OPINION: Marketing in 'Big Data' era presents technical, ethical challenges

The hit song "Every Breath You Take" by The Police is one of my favorite songs of all time. However, it is not a song one would play during a romantic encounter, as most would agree that its lyrics are a bit on the creepy side, unless you are a stalker in training. Recently however, I had the misfortune of discussing the implications of living in the world of big data, and the song's chorus seemed rather apt.

Imagine a world where you as the consumer—your every search, your every page of content, your Facebook wall, your tweets, your blogs, your choice of friends, your every inclination and decision—is dissected by technology. We now know with a degree of certainty what you like and can place the appropriate communication before your eyes.

Eerie as this may sound, this is the world of big data we live in, where we merge the three kinds of media data together: Bought data, the ad-serving and paid search, the owned data, the website data analytics including a brand’s Facebook wall page, and earned data, the social-media reporting on Facebook, Twitter, blogs and so on. All three give a potent indicator for marketers to dissect their audiences. Social probably gives the most nuance, as epitomized by social monitoring tools that scrape the internet, including social sites, to build profiles of social commentators. After all, people today seem to live half their lives on social, like making footsteps in the sand—or should I say concrete as it sticks around for an almost eternity.

The upside for a marketer is that now they can see the implications of their bought media on earned and owned media. Many agencies today measure this relationship not only for their clients’ brands but also in consideration of the relevant competitive activity. Research has proven that social done right drives brand preference and in return drives marketing returns. What is harder to do on a consistent basis is to have earned media drive communications to be more effective. Not all clients consistently listen in on their consumers to see what they are saying about their brands.

There are three challenges in this world of big data:

• Technology: Today the ever-evolving landscape is making the data more open and accessible than ever before. Digital platform solutions have opened up APIs that allow plug-ins from many sources to permit real-time tracking of data sources. Massive global data platforms exist among most agencies to harmonize these data, and more often than not this is the hardest of the challenges, easier said than done.
• People: Data analysts are required to make sense out of data. There are many different kinds of people in the world, and only a small subset loves data. An even smaller subset can relate to the world of marketing-communications. Thankfully for us, media agency folks are notoriously gifted in this department, able to manage the minutiae of data and apply a strategic as well as economic sense to it.
• Trust: In the world of big data, clients have a varying degree of trust level with their agencies. Some trust them implicitly and explicitly and are true partners in the business. Others are on the far extreme and are hesitant to share their data. Unfortunately most clients today are inundated with data and are hard-pressed to dedicate resources to this end. The smart client would leverage the agency’s resources in helping them establish and build the right frameworks around their marketing communications. After all, agencies have been an integral part of their efforts for the longest time; it only makes sense for them to help bridge this new frontier.

At the beginning, I mentioned the misfortune regarding big data, and it revolves around ethics. As corporations track, follow, engage and manage communications to consumers, data privacy will raise its head. Although companies today will look at legal definitions of what they can and cannot do, their practices can and will raise the ire of the everyday consumers.

As with the song, many consumers will see the effort to get closer to them as a love ballad, but others will see the creepy stalker. Today’s consumers’ are smarter and much better informed about their rights to privacy, something that brands should be more cautious about. Technology and legal definitions aside, social media seems to be the ultimate consumer tribunal, so in this case, let the seller beware.