PRIVACY
The new world of marketing
More than a century ago one of the pioneers of marketing, John Wanamaker, protested that, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted, the trouble is I don’t know which half it is.” This complaint still holds true for traditional forms of advertising, but recent decades have introduced several innovative models for promoting one’s services or products, especially via digital channels. The feature that distinguishes these more efficient modes of communication is their more focused profiling of contact methods and the persuasion strategies that they adopt. The targeted recipients of information are identified using a degree of personalization that is often quite advanced, and the latest conversational technologies customize the content of the message almost on a person-by-person basis. In this way, communicative effectiveness is maximized via an ongoing refinement process whose success can be measured, and whose effects can be improved on in an increasingly “scientific” way.
The truth about the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation)
European legislation protecting privacy appears to significantly interfere with the new idyllic romance that appears to have formed between businesses and advertising / marketing. Reporting on the subject is full of gaps and innuendo, rather than accuracy and facts, instead aiming to exaggerate the GDPR’s restrictive nature.
To the contrary, while it is true that the possible imposition of sanctions resulting from privacy violations should lead businesses to be cautious and obtain initial and ongoing legal advice on the subject, competent legal guidance aimed at fulfilment of its regulatory requirements indeed provides businesses with a great opportunity to efficiently reorganize their marketing strategies, ranging from defining goals to managing the professionals who will be involved in carrying them out successfully.
The costs related to this transition are concentrated in the early stages of the process. This is the time when you need to design the new marketing structure, understanding what types of customer data are being recorded, stored and tracked, and how it will be used for future promotional efforts. At the same time, you need to survey available tools for tracking, analyzing and planning marketing campaigns, as well as deciding which people in the firm’s organization will be responsible for overseeing the safekeeping, updating and use of sensitive information about the business’ communications stakeholders.
The efficient use of marketing
The modernization of marketing coordination and development efforts therefore entails properly reflecting on the organizational and commercial structure of the company: evaluating contact opportunities and potential new business development are put together in a more formal plan in which the final added-value consulting work of the Law Firm of Cascio & Ferraro is carried out. The value of the Firm’s support involves methodically analyzing the preliminary information, and then using such to implement a process of transitioning towards the new marketing structure to be reflected in the legal documentation. These steps, taken together, permit the business decisionmakers to increase their knowledge the company value that needs to be communicated to the public, the targeted recipients of such promotional efforts, the methods to both measure success and optimize marketing campaigns effectiveness and, of course, the expected results.
Data management tools
However, the issue of privacy does not only affect the relationship between the company and the general public, where current or potential customers are located. Relationships also arise with all those who have a collaborative or subordinate working relationship with the company, and who are therefore immersed in a daily flow of data exchange with the company’s human resources function. This information traffic must be surveyed and classified, in order to regulate each of its components according to the requirements of applicable law, and to establish who the contacts are for their management, protection guarantees and access to the contents that are being traced, as well as the duration of the storage of such data.
In recent years, it is not only marketing that has undergone a profound transformation in methods and applications that have revolutionized it. The introduction of digital devices has brought about an evolution in the work environment that has had an equally disruptive impact on the principles and processes impacting business management. Staff access is recorded using electronic tools that encode input and output signals into a few bits, easy to consult and available for low-cost storage for potentially on a permanent basis. However, in addition to company security badges, people can also be tracked through via digital logs connected to their devices, from mobile phones to laptops and tablets. Very often, employees themselves spontaneously report their whereabouts through social media positing and disclose their personal information via their private accounts. According to Ancient Greek writer, Heraclitus, “Nature loves to hide”. However, times have changed, and contemporary humanity seems to be obsessed with a certain passion for exhibitionism, even to his or her own detriment. The activation of tracking devices, the access and consultation of the information accessible, are all subject to extensive documented regulation. We truly are walking along a precipice where it is easy to fall from Heraclitus’ hidden nature to Orwell’s all-monitored society.
Smart working in the Covid and the post-Covid worlds
Recent years have seen significant growth in issues connected to the complexities of technological development (including as well the legal aspects) and its implications for the management of smart working. According to the Smart Working Observatory of the Politecnico di Milano in Italy, the share of employees working from home in 2019 either continuously or occasionally was around 4.8% of the total; however, in 2020, Covid-19 containment strategies led many (if not most) companies to resort extensively to this form of employment arrangement. During the first lockdown of March 2020, 6.6 million workers in Italy were remotely working. The “new normal” that is facilitating the incorporation of smart working more permanently into companies’ business models is expected to result in 5.3 million individuals working in some way from home, representing about 25% of the country’s working population. 54% of companies are ready to regularize more “agile” or “flexible” ways of working [link to: https://www.ilsole24ore.com/art/smart-working-54percento-imprese-continuera-usarlo-ADzchDUB], with the resulting need to revise the employment and collaboration agreements, as well as the need to develop specific, customized policies for data management relating to company network remote access, mechanisms for verifying employee compliance with contractual and other commitments, as well as defining the roles of those tasked with supervising the application of such rules.
Streamlining the business enterprise
A famous graphic novel by Alan Moore asked, “Who will watch the watchmen?” (quoting Roman author, Juvenal, “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” in Latin from his “VI Satire”). First and foremost, this task falls to the clauses of the company’s privacy policy and the work of streamlining the goals and processes behind them. The ability to clearly identify the relationship between aims and means produces benefits for all and is the primary guarantee of compliance with the arrangements by all parties involved. At the same time, transparency in working methods, in how they interact, and in the manner in which results are measured, leads to value that distinguishes the company from its competitors in the marketplace. In a world that is increasingly concerned with sustainability, attention to corporate social responsibility (and especially their ethical codes), the care dedicated to privacy is a central feature of institutional communications and an important consideration in the eyes of customers, who are increasingly sensitive to those companies who have invested time and resources in it.
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