That quibble aside, this is genius.
From the Financial Times:
Cambridge Analytica’s éminence grise is really just an adman bigging up his firm
There does seem to be more than a touch of the Bond villain about Alexander Nix, the perfectly turned-out figure at the centre of the Facebook data row.
Ah, 007. Our target is this man, chief executive of Cambridge Analytica, Alexander Nix....MUCH MORE
Is that Dr Nix?
Er, no. Just Mr Nix.
Pity. Dr Nix sounds more sinister. So what’s Little Nix done?
He’s inserted himself into the world’s most powerful data engine and is using it to change election outcomes.
I see. How do we know this?
He’s been telling everyone.
Telling everyone? Isn’t this the kind of thing you do secretly? Probably from a bunker hidden inside a volcano on an island in the Pacific which doesn’t exist on radar.
He seems to be operating mainly out of an office off Oxford Street. Wired called him one of 25 geniuses making the future happen now.
Who else was on the list?
There was a guy who makes movies for Amazon and a woman in charge of documentaries for Netflix.
So he’s hiding in plain sight. Clever.
He’s not exactly hiding. He goes to conferences and does interviews about how his firm won it for Trump.
I see. What do they do?
They use programmatic campaigning on social media augmented with linear optimised data.
You mean targeted advertising.
Not just targeted advertising, Bond. We think he’s developed a powerful new tool he calls psychographics. It fuses demographic data with personality traits.
OK, so it’s very targeted advertising....
Re: Plodden, I think I just came up with a neologism. Or at minimum a portmanteau of plodding and leaden.
Or maybe it's a malamanteau:
Lord knows I've tried:
The White House Is Searching for the NextGen Futurecow (MOO)For a discussion of neologisms we have on offer:
Nextgen futurecow is probably as close to a neologism as I'm ever going to get....
(cue deep mournful lowing)
Sodom, LLC: The Marquis de Sade and the Modern Office NovelOn second thought it might be best to just follow the FT link.