How to make your brand stand out as an ethical data user

How to make your brand stand out as an ethical data user is a great question. And it starts with you. Or rather, it starts with you, me and the lady next door.

All of us as individuals now have a deeper sense of the things that matter. Our family, our friends and our data. The growing conversation about data protection, privacy and security is set to continue well through this year, next year and beyond. But so too is the wider question of data ethics.

So as a marketer, how to make your brand stand out is already part of our psyche. Fundamentally, it’s about doing the right thing because it’s the right thing to do. Not because it’s written down in some law or regulation.

The most successful brand owners on the planet all share one thing in common irrespective of their market or customer segments. They all have a higher sense of purpose.

Pioneer sets example of ethical data user

A good example of this is from my own tiny Zoroastrian community. The principle of ‘enlightened self-interest’ has been taken a step further by Tata, one of the most successful Indian-owned multinational companies on the planet. It happens to own my favourite car brand – Jaguar.

The company was started by Jamshedji Nusserwanji Tata, an Indian pioneer industrialist, who founded the Tata Group, India’s biggest conglomerate company. He was born to a Parsi Zoroastrian family in Navsari, a place where my own family comes from.

He had the vision and purpose to build a company on ancient Zoroastrian values that place contribution to the wider community on an equal basis with wealth creation and profit. It has always returned 30% of its profits to good causes.

In 2015, India became the first country in the world to enact a law making it mandatory for companies to invest 2% of their net profits in social development. This type of ‘corporate philanthropy’ isn’t perfect and perhaps is flawed because companies aren’t always the best placed to know how to make a positive, societal impact. However, it shouldn’t stop them trying.

Such an approach hasn’t gone unnoticed.

All brand owners – small, medium and large – can have a higher sense of purpose. And this can transcend the way they talk to us.

For example, many brand owners’ websites greet returning customers and new ones by their first name. Unashamedly, they all deliver personal messages with tailored offers and price points in the pursuit of personalisation.

At the dawn of the internet, we used to call this ‘mass customisation’ – which sounded innocuous, didn’t it?

Getting ‘creeped out’ by the data user

However, over time, we’ve increasingly begun to feel uncomfortable. And such activities powered by technology are starting to feel more ‘creepy than cool’.

That’s because mass customisation or, if you prefer, ‘personalisation’ is based our digital footprint. And this feels particularly intrusive when someone holds and uses sensitive personal information about us without our knowledge or consent.

In many respects it could feel like a betrayal of trust – something that Facebook right now is struggling to come to terms with in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Ads regularly appear on your Facebook wall for stuff you don’t ever remember sharing on Facebook – like dating opportunities for meeting a partner (I’m happily married, thank you!).

Or what about a pair of shoes or new holiday destination that chases you around the web? The art of ‘web scraping’ through exploiting the data stored on cookies as users visit websites can look very appealing to marketers in an uber-competitive online marketplace.

But it’s an uneven online playing field.

Most people would like to decide for themselves just who knows exactly what about them and when. Yet marketers often know more about the buyer thanks to intense data collection. In the era of big data, there’s been a shift in the control over data about us. We’ve had less oversight and less control of that data that forms our digital identity – personal information such a name, address, health data, our dreams, data on our family and friends and attitudes, values, perceptions, beliefs and behaviours.

This lack of control is something that consumers are beginning to feel directly and respond to. In an online environment, those brand owners that stand out as ethical data users will be those that understand and respect the delicate balance between ‘legitimate interests’ and the rights, freedoms and interests of individuals.

The answer is to listen. Those brand owners with a clear vision and purpose are those that actively listen to what their customers, clients, supporters and employees care about. They leave space to listen to their concerns, observe their actions and react in good time.

Data user – raise your game

In conclusion, it’s fair to say that the ever-growing impact of business on society means that citizens and consumers can expect corporate power to be exerted responsibly. As citizens, we’ve become more sceptical, self-organised and prone to challenge authority. In response, brand owners must raise their game in how to build and maintain trust.

The result is that tomorrow’s company and organisation will become increasingly proactive and thorough in how it views its responsibilities and the impact it has on the wider society it serves. And at the core of this movement is deepening digital trust in order to do more, not less, with personal data.

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