Data ethics: An unconsidered element of brand reputation
It has become essential for marketers to build confidence in users that data within organisations, is protected and used lawfully
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In the movie Spider-Man, Uncle Ben gave a very important lesson to Peter Parker - "With great power comes great responsibility." In today’s digital era, millions of people are using online platforms like Google, Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and generating digital footprints of their activities. These platforms just represent the tip of the iceberg. The amount of data getting generated through phone calls, car navigation systems, numerous apps and Internet of Things-enabled smart devices, etc. is outstripping human imagination. This huge amount of data is a treasure, and technologies like big data analytics, artificial intelligence and machine learning are helping organisations in deriving valuable insights from this treasure.
These insights can help organisations to make more informed decisions and improve their services. More the data, better the insights and better the services leading to improved brand reputation. For example, Netflix used collected data on its viewers to determine what they might like to see and came up with a TV series called House of Cards, which became an immediate hit. As another interesting example, over the years, by collecting data from variety of sources including satellite imagery, geological surveys, municipality maps, third-party surveys, etc. Google has mapped almost the entire world and has created tremendous value for its users through its popular application Google Maps.
The above examples show the glimpse of power that comes from data. But along with the power, organisations also have responsibility to protect this data. Commonly considered threat to data is related to cyber attacks. For example, in 2016, Uber suffered a massive cyber-attack that exposed the confidential data of 57 million customers and drivers. But an unconsidered threat comes when data rich organisations don’t safeguard their data properly and become prone to data leakage. As an example, in early 2018, Facebook came in news for negative reasons as Cambridge Analytica, a British political consulting firm, harvested data from 50 million Facebook users without their consent and supported Donald Trump campaign in the 2016 US election.
Till the time news of data breach is not out, organisations can enjoy the mileage of their brand reputation, but the day any scandal comes out, losses can become uncontrollable. Cambridge Analytica scandal took Facebook’s stock downwards leading to multi-billion dollar loss in market cap. Many influential users started leaving Facebook, for example, Farhan Akhtar deleted his personal Facebook account and Elon Musk deleted the Facebook pages for Tesla and SpaceX. In addition, several advertisers planned to move away from the platform, for example, US software giant Mozilla and Germany's Commerzbank said that they will pull advertising from Facebook.
Moreover, Facebook is facing several regulatory and governmental probes and several investors have banned their funds from investing in the company. For example, the Federal Trade Commission has opened an investigation into Facebook’s privacy practices and Nordea Asset Management, the Nordic investment house, has banned its sustainable funds from investing in Facebook. In short, Facebook’s brand reputation has been damaged seriously because of an unconsidered element – data ethics. The scandal at Facebook has made the organisations realise that hard earned brand reputation over the years can be wiped off in minutes if there is any compromise with data ethics.
One of the key responsibilities of marketing leaders is to build trust in their respective brands. Earlier, to grow and sustain this trust, marketers used to focus on storytelling, social causes, events, thought leadership, media relations, customer testimonials and other image building initiatives. But now, it has become essential for marketers to build confidence in users or customers that their data within organisations is protected and used lawfully. Marketers could take multiple measures to include data ethics in their brand reputation management plans. A few of them are as follows:
Warren Buffett has said, “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it.“ If marketers remember this statement, they will look at their role differently. The role of marketing is to continuously get new users and retain existing users. If users are confident that a brand will guard their data, then they would try new products from the brand even if it requires sharing more data. But if they find a brand untrustworthy, even the slightest bit, they will not shy away from moving on.