When all the cookies are over: How Data Privacy affects Marketing in the Modern World
by Ayushi Mona
If you are in the Marketing & Advertising function - you often get to read these blog posts on what’s the next big thing - for a long time, customisation, AR/VR, Metaverse, Data-driven marketing have dominated conversations..
Over the last few years though ‘trust,’ ‘data privacy’, ‘privacy-first marketing’ have shown up.
The area of Data Privacy is personally interesting to me for three reasons:
I have worked in two regulated industries where privacy is a concern - banking & pharmaceuticals
I was a Data Privacy champion & advocate at my last job. I also worked with patients in the advocacy function who shared intensely private information with me 1-1, be it suicidal thoughts or their inability to afford a life-saving medicine
One of my favourite courses during my time at MICA was - Digital Media Citizenship where we had a module on the Cambridge Analytica fiasco and how that changed the landscape of privacy concerns worldwide.
Usually, my articles are fairly prescriptive. Be it similarities between Tinder & Wordle, how to write good copy or how to give better feedback as Marketers.
For this, post though I am going to go with the Socratic method and just raise a few questions:
Do consumers really care for Privacy?
If you have used a smartphone, then you have surely complained when you were targeted with ads basis what you spoke or searched or chatted with someone about.
And, while you did grumble, seeing three new ads about sneakers (that you anyway skip over) is (largely) harmless.
There are people like me who use ad-blockers and actually go to settings and disable all ad activity on all accounts and then there’s you who goes around dropping your phone number like confetti.
If we believe, all consumers are unique then they also have unique preferences and does imposing blanket privacy regulations then underserve not just brands but consumers who couldn’t care less.
There are also cultural nuances - in Indian societies, knowing salaries, health issues, marital problems is a norm, who cares about sharing an email ID that never gets logged in, anyway!
Is Customization King?
Brands will tell you that Data Privacy regulations hurt them as they are not able to customise communication to customers.
A good example of customisation that grabs annual attention is the #SpotifyWrapped but music tastes are an intensely personal choice that harm no one. Do we really need yet another call where a random tele-caller knows everything about my spend history as they pitch me a Credit Card?
Aren’t Terms & Conditions the true evil?
We all sign up for everything online. We never read T&Cs unless we are paranoid or lawyers drafting the aforementioned T&Cs. Should simplifying T&Cs in the interest of consumer (and marketing is all about consumer centricity) not be an overarching goal instead of blanket bans?
How should Privacy & Marketing integration be made frictionless?
Do you all remember when cookie policies were imposed as a diktat world over due to GDPR? The verbiage, expectations and implementation was so subjective. (On a side note, how many aggregate man hours have been spent, accepting & rejecting cookie policies on every website ever!)
Half of consumers who visit a website leave to purchase a product elsewhere due to a poor experience.
Marketing is a challenge on most days and does Privacy then add a layer that takes away more than it adds?
Do Marketers even know how to make sense of data?
How much ever Marketing teams cry about data-driven marketing, most of them are not equipped to do anything but the bare minimum (say Geographical/Gender specific segregation). That also is not frequently updated or real-time in many cases.
While Marketers talk about Privacy regulations taking the charm out of individualised customer journeys, isn’t most Marketing still persona-driven and not person-driven?
Data Quality, Data Capture, Data Retention - who wins?
Not all aspects of privacy are created equal. Marketers are concerned about targeted advertising and steep costs associated with the same but there is enough and more to be done with processing of first-party data and retention.
Who will remember the original point of Marketing?
A) Marketing was about taking your brand to the consumer not consumers submitting everything barring their horoscopes to brands.
B) Advertising exists to subsidise media channels - should consumers who refuse to pay for subscription models be forced to submit to Advertising?
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Curious to learn more?
Here’s something I enjoyed reading:
https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/marketing-and-sales/our-insights/a-customer-centric-approach-to-marketing-in-a-privacy-first-world
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