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