I have always had a fascination of the mongoose. If you have ever read Rudyard Kipling’s children’s book, Rikki Tiki Tavi, you know that mongooses are kept in houses in Asia and Africa to keep venomous snakes out. They have been called the cobra killers. These stealth creatures are lightning quick and have a natural resistance to snake venom in their acetylcholine receptors. They are agile enough that they can crawl into a hole in the ground just big enough for the creature to fit into and fight a snake to the death.

There is a mongoose on your computer right now. We put it there when you opened this article and began to read it. Don’t be alarmed, this is not a virus. It is actually an html cookie that allows us to track the fact that you are here, how long you are sticking around to read this article, and where you might go on our web site after you finish reading. It recognizes you when you come back to the site as a return visitor. Cookies are like the mongooses of marketing. They help us keep track of your computer activities so we know how to advertise to you, so when you go to a site that is selling kayaks to water enthusiasts, the cookie tells us that is who you are when you go to another site and see an ad for the same kayak.

Isn’t this just spying? I suppose that depends upon whom you ask. We are living in the crack of what is an invasion of privacy on one hand and what is smart marketing tactics on the other. There certainly is a shift in the amount of personal information people are willing to tell about themselves on social media and broadcast across the internet for the world to see. I remember some twenty years ago when a restaurant client wanted to come up with what amounted to a rewards program for frequent diners. Customers were given a card to swipe each time they came to the restaurant and, after so many swipes, they received a free meal. The programmers of the software that tracked the customer’s information got together with those of us charged with marketing the card and let us know that the database they built could do more than count swipes. It could also keep track of important dates, like the customer’s birthday and anniversary. It could monitor what he or she had to eat and drink and the frequency in which they ordered each item. All of that data could come in handy when the waiter approached a customer armed with this info: "Good evening Mr. and Mrs. Smith and happy anniversary to the both of you. Would you like your usual Shrimp and Salmon Ceviche and Beef Tartare?” A cookie does the same thing as the card used to do. It simply keeps track of interests and frequency.

We were not able to implement the card swipe marketing tactic. Twenty years ago, the owner of the restaurant hedged at the thought of that much personal information being stored in his computers. He felt that his regular customers would become wary of being watched and would leave him for another restaurant. Think about how times have changed in those twenty years. We give up personal info about ourselves all of the time on social media alone. Our private world has been shrinking around us. I remember the first time someone showed me how much personal information there was about me by simply entering my name in a search engine. I was appalled that my home address, my work address, my telephone number, and every organization where I had been a member had a listing. Now I have accepted it as a way of life. Now I use the internet to find anyone I need to contact. Attitudes have changed.

What should you be doing to take advantage of cookies in your marketing plans? There are simple ways you can program the information that cookies give you into your web site. Ads are an obvious choice. There are some very slick ways to get your product in front of customers on ads on your own site and on other web sites. If someone has been looking at one of your products, it makes sense to advertise that product to them time and again on a number of other web pages. It is a way to reach your target market without them really knowing that you are tracking them: mongoose and snake.