Brands That Are Winning Post GDPR

We’ve told you about our transparency / inclusion / dialogue trust model, here are the real time applications.

Easyjet are doing a great job regarding transparency and inclusion in response to the GDPR. Their educational video opens with the line ‘we know that our privacy policy may not be the most interesting subject in the world, but keeping you, and your personal information, safe is important to us. So, we’ve made a little film, to help explain our privacy promise.’

The video goes on to state that Easyjet promises to be open, regarding the use of personal data. It then distinguishes between different kinds of data; that which is necessary to board the plane, that which is necessarily shared with other organisations, that which enables an additional opt in service (including providing a mobile number, or downloading the app), that which enables service improvement (including preference data and information from feedback mechanisms), and that which is used to provide targeted marketing.

This tiered approach to data use, providing clear consent opportunities at every level, makes it easy to understand how personal data is used by an airline.

What Easyjet doesn’t offer is decision making support for their consumers. A short advertisement video from Barclays Digisafe is pushing a service which is designed to educate consumers regarding mechanisms that will allow them to take control of personal data online. They offer a definition of personal data, examples of where consumers are currently giving it away, a data dictionary of common terms, and directions for retrieving ownership.

There are also interactive challenges, designed to highlight behaviour that indicates misuse of data. The vishing challenge (voice phishing) is a recording of a call between a consumer and a fraudster pretending to be a bank. The player needs to hit the ‘alert’ button, whenever they detect suspicious activity. This tool is a great way of making sure that consumers can not only access and understand the relevant information, but are also supported in developing their understanding and making personal decisions regarding trust.

Brands are hitting the hygiene marks for trust and privacy once transparency and inclusion are at the heart of their approach. Gaining an edge comes down in part to going the extra mile in the name of building meaningful relationships with consumers. Mozilla Firefox is a great example of this.

They offer continual opportunities for dialogue, acting quickly on responses from their active community base. When they run data experiments, they blog about how participants are selected, they actively offer the option of refusal, they seek permissions continually, and make the code they run in experiments publically available. They also list the data practises for each experiment individually, for example, participants are given a random ID for the experiment that is not associated with any other identifier.

By offering their content up in this way, they encourage interaction and conversation, playing into their consumers’ desire for co-creation. Through these mechanisms they are enabling accessibility, but without compromising on user privacy or autonomy. They keep data and processes sensitive by, for example, making only code run on raw data available.

How can you get in on the action?

The winning formula for brands is, first, to ensure that transparency and inclusion are the foundation for their product / service, and second, to use dialogue enabling tools to get closer to consumers. Identify what engaged consumers want, whether it’s the delegating attitude of airline passengers, or the community involvement attitude of tech startups, and create a brand position that is responsive to their desires.

Getting closer, without breaching the trust of a given individual, and supporting them in navigating products and services according to their own priorities, will provide a foundation for fundamentally trustworthy interactions.

Want to know more? Download our full report on the changing nature of trust.

If you’d like to know more, come speak to us at Adeptiv UK. We are a data-driven dialogue agency in London which specialises in helping clients get, keep and grow customer relationships at scale.