Data is the new currency

Chris Riddell is one of Asia’s most sought after futurists, although a Brit he now lives in Melbourne, Australia. He is a renowned emerging trend spotter for businesses senior leaders in today’s highly disrupted world. A futurist analyses markets and makes predictions about where economies will be in the future.

The production of data is one consequence of technology entering every area of our lives. New devices like the Apple Watch or iPad are so lucrative because of the data they collect on their users. The insights we can glean from consumer data is like the new oil or coal in the modern economy.

He cited the example of Yahoo’s Flickr, which logs the GPS location of a user when they take a photograph.

This data is sold to city planning departments who can then analyse where people are spending most of their time when in a city centre. For example, the data can be used to create a heat map of where tourists are spending their days out.

He went on to talk about how data has given marketers the ability to join the online and offline worlds together. The brands of the future will thrive by ensuring their customers have an amazing experience with them every time. Brand loyalty can no longer be taken for granted.

All these opportunities give us hope for a more interconnected future where technology combined with data can provide solutions to many of today’s problems in marketing, but it is not necessarily going to be an easy road.

For Chris, marketers have been poor at explaining to their customers the benefits of the digital revolution. DMA privacy research found that the vast majority of people believe businesses and not people benefit from the modern data economy.

Marketers should be telling stories that demonstrate just how much people gain from sharing their data. No market can survive without customers and potential customers understanding a fair value exchange. This is the challenge for marketing and advertising all over the world.