Data is today’s marketing gospel

Data is the gospel of today. A key piece of faith that surpasses all other beliefs in many areas of life and now especially in marketing. Again – and ever always repeatedly – we are on the verge of having only one place in our collective consciousness at a time for the idea of proper marketing knowledge. Automation, measuring and conversions. Faith only strengthens. If you don’t talk about these you’re past history.

Data is a new source for social experiences

Data is at its best when it saves lives and helps us, for example, by taking the burden off our shoulders in our daily routines; thus freeing us time for other activities, or for rest. Data is also at its best when it helps businesses and nations succeed and grow; thus creating innovation, wealth, jobs and prosperity. At its best, data is also a whole new source of productivity and social experiences.

From marketing perspective, it is clear that the means of modern technology to identify the user and the resulting opportunities to target messages create tremendous prospects for marketing in digital channels. Massive user data and customer data is collected by large retail chains with their loyalty programs, by small ones with their own or purchased customer data – and by medias with their own versios of commercial content collaboration – grinding customer communication and content marketing to the full field of view of network users through marketing automation. A bad scenario in this development is that the relative amount of independent and responsible content and its effectiveness may dilute.

The amount and effectiveness of independent content is diluted

The fundamentals of digitalization are technology, data and people. Human is a factor in creating uncertainty and discontinuity in the equation of digitalization; unstable and difficult to predict. Humanity is also a feature of digitalization that the intentions of the data collector, controller and user are not always sincere. We are currently witnessing this phenomenon on a visible global scale.

Our understanding of responsible development

In the depths of the digitalized consumer society, individual traces of human choices are stored as events, or data. This data is disordered information without meaning and order. When a clear meaningful connection can be found to this information, it becomes valuable information – either for good or less good purpose.

Collectors and managers of user data and customer information play a key role in influencing our choices as consumers and our perceptions of responsibilty in general and of responsible development and responsible consumption.

Massive amount of user data and customer information also brings another perspective to responsibility. The very recent security breaches in Finland, and with them our awakening to the possibilities and even probabilities of serious misuse, make the collection of data and its utilization a socially sensitive issue.

We take what is superior in digitalization; and we add the most troublesome

EU-level regulation on the collection, storage and management of personal data, which came into force a couple of years ago, has created the illusion of lasting privacy. Gdpr can now only prove to be a lofty principle when the most predictable thing happened in digitalization: we take from digital what is superior in it – speed. And we add the most awkward – us humans.

Data will not remain private and private data will not be protected from misuse if the practices in real life do not implement what is enshrined in the legislation and required by operating protocol of various players.

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Timo Keinänen Explorer, service designer, concept designer, art director, strategist, writer and designer.
”I belive that you should be yourself, as all other roles are already taken. If you have the opportunity to express an opinion, express your own.”

Thoughts, posts and opinions represent myself only.