Get your Purple Ducks in a Row Before Asking for Trouble

My grandfather told me that you should never, ever bet against laziness. It’s the one thing that can destroy families and sink warships, and recently a new example of this hit the press. The weak link of laziness bit again - this time with a new marketing twist.

If you develop something and come up with a gimmick like Dodd Davis, CEO of LifeLock did, you really need to be sure about it.

Davis is well known for putting his personal social security number in advertisements on television to the sides of buses. It was a Purple Cow and this remarkable method of promoting the business stands out as one of the boldest advertising moves of recent days. With over 700,000 customers, growing by 3000 per day, the message seems to have hit home.

His methods caused quite a buzz among marketers, even if the business itself seems to have a questionable standing among customers and investors - not to mention some rocky antics with credit bureaus. Lifelock has had a lot of problems lately, with their founder Robert Maynard, Jr. stepping down earlier this month due to a rather messy controversy surrounding the company, and class action lawsuits being filed against the firm around the country.

He was inviting every identity thief in the world into the ring. But rather than being attacked by a financial ninja - it was a sloppy, unregulated check cashing shop in Ft. Worth that brought him down. By skipping the normal procedures for verifying the identity of a check advance customer, his identity was used for a $500 loan. The loophole bit him.

The financial networks have billions of possible weak points. The system depends on a combination of technological and human security procedures to avoid problems and for the most part works exceptionally well. If you allow an industry like payday advance to be a part of it, the entire system is at risk.

But it was Lifelock that put itself out there, boldly - and now they must do something equally good to explain it.

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