Lost At Sea Part 33

It is slightly chilling to realize there are rational, functional people up there employed to spot, nurture, and exploit those down here among us who are irrational and can barely cope. If you want to know how stupid you're perceived to be by the people up there, count the unsolicited junk mail you receive. If you get a lot, you're perceived to be alluringly stupid.

THIS DOESN'T SOLVE the Richard Cullen mystery. In the weeks before his death, he insisted to his wife that there had been no secret vices, nothing like that at all. If that was true-if there was nothing t.i.tch Ronsonlike about him-why was he, in particular, bombarded?

I have coffee at Portcullis House with the Labour MP Chris Bryant. He's a member of the Treasury Select Committee, a group of MPs who are trying to investigate the credit-card industry.

"We all know they target the people who are just b.u.mping along," he says, "who don't read the small print and don't realize the extortionate interest rates they're paying. We know they use aggressive marketing techniques to persuade those people to take out loans that they often don't understand and simply can't afford."

"Do any credit-card companies ever admit to this?" I ask.

"Of course not," says Chris. Then he pauses and says, "Have you heard of this thing called Mosaic?"

Chris says he doesn't know much about Mosaic, only that it is some computer program. He says he's heard that the credit-card junk-mail departments have grown to rely on Mosaic when determining whom to shower. Apparently, he says, if you type a postcode into Mosaic, it'll tell you if the person living at that house wears Burberry, or drinks c.o.ke or white wine, or whatever.

Then Chris moves his chair slightly closer to mine.

"The Tories have Mosaic," he says. "They're using it to decide who to target with their junk."

"Are they?" I reply darkly. What Chris doesn't tell me-and I only find out later-is that Labour has Mosaic too.

TORIES USE CONSUMER HABITS TO TARGET VOTERS

The contents of voters' shopping baskets are being studied by both main political parties to help them prepare "bespoke" campaigns in the coming election. The program was developed in the US where the Republicans' more skillful use of consumer information to target voters is credited with helping George Bush win.

Drinkers of Coors beer, for example, were more likely to vote Republican, as were bourbon drinkers. Those with a taste for brandy, on the other hand, were found to be Democrats. One senior Labour strategist was dismissive of attempts to "fetis.h.i.+se" marketing tools, while admitting that the party was also using Mosaic.

-Independent on Sunday, February 6, 2005

The article goes on to explain how Mosaic is even influencing the Tories' dissemination of their message. For instance, they intend to post their anti-immigration leaflets to households deemed, via Mosaic, to be intolerant of outsiders, but they won't bother sending those leaflets to the more cosmopolitan Tory voters. I wonder: If Chris Bryant was right about Mosaic's influence on the credit-card junk mailers, what was it about Richard Cullen's lifestyle that made him seem a suitable target?

I LEAVE A MESSAGE with the Mosaic people, who turn out to be a company called Experian. Their press officer, Bruno, calls me back. Over the phone he eulogizes Mosaic. He says it is incredibly accurate and used by everyone, more than fifty thousand businesses, including many credit-card companies.

I tell him I still don't quite understand what it does.

"I'll give you a demonstration," Bruno replies. "Give me a postcode."

"Ah," I say. I scrabble frantically around my notes until I find Richard Cullen's postcode-the postcode shared by the twenty or so households on the Cullens' street.

"Uh ... BA14 ..." I begin, making it sound like I've just invented a postcode at random.

I hear him type it into his computer.

The Cullens, it turns out, belong to Mosaic's Group B 11: "Happy Families: Families Making Good." These are "older people on middle incomes ... not highfliers up career ladders of large conglomerates." Neighborhoods like this are "hardly centers of intellectual or aesthetic style." Happy Families are "likely to be interested in adverts for financial products."

"This is a culture," concludes Mosaic, "that is keen to take advantage of easy credit."

I later discover that a fledgling incarnation of Mosaic called ACORN (A Cla.s.sification of Residential Neighbourhoods), which is also used by some credit-card companies, says of Richard Cullen's postcode: "The interest in current affairs is low. They are educated to a low degree." (ACORN was invented by the creator of Mosaic-Professor Richard Webber-but it is owned and operated by a company called CACI, and not by Experian.)

Then Bruno types my postcode into Mosaic.

"Wow!" he says. "You're a Global Connector. Roman Abramovich is a Global Connector too."

Bruno is clearly impressed.

"We bought before the boom," I explain, slightly embarra.s.sed.

"Not many Guardian journalists are Global Connectors," says Bruno.

"My street isn't that nice," I say.

"Well, if we've got it wrong, you're the exception that proves the rule," says Bruno, a little defensively.

He reads out my profile. Nowhere does it say that we Global Connectors are likely to take advantage of easy credit, nor will we be interested in adverts for financial products.

The reason neither I nor my horrendous alter ego t.i.tch don't get nearly as much credit-card junk mail as Richard Cullen did is that our postcode, N1, suggests affluence. If I lived in a downmarket postal area, one more befitting t.i.tch's characteristics, he wouldn't have been filtered out by Mosaic. He'd have been deluged.

Bruno invites me to Experian's London offices. I've never heard of them. It turns out that they're not only the power behind Mosaic, they are also Britain's biggest credit-reference agency, with files on forty million people in Britain. Bruno gives me directions. I should walk down Park Lane, he says, turn onto Curzon Street, and after 150 yards I'll see Leconfield House.

"Apparently it used to be MI5 headquarters," says Bruno, "which is very appropriate, I suppose."

"You've taken over MI5's old building?" I repeat.

He laughs. "Yes," he says.

LECONFIELD HOUSE was indeed MI5 HQ-between 1945 and 1976. And you can tell. It has no street number. Leconfield House is not number anything, Curzon Street. Inside, Experian's offices are all beige and pine, like an airport hotel. Bruno arrives with another man-Professor Richard Webber, "the father of geodemographics." This is the man who invented both Mosaic and ACORN.

It isn't my imagination. As we walk to Conference Room A, Professor Webber is looking me up and down, categorizing me on the spot.

"You're wearing training shoes," he says, slightly baffled, because they don't quite fit with the rest of my clothes.

"I walked here," I explain. "I need comfortable shoes for walking."

"Hm," says Professor Webber.

PROFESSOR WEBBER'S WORK-profiling and categorizing the lifestyles of the nation-began in the 1970s when he was commissioned by Liverpool City Council to design a computer program that might explain certain nuances of geographical deprivation. Why were some poor areas p.r.o.ne to rioting when others weren't? It turned out that some Liverpool ghettos had preponderances of "ethnics, drug issues, single parents, low levels of education," whereas others had "high fertility, high church attendance," and so on. Beefeater gin was shown to be particularly popular in certain areas.

"Until then," Professor Webber says, "n.o.body knew the connection between neighborhoods and consumption. It wasn't long before the private sector saw the potential."

Ever since, the professor has been tallying and perfecting, buying up databases from the DVLA (Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency), the electoral roll, the British Crime Survey, and so on, and augmenting this data with Experian's own lifestyle surveys.

"Which Mosaic category do you fall into?" I ask the professor.