An affinity group is composed of people

who share an identity marker.

Backpackers are an affinity group.

Corvette drivers are an affinity group.

If you like to sew, you are part of an affinity group.

Every sports team has “fans,” an affinity group.

If you like wine, you are in that affinity group.

People who like science are part of an affinity group.

If you would rather drive than fly, you are part of an affinity group.

In a class he taught at Wizard Academy, Ryan Deiss said,

“Identify a tribe. Develop the tribe. Market to the tribe.”

Ryan was talking about affinity groups.

Affinity groups have an affinity for – an attraction to – a particular thing.

Marketing to affinity groups is a smart thing to do.*

Do you know the jargon of the affinity group you are trying to sell?

People who spend time to save money are in an affinity group.

People who spend money to save time are in a different affinity group.

Your ad copy attracts one of these groups more strongly than it does the other. Do you know which group you are unconsciously targeting?

Maggie Tufu is a fictional character, but she spoke profoundly when she said,

“Tell me what a person admires and I’ll tell you everything about them that matters.”

Mark Zuckerberg is rich because he controls one of the major gateways that allow advertisers to reach affinity groups.

Every time you click on something – anything at all – you reveal intimate things about yourself to Mark and dozens of other data brokers. Soon you will have told them everything about yourself that matters.

Allow me to quote a video that you will see near the end of today’s rabbit hole:

“What all these companies have in common is they collect your personal information and then resell or share it with others… The entire economy of the internet right now is basically built on this practice. All the free stuff that you take for granted online is only free because you are the product. They make money by selling your data… As one expert puts it, ‘They’re the middlemen of surveillance capitalism.'”

Several of the apps you have on your phone are tracking you for the purposes of letting you know which of their locations is “Nearest You” at any given moment. And they sell that data to data brokers, some of which are happy to tell anyone – who wants to kill you, kidnap you, or sell you an extended warranty – exactly where you are right now.

The going price for that information is $45.

Seems like there ought to be a law that makes this impossible, right? Well, there is an outside chance that such a law might soon be enacted.

According to that video you’ll see near the end of today’s rabbit hole,

“The one time that Congress has acted quickly to safeguard people’s privacy was in the 1980s when Robert Bork was nominated to the Supreme Court and a reporter walked into a local video store and asked the manager whether he could have a peek at Bork’s video rental history. And he got it. As soon as Congress realized there was nothing stopping anyone from retrieving their video rental records too, they freaked out. And lo and behold, the Video Privacy Protection Act was passed with quite deliberate speed.”

At the end of today’s rabbit hole, you can see how one man is currently trying to motivate Congress by threatening to reveal all the detailed, personal information he gathered about each of them after spending just a few dollars with data brokers.

This could get interesting.

Roy H. Williams

*Earlier, when I said, “Marketing to affinity groups is a smart thing to do,” please notice that I did not say that marketing to affinity groups is the “only” smart thing to do. I continue to believe in the effectiveness of untargeted mass media – TV and radio – because it works miraculously if you know how to use it. It reaches your target, but it also reaches the influencers of your target. And compared to online marketing, Mass Media is astoundingly affordable.