How is Mobile-Social changing the way you connect with your customers?
This mornings Loyalty World saw a lively and controversial debate between Martine Edgell, Digital Communications Specialist at Mercedes Benz & Smart, Ilicco Elia, Head of Mobile at LBi and CEO/ Founder Tony Fish, Entrepreneur, AMF Ventures. It started relatively calmly with Ilicco explaining that mobile is not just about applications, it is about putting mobile at the centre of your service and communicating with your customers using multiple channels.
Tony (for those of you who run a loyalty scheme you may know him better as George Clooney or Brad Pitt*) agreed, explaining that the objective of a loyalty scheme is simply to help you to keep your consumers consuming, and that a mobile phone is not actually a consumption device. It is the data that the phone holds which is valuable to companies. It can tell them where that person has been, who they have interacted with, what social networking they do and in the case of people purchasing through apps, what they have bought.
But that was about the only thing they seemed to agree on. Tony Fish put forward the idea that in the case of Facebook it is you, the user, who is the product and Facebook’s advertisers are the consumer – they are consuming you. Without giving up your data you are worthless and it is your decision about whether or not you actually share this information, not the device’s.
Despite understanding the principles of what he was saying, Martine and Illico were sceptical of this analogy and it led to a pretty heated debate around the ownership of data.
Do you own your own data or does the company that holds that data about you own it?
Tony very strongly argued the view that “Privacy is Dead” and that the whole concept of privacy is just an ideology. What data can you claim to actually own? Your bank number, date of birth, a photo even?
Martine clearly felt very strongly opposed to this, believing that everybody should have the right to protect their data. A view Chairman Vince-Wayne Mitchell, Professor of Consumer Marketing at Cass Business School, City University seemed to share. Whilst agreeing that intellectually Tony may have a point, he felt that taking such a stance in a professional setting was risky. By using and abusing information about your consumers you risk upsetting them and alienating them against your organisation. And subsequently you lose their willingness to share any more information with you, a topic touched on in a number of the presentations yesterday.
As a fellow marketer it was a really interesting debate to watch – everyone in the room, myself included, became a little uncomfortable as our beliefs as “marketers” clearly conflicted with our values as a “consumer”.
In the end, they all concluded that reward schemes at least helped to close the loop. They provide both parties with a mutually beneficial value proposition. Consumers swap their data with companies in exchange for points and rewards.
Let us know your thoughts – who do you think owns your data? You as a marketer or you as a consumer?
