In George Orwell’s eponymously titled book Nineteen Eighty-Four, he warned of a dystopic future with a government agency known only as Big Brother. The tagline of course is that “Big Brother is watching”, insinuating that no matter what, the government always has a tag on who you are and where you are going.

Fast forward to well past the year that Orwell insinuated this would all happen, and we have a very similar premise with a very different result. Someone does know where you are at all times, and in the western world it seems that we are all living underneath some form of Big Brother, except Big Brother is not a government agency. Our phones and Facebook profiles have almost all the information an agency like Big Brother would. The funniest part is, this data is only really ever used to by marketers, as a means of reaching consumers in new ways.

Welcome to the world of Geolocation Marketing, one of the most powerful tools ever invented in marketing.

Geolocation Marketing is so powerful because of two simple measures, that can encompass almost all forms of marketing in one way or another. If you really pause to think for a moment, where you are at any given moment will say a lot about who you are as a person. These two beautiful numbers form many aspects of your identity, and can help marketers segment into incredibly detailed profiles.

Let’s take a given person’s life as an example, and see how this can be broken down into data. Let’s say that this a given person is an I.T. consultant, who works at a law firm and goes to the beach on their days off. They shop in Newtown and spend most of their nights out between two specific bars in the city. All these pieces of data can be determined by the percentage of time they spend at each location (home, work and leisure).

Now here is the real kicker.

From the suburb they spend most time in, their average income could be determined from the median house price of that location. Their specific taste in fashion could be determined from the fact they shop in Newtown, even going so far as to determine the specific shops they go into. You could determine the persons favourite drink based on the bars they go in. If you really wanted to, you could determine a person’s favourite type of cuisine based on restaurant location data. Anything is possible really.

This is the true power of geolocation marketing. With pure location data, marketers may now obtain micro-segments, based on the needs of the individual rather than the group.

Thanks to Geolocation services, marketers can now determine whether you have seen an advertisement in billboard form, and then remarket to consumers using the digital form of that ad campaign.

In the world of Orwell, Geolocation marketing has presented a real brave new world. With this great power, comes great responsibility as to whether a marketer can use this information wisely.