The Data Reawakening
The world is in the midst of a data reawakening. People are waking up to an idea that advertisers have known for a long time. These digital platforms that connect us aren’t free. The price users pay is they become the product, and what a product we are! 26% of Americans are online “almost constantly,” and 77% of Americans go online daily. Users are a product that gets better and better over time.
Newton said it best. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. We’re in the midst of that reaction now.
The Facebook and Cambridge Analytica story has become mainstream news, and what people are starting to see is this wasn’t a data breach like Equifax. This is data that was readily available being used, at first, as intended and as it was not intended after Facebook’s implemented new guidelines To be fair to Facebook, though. What they were doing was quite similar to data approaches adopted by Google, Amazon and seemingly everyone else.
Trust is Gone
Many wrongs don’t make a right, and all this story did was confirm connected consumers’ deepest fears. Before any of these stories broke 4 in 10 consumers worldwide expressed concern with how much personal data companies had on them. Today, only 41% of Americans trust Facebook to follow laws protecting their data, a far cry from the 62% who trust Google and 66% who trust Amazon.
The major thing that happened is everyone’s worst fears were confirmed, and people seem to be realizing that they don’t love Facebook and these other tech companies as much as they love them. 1/3 of Americans wouldn’t care if Twitter disappeared!
The worst thing that could happen to a tech brand is people realizing they could live without it. When The New York Times’ Farhad Manjoo took two months off of getting his news from digital channels, he found himself less anxious and addicted to news, while also being better informed. If the users go away, the companies behind platforms do too.
Waking Up from the Machine
There’s a strong chance all of this blows over and things go back to the status quo, but right now, the momentum is in the opposite direction.
All of this is good in many ways. Consumers and brands should be having a data reawakening. Collectively, our data literacy should come out of this stronger than ever.
Consumers will understand that their data is in fact valuable, and maybe they’ll realize that every action on a platform from every post to every like is a signal being gathered about them. That’s not necessarily a bad thing or a good thing, but it is something that’s important to be aware of and understand.
Brands will wake up to the fact that over-investing in platforms relinquishes control. Platforms have made themselves indispensable avenues for connecting with consumers, and while they are incredibly important and critical for any marketing plan, the goal of marketers shouldn’t be to make another platform the conduit for interaction. The goal should be to get those consumers to owned channels where the brand can control the interaction and the data.
Let the data reawakening begin.