here are four examples.

But how does outsourced content writing work?

How Bredemarket works with you to create content

Maybe you need an outsourced content writer because your current textual content is not compelling to your prospects, or perhaps it’s non-existent (for example, a LinkedIn company page with zero posts).

If you approach Bredemarket with your outsourced content writing request, here’s how we will work together:

Kickoff.
First draft.
First draft review.
It depends.
Finalize and publish.

For this example, let’s assume that you need between 400 to 600 words of text to post to your company blog or to your company LinkedIn account, and therefore are purchasing my Bredemarket 400 Short Writing Service.

From https://bredemarket.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/bmt0400-2206a.pdf.

Step 1: Kickoff

This is the most important step in the entire process, and I don’t write a word of text until you and I have some agreement on WHAT I am going to write.

I start by asking seven questions about the content, your product, and your company.

Why?
How?
What?
Goal?
Benefits?
Target Audience?
Emotions?

I ask some additional questions which I won’t discuss in detail here. For example, you may specify the subject matter experts or articles I need to consult.

Once we’ve worked through ALL the questions, either in a synchronous meeting or asynchronously via email, I have a good idea of what the written content needs to say.

Step 2: First draft

Now I write the first draft.

By Photo by Gnsin – Gnsin, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=234900.

I don’t ask a bot to write the first draft; I write it myself.

Why? Because I’m an opinionated, crotchety, temperamental writer, and a “you can pry my keyboard out of my cold dead hands” type.

This benefits you because I love doing this, communicating your benefits to your prospects using the framework upon which we agreed in the kickoff.

Unless we agree on a different schedule, I get that first draft to you in three days for the next important step.

Step 3: First draft review

This is where you come in. Your task is to review my draft within three days and provide comments. And if I don’t hear from you within three days, you’ll hear from me. Why?

The first reason is my pure self-interest. The sooner I complete the project, the sooner I get paid. Those cold dead hands need some nice gloves.
The second reason is of mutual interest. We want to complete the project while we’re focused on thinking about it, and while it is critically important to us.
The third reason is for your own self-interest. You have a content gap, and it’s in your interest to fill that gap. If we get this draft reviewed and move forward, that gap will be filled quickly. If we don’t move forward, the gap will remain, your efforts to contract with Bredemarket will be for naught, and you’ll still have an uninteresting website and dead social media accounts.

Step 4: It depends

What happens after the first draft review varies from client to client.

Some of my clients love the first draft and don’t want to change a thing.
Some of my first drafts have embedded questions that you need to answer; once those questions are answered, the content is ready.
Some of my first drafts may need minor changes. In one case, I was asked to remove a reference to a successful hack that occurred at a well-known company; unbeknownst to me, the company was a customer of another division of the client in question. Whoops.
Occasionally more substantive changes are required, and I end up creating a second draft in three days, and you review it in three days.

In the end, we have a piece of content that is almost ready for publication.

Step 5: Finalize and publish

While the words may be ready, the entire piece is not.

I’m not a graphics person, and usually a written piece needs some accompanying images to drive the message home. I may suggest some images, or I may suggest that the client reuse an image from their website, or I may just ask the client to select an appropriate image.

Once the text and images are ready, you publish the piece. Normally I don’t have access to your website or social media accounts, so I can’t publish the piece for you. Only one client has given me such access, and even for that client I don’t have COMPLETE publishing permission.

For short projects such as a Bredemarket 400 project, I usually bill you when you publish the piece, although in certain circumstances I may bill you once the text is complete.

Are you ready to outsource your content marketing?

While other content marketers may work differently, we all have some type of process for our outsourced content writing.

If you’re ready to move forward with Bredemarket for outsourced content writing, contact me.

Drive content results with Bredemarket Technology Firm Services.

Three Technology News Sources

Are you hungry for (non-identity/biometric) technology news? Well, here are three places where you can find it.

The Bredemarket Technology Firm Services LinkedIn page. https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/bredemarket-technology-firm-services/
The Bredemarket Technology Firm Services Facebook group. https://www.facebook.com/groups/bredemarkettechnology
Items in the Bredemarket blog tagged with “technology”. https://bredemarket.com/tag/technology/

Of course, nothing appears in any of these sources (or the more famous technology news sources) unless the companies create actual technology content.

Does your technology firm need help creating such content? Bredemarket can help.

Ofcom and the Digital Trust & Safety Partnership

The Digital Trust & Safety Partnership (DTSP) consists of “leading technology companies,” including Apple, Google, Meta (parent of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp), Microsoft (and its LinkedIn subsidiary), TikTok, and others.

The DTSP obviously has its views on Ofcom’s enforcement of the UK Online Safety Act.

Which, as Biometric Update notes, boils down to “the industry can regulate itself.”

Here’s how the DTSP stated this in its submission to Ofcom:

DTSP appreciates and shares Ofcom’s view that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to trust and safety and to protecting people online. We agree that size is not the only factor that should be considered, and our assessment methodology, the Safe Framework, uses a tailoring framework that combines objective measures of organizational size and scale for the product or service in scope of assessment, as well as risk factors.
From https://dtspartnership.org/press-releases/dtsp-submission-to-the-uk-ofcom-consultation-on-illegal-harms-online/.

We’ll get to the “Safe Framework” later. DTSP continues:

Overly prescriptive codes may have unintended effects: Although there is significant overlap between the content of the DTSP Best Practices Framework and the proposed Illegal Content Codes of Practice, the level of prescription in the codes, their status as a safe harbor, and the burden of documenting alternative approaches will discourage services from using other measures that might be more effective. Our framework allows companies to use whatever combination of practices most effectively fulfills their overarching commitments to product development, governance, enforcement, improvement, and transparency. This helps ensure that our practices can evolve in the face of new risks and new technologies.
From https://dtspartnership.org/press-releases/dtsp-submission-to-the-uk-ofcom-consultation-on-illegal-harms-online/.

But remember that the UK’s neighbors in the EU recently prescribed that USB-3 cables are the way to go. This not only forced DTSP member Apple to abandon the Lightning cable worldwide, but it affects Google and others because there will be no efforts to come up with better cables. Who wants to fight the bureaucratic battle with Brussels? Or alternatively we will have the advanced “world” versions of cables and the deprecated “EU” standards-compliant cables.

So forget Ofcom’s so-called overbearing approach and just adopt the Safe Framework. Big tech will take care of everything, including all those age assurance issues.

From https://dtspartnership.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/DTSP_Age-Assurance-Best-Practices.pdf.

DTSP’s September 2023 paper on age assurance documents a “not overly prescriptive” approach, with a lot of “it depends” discussion.

Incorporating each characteristic comes with trade-offs, and there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Highly accurate age assurance methods may depend on collection of new personal data such as facial imagery or government-issued ID. Some methods that may be economical may have the consequence of creating inequities among the user base. And each service and even feature may present a different risk profile for younger users; for example, features that are designed to facilitate users meeting in real life pose a very different set of risks than services that provide access to different types of content….

Instead of a single approach, we acknowledge that appropriate age assurance will vary among services, based on an assessment of the risks and benefits of a given context. A single service may also use different
approaches for different aspects or features of the service, taking a multi-layered approach.
From https://dtspartnership.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/DTSP_Age-Assurance-Best-Practices.pdf.

So will Ofcom heed the DTSP’s advice and say “Never mind. You figure it out”?

Um, maybe not.

Why Your 17X Certified Resume Writer Pitches Are Failing

Dear 17X Certified Resume Writer,

You may think your marketing tactics and sequence are foolproof. But they’re not. Read on to see why.

And if you’re NOT a 17x certified resume writer, skip to the bottom to see how the resume writing market lacks differentiation. But what about YOUR market?

Why your marketing tactics and sequence don’t work

From observing you and dozens of your 17x certified resume writing competitors that I’ve encountered (and over 14,000 of your competitors that I haven’t encountered), here are the marketing tactics and sequence that ALL of you are using, and why they are COMPLETELY ineffective.

Find a LinkedIn profile with a green “Open to Work” banner.

From https://www.linkedin.com/in/jbredehoft/.

Send a message to the banner-bearer with canned phrases like “Thank you for connecting with a 17x certified resume writer,” or “May I ask what job you are seeking?” If you are using the same language as every other 17x certified resume writer out there, then the prospect has no reason to purchase YOUR services.
Immediately demand that the prospect provide a copy of their resume. Never mind that the prospect’s LinkedIn profile already has the same information as the resume. If you are requesting information that is already available online, then the prospect has no reason to purchase YOUR services.
When your qualifications as a 17x certified resume writer are challenged, respond with stupid stuff. For example, say that your services can place your prospect into LinkedIn’s top 10% of candidates for a position. If your “expert knowledge” betrays that you have NO expertise, then the prospect has no reason to purchase YOUR services.

From a LinkedIn InMail from a 17x certified resume writer.

When all else fails, talk about the respectability of the third-party website where you advertise your services (usually Fiverr). If you talk about Fiverr (which has over 14,000 resume writers), then the prospect has no reason to purchase YOUR services.

From https://www.fiverr.com/search/gigs?query=resume%20writing

Most importantly, ensure that your pitch is the same as the pitch of your 13,999+ competitors. This is critically important—don’t provide ANY reason why your 17x resume writing services are better than those of your 13,999+ competitors. If you provide NO reason why you are better than your competition, all of whom are bombarding LinkedIn “open to work” folks with canned pitches daily, then the prospect has no reason to purchase YOUR services.

So this is why your tactics don’t work.

Why did I rewrite something that I already wrote a few weeks ago?

If you’re a regular reader of the Bredemarket blog—that’s a joke; if you haven’t read my LinkedIn profile, you certainly haven’t read the Bredemarket blog before—then you know that I recently wrote a post entitled “Five Reasons Why 17X Certified Resume Writer Pitches Fail.” It approached your marketing tactics from a different perspective.

But one afternoon when I received three separate LinkedIn InMails from three separate 17x certified resume writers in the space of five minutes, I figured that I needed to address this issue again, in a more pointed fashion. (Yes, I iterate.)

Now I don’t want you to read the entirety of my January 8 post. I know that you are very busy searching for “open to work” people to ask your canned question about their desired position. But I do suggest that you read the fourth of my five reasons why your pitches fail, and take the steps to ensure that you don’t sound exactly the same as your thousands of competitors.

*Dionne Quintuplets – School Days*, painting by Andrew Loomis, 1938. By Andrew Loomis – https://www.flickr.com/photos/lac-bac/7797309642/in/album-72157631099965608/, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=56000992

Hope this helps.

That’s all I have to say. 17x certified resume writers can stop reading here.

Seriously.

Stop. Get to work.

For those of you who are NOT 17x certified resume writers

OK, time for me to talk to the rest of you. It’s just me, you, and the wildebeest.

Black wildebeest. By derekkeats – Flickr: IMG_4955_facebook, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=14620744

Frankly, I doubt that any of the 17x certified resume writers have even made it to this point of the blog post. Like I said, they’re too busy seeking their next prospects.

But the whole 17x certified resume writer market strikes me as one which is sorely lacking in differentiation, competitive analysis, and customer focus. The vast majority of people who provide resume services don’t even attempt to say why their services are superior and the services of their 13,999+ competitors are inferior. And the vast majority focus on themselves rather than the specific needs of their prospects. Why should I choose one of these 17x certified resume writers, and not one of their competitors?

But it’s not enough to take a look at a lack of differentiation in one market. Now I have to take a look at myself. Have I done an adequate job of differentiating Bredemarket’s marketing and writing services from those of my other content marketing competitors? I already know that Canva content creator G from Ray of Social is a much better singer than I am.

From “epic Western” singing to Canva queendom. Sorry, G, but this is still my favo(u)rite song. From https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q04LZgFpP9Y

And perhaps you should take a look at yourself. Have you done an adequate job of differentiating YOUR company from the competition? Do your prospects have a reason to choose you?

If you are employed by a technology firm and need your content to stand out from the crowd, let me explain why Bredemarket’s services can drive content results, how I provide services that no one else does, and what we will do together to create that content your company desperately needs.

Postscript

Just in case these questions come up.

I have nothing against Fiverr as a platform, or against similar platforms such as Upwork. I’m sure that there are good people on Fiverr, and I don’t believe that there is a causation between people being on Fiverr and people providing bad services. But I do believe that there is a correlation between Fiverr and bad services, and that if you are on Fiverr, it is incumbent for you to prove that you are qualified to offer your services. (That goes for people like me who AREN’T on Fiverr also.)
In addition, I have nothing against Nigeria, or India, or any country where a service provider may reside. While the three separate InMails that I received from three separate 17x certified resume writers within five minutes were ALL from Nigeria (Anita from Abuja, Helen from Lagos State, and Renee from Akwa Ibom State), that doesn’t necessarily mean that Nigerians are bad service providers (or that people in the United States and other “first world” countries are GOOD service providers). But again a service provider’s origin is a risk factor that you may need to consider when selecting someone.
Well, unless they’re a rich and respectable person, like a prince, rather than some poor Fiverr user.

From LinkedIn, of course. https://www.linkedin.com/in/hrh-prince-akeem-joffer-b418b5b2/

Five Reasons Why 17X Certified Resume Writer Pitches Fail

Are you a 17X Certified Resume Writer?

Do you seek your prospects by searching for LinkedIn profiles with green #OpenToWork banners?

Do you find that your prospects resist your pitches?

From https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jbredehoft_i-have-a-question-for-people-who-need-to-activity-7150154185278144512-tPMt/.

Here are five reasons why your pitches may not be resonating.

You don’t say WHY you exist.
You don’t say HOW you’ll make me a lot of money.
You don’t say WHAT you will emphasize in my resume…because you never read my profile.
You’re a “me too” resume writer.
You say nothing about product marketing, identity, biometrics, or technology.

If you’re a 17x Certified Resume Writer with generic failing pitches, Bredemarket can’t fix your issues, but maybe someone else can.

The five reasons

Reason One: You don’t say WHY you exist

Let’s face it. 99% of the 17X Certified Resume Writer pitches read “You have an #OpenToWork banner, and I write resumes, so you should buy my services.”

This tells me NOTHING about you, or why you do what you do.

Was there a childhood experience that propelled you into the resume writing field?
Or did a simple tweak to your own resume propel you forward?
Or are you just doing this because it beats delivery driving?

Who are you? Why should I care?

Maybe you should do something like this. For example, here’s why my consulting firm Bredemarket exists:

I am John E. Bredehoft, and I have enjoyed writing for a while now….I guess I’m a “you can pry my keyboard out of my cold dead hands” type.
From https://bredemarket.com/who-i-am/.

Reason Two: You don’t say HOW you’ll make me a lot of money

Remember that I don’t care about your service. I care about how I’m going to get a company to hire me and pay me billions of dollars every year. (More or less.)

I’ve got the brains, you’ve got the looks, let’s make lots of money. By US Federal Reserve – Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=70290373.

So, how will you do this? Do you have a process that results in stellar resumes? Or do you just type stuff at random and hope it comes out OK?

For example, here’s Bredemarket’s process. Did you see that my first two reasons in this particular post were “Why” and “How”? Now you know where I got those terms. And guess what comes next.

Reason Three: You don’t say WHAT you will emphasize in my resume…because you never read my profile

Be honest. When I see these pitches, I draw one of two conclusions:

You saw my #OpenToWork banner and immediately fired off a generic pitch without looking at my LinkedIn profile, in which case I have no reason to work with you.
You DID read my LinkedIn profile, but you’re such a poor communicator that you didn’t bother to say what you saw in my LinkedIn profile, in which case I have no reason to work with you.

Reason Four: You’re a “me too” resume writer

You may not realize this, but you are not the only 17X Certified Resume Writer out there. At the same time that you are sending your “You have an #OpenToWork banner, and I write resumes, so you should buy my services” pitch, other people are sending THEIR “You have an #OpenToWork banner, and I write resumes, so you should buy my services” pitch.

Your pitch doesn’t say why I should pick YOU. Or why you are great and why everyone else sucks. You all look the same to me.

As I look at your undifferentiated “me too” pitch and all of their undifferentiated “me too” pitches, none of which cover the “why,” “how,” or “what” of your 17X Certified Resume Writer services. When everyone says “me too” without differentiation, no one stands out.

By Ben Schumin – Own work, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1123246

As I said earlier: “If the 17x certified resume writers are unable to convey THEIR OWN unique value, why should I believe that they can convey MINE?”

Reason Five: You say nothing about product marketing, identity, biometrics, or technology

I end up shaking my head at the pitches that use the following introductory question to send me through their sequence:

I’m curious about which specific role you intend to apply for?

(I had to edit that pitch quote because the original version I received had a space between “for” and the question mark. I am in the United States. Punctuate accordingly.)

If you had actually read my profile (see reason 3 above), you’d know that I self-describe (at least this week, pending future edits) as a “Senior Product Marketing Manager experienced in identity and technology.” You’d also know that I talk about #identity, #biometrics, #facialrecognition, and #productmarketingmanager. You’d also know that my advertised top skills are Product Marketing, Content Marketing, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Competitive Intelligence.

From Sandeep Kumar, A. Sony, Rahul Hooda, Yashpal Singh, in Journal of Advances and Scholarly Researches in Allied Education | Multidisciplinary Academic Research, “*Multimodal Biometric Authentication System for Automatic Certificate Generation*.”

That’s a wealth of information right there, even without looking at my work history, my skills, or my posts.

Too bad you didn’t use it in your pitch.

Time to fix it

I’ll grant that an introductory pitch doesn’t have a lot of real estate, but you should be able to rework your pitch to accommodate all five gaps in your current marketing.

Unfortunately, the word count for your pitch will be well below 400 words, the minimum word count that Bredemarket supports.

But you should be able to find someone.

Just avoid the people with the generic pitch.

From https://www.pinterest.com/pin/121737996155096419/.

(Pizza Stories) The Worst Time to READ a Pizza Post on Social Media

Have you ever seen those posts from self-appointed gurus?

Specifically, the ones that authoritatively state the BEST time to WRITE a post on Instagram, or LinkedIn, or TikTok, or whatever?

I religiously ignore those posts for a simple reason: My country has multiple time zones. So the best time in one time zone may be the worst time in another time zone.

However, I can tell you the WORST time to READ a post in the PACIFIC Time Zone…if the post concerns pizza.

And I’ll explain what all this means…eventually.

Ophir Tal on awareness

In addition to saying WHEN to post, the gurus also provide authoritative (and often contradictory) advice about WHAT to post.

For example, some gurus assert that you MUST prioritize bottom of funnel (conversion) content over top of funnel (awareness) content because it’s most important to get people to buy.

Ophir Tal disagrees, and has evidence to support his position.

Ophir Tal on pizza

From https://www.linkedin.com/in/ophir-tal/.

Ophir Tal self-identifies as a “LinkedIn Ghostwriter & Personal brand Builder for CEOs & Founders”…and part of the way he builds personal brands is via awareness. Here’s where Tal made this assertion about the importance of awareness.

Let’s look at Tal’s hook:

How I Got An Inbound Lead From A Post About Pizza
From Ophir Tal on LinkedIn.

This hook caught my attention. People want leads, and people like pizza, so I paid attention. But I also paid attention for a third reason that I’ll discuss later.

Tal describes how he wrote a LinkedIn post about a piece of pizza that he dropped by mistake, and how he acquired 9,400 views, 97 likes, and 112 comments from that single post. So he told the story a second time.

Tal then noted that the gurus would have recommended NOT posting this because he was “doing it wrong.” Specifically:

The post didn’t solve a problem for his potential clients. (Unless they regularly drop slices of pizza, I guess.)
It didn’t have a strong call to action.
It wasn’t targeted to his ideal clients. (Again, unless they regularly drop slices of pizza, or unless they love chicken wings.)

But despite doing everything wrong, that particular piece of content attracted the attention of someone “at a 6 figure ecom company.” After viewing the content, the reader looked at Tal’s profile and realized Tal could meet their need for ghostwriting services.

Tal earned a lead from his pizza post.

Again, this is only part of Tal’s story. I encourage you to read the rest here.

And now I’ll tell you the third reason why I paid attention to Tal’s post.

John Bredehoft on birthdays

As I noted above, I paid attention to Ophir Tal’s pizza post for two reasons:

People want leads.
People like pizza.

Now let’s jump back to a post I wrote all the way back in 2023, one that described why I’ve soured on the term “target audience.” (Or, in Tal’s words, “ideal clients.”) I started that post by wondering if the term “needy people” would be better than “target audience.” Yes, but not good enough.

I’ll grant that “needy people” has a negative connotation, like the person who is sad when people forget their birthday.
From “I’m Questioning Everything About Target Audiences, Including the Name.”

Why did I include that sentence?

I’ll let you in on a personal secret. When I wrote that, I was myself sad because a few people had forgotten my birthday.

Teddy alone at his pizza birthday party in 2018. Picture shared by Nick VinZant. Story here.

It turns out that these people had a VERY GOOD reason for forgetting my birthday. However, I cannot reveal this reason to you because the disclosure would force me to reveal someone’s personal identifiable information, or PII. (Mine.)

So after they remembered my birthday, one of them asked what I did for my birthday…and I told them that my wife, father-in-law, and brother-in-law went out to dinner.

For pizza.

And I also told them that there were leftovers, which my wife and I enjoyed a few days later.

Leftover pizza is the best pizza. Preparation credit: Pizza N Such, Claremont, California. Can I earn free pizza as a powerful influencer? Probably not, but I’ll disclose on the 0.00001% chance that I do.

A nice story, and while I was reading Ophir Tal’s story on dropped pizza, I realized that I had missed an opportunity to tell my own story about leftover pizza.

Time to channel Steve Jobs…

Oh, and there’s one more thing

I forgot to mention one thing about the Ophir Tal story.

When I read the story, it was around 4:00 pm in California.

So when I read about Tal’s dropped pizza, and thought about my leftover pizza (which I had already eaten)…I was hungry.

Target audience, needy people…hungry people

Coincidentally, “hungry people” is the phrase that I eventually decided was better than “needy people.”

Tal’s lead was hungry for ghostwriting services, and when they saw that Tal offered such a service, they contacted him.

What does this mean? I’ll go into that in a separate post.

But for now, remember that stories that raise awareness with your “hungry people” (target audience) are good stories to tell.

Maybe I should tell more stories.

Clean Data is the New Oxygen, and Dirty Data is the New Carbon Monoxide

I have three questions for you, but don’t sweat; I’m giving you the answers.

How long can you survive without pizza? Years (although your existence will be hellish).
OK, how long can you survive without water? From 3 days to 7 days.
OK, how long can you survive without oxygen? Only 10 minutes.

This post asks how long a 21st century firm can survive without data, and what can happen if the data is “dirty.”

How does Mika survive?

Have you heard of Mika? Here’s her LinkedIn profile.

From Mika’s LinkedIn profile at https://www.linkedin.com/in/mika-ai-ceo/

Yes, you already know that I don’t like LinkedIn profiles that don’t belong to real people. But this one is a bit different.

Mika is the Chief Executive Officer of Dictador, a Polish-Colombian spirits firm, and is responsible for “data insight, strategic provocation and DAO community liaison.” Regarding data insight, Mika described her approach in an interview with Inside Edition:

My decision making process relies on extensive data analysis and aligning with the company’s strategic objectives. It’s devoid of personal bias ensuring unbiased and strategic choices that prioritize the organization’s best interests.
From the transcript to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BQEyQ2-awc

From https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BQEyQ2-awc

Mika was brought to my attention by accomplished product marketer/artist Danuta (Dana) Deborgoska. (She’s appeared in the Bredemarket blog before, though not by name.) Dana is also Polish (but not Colombian) and clearly takes pride in the artificial intelligence accomplishments of this Polish-headquartered company. You can read her LinkedIn post to see her thoughts, one of which was as follows:

Data is the new oxygen, and we all know that we need clean data to innovate and sustain business models.
From Dana Debogorska’s LinkedIn post.

Dana succinctly made two points:

Data is the new oxygen.
We need clean data.

Point one: data is the new oxygen

There’s a reference to oxygen again, but it’s certainly appropriate. Just as people cannot survive without oxygen, Generative AI cannot survive without data.

But the need for data predates AI models. From 2017:

Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani said India is poised to grow…but to make that happen the country’s telecoms and IT industry would need to play a foundational role and create the necessary digital infrastructure.

Calling data the “oxygen” of the digital economy, Ambani said the telecom industry had the urgent task of empowering 1.3 billion Indians with the tools needed to flourish in the digital marketplace.
From India Times.

And we can go back centuries in history and find examples when a lack of data led to catastrophe. Like the time in 1776 when the Hessians didn’t know that George Washington and his troops had crossed the Delaware.

Public domain. From https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/11417

Point two: we need clean data

Of course, the presence or absence of data alone is not enough. As Debogorska notes, we don’t just need any data; we need CLEAN data, without error and without bias. Dirty data is like carbon monoxide, and as you know carbon monoxide is harmful…well, most of the time.

That’s been the challenge not only with artificial intelligence, but with ALL aspects of data gathering.

The all-male board of directors of a fertilizer company in 1960. Fair use. From the New York Times.

In 2015, Amazon discovered that because its AI-powered recruiting engine was trained on 10 years of historical data, the tool ended up with a bias to select men rather than women—because that’s why the historical data indicated was a mark of success. Dirty data caused Amazon to scrap the engine.
In 2001, Enron used mark to market (MTM) accounting to artificially inflate its value. When shareholders discovered that Enron had cooked the books, share price dropped from $90.75 to $0.26. Dirty data caused Enron to cease to exist. Go odbye, Enron field. Hello, Minute Maid Park.
The industry in which I’ve spent the last 29 years, identity/biometrics, is also wrestling with the issue of clean data. As part of its FRTE testing, the National Institute of Standards and Technology regularly measures demographic effects on facial recognition accuracy. Dirty data caused people to ask questions (“Is facial recognition racist?“), NIST has been providing answers.

In all of these cases, someone (Amazon, Enron’s shareholders, or NIST) asked questions about the cleanliness of the data, and then set out to answer those questions.

In the case of Amazon’s recruitment tool and the company Enron, the answers caused Amazon to abandon the tool and Enron to abandon its existence.
Despite the entreaties of so-called privacy advocates (who prefer the privacy nightmare of physical driver’s licenses to the privacy-preserving features of mobile driver’s licenses), we have not abandoned facial recognition, but we’re definitely monitoring it in a statistical (not an anecdotal) sense.

The cleanliness of the data will continue to be the challenge as we apply artificial intelligence to new applications.

Clean room of a semiconductor manufacturing facility. Uploaded by Duk 08:45, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC) – http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/ictd/content/labmicrofab.html (original) and https://images.nasa.gov/details/GRC-1998-C-01261 (high resolution), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=60825

Point three: if you’re not saying things, then you’re not selling

(Yes, this is the surprise point.)

Dictador is talking about Mika.

Are you talking about your product, or are you keeping mum about it?

I have more to…um…say about this. Follow this link.