The person who painted the phone number onto every tradesman's van holds a de-facto contact list of our exact target. The automated equivalent: Google Street View, shopfront signage and Maps Business entries frequently show the painted number on the storefront or van, and Vision OCR can read it. This is the lowest-priority, sharpest-cornered channel: it works, but it must be built carefully. Official APIs and manual capture only, never bots.
Use the official Google Maps Platform APIs (the Street View Static API and Places API) to pull imagery of shopfronts and vans in a target patch. Many local trades paint their mobile number straight onto the signage. Run each image through Vision OCR to lift business name + number, then feed it into the same pipeline as every other channel.
This is the machine version of the sign-writer channel: instead of a human referral partner, the storefront itself becomes the data source.
No worker to recruit, no board to physically visit: a desk-based sweep of a postcode. Once built, it scales across towns for API cost only.
It's the automated twin of the Noticeboard mechanical-turk model: same output (name + number → postal), different capture.
Pick a postcode / high-street run. Query Places API for businesses; get lat,lng for each frontage.
Street View Static API: official, paid, ToS-clean. Grab the storefront view at each point.
Google Vision reads painted signage → candidate name + number strings.
LLM extracts a plausible business name + UK/DE mobile; low-confidence → manual review, never auto-accept.
Hash against existing CRM; store only name + number + source + town (minimisation).
Each new lead → one Stannp A-pile postcard with QR-to-claim. The prospect self-initiates. 🟢
| Point | Rule | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| Data source | Use official Maps Platform APIs (Street View Static, Places), paid, licensed. No logged-in scraping of Google. | 🟠 API only |
| Nature of the number | A sole trader's mobile is personal data under UK/EU GDPR, even painted on a van. | 🟠 |
| Lawful basis | Legitimate interest + a written LIA, data minimisation (name + number + source + town only), privacy notice, easy erasure. | 🟠 |
| Use of the number | Postal touch → QR-to-claim only. Prospect self-initiates. No cold call, no cold SMS. | 🟢 postal-only |
| Cold call / SMS to the number | PECR (UK) / UWG §7 (DE): a painted number is not consent. | 🔴 avoid |
| Bots / scraping Google | ToS breach + GDPR. | 🔴 avoid |
Verdict from the strategy: 🟠 Street View OCR → postal: treat as a v2 experiment, lower priority than the human channels. The referral partnership with a real sign-writer stays 🟢 cleanest of all; this is its automated, more-constrained cousin.
outreach/lead-sourcing-strategy.md §4 · v2 experiment · official APIs, no bots, postal-only