I spend a lot of energy each day telling my 7- & 9-year-old boys to say 'please' and 'thankyou', 'don't speak with your mouth open', 'stop hitting each other' (yes, they are that age….), so as adults at work why do we on occasion forget all those things that have been drilled into us as kids? This seems to be more the case while ‘transacting’ online, when potentially it feels less real, and especially when having a conversation with people around data exchange.
We often struggle to articulate in a polite and clear way to people exactly what information they have agreed to give us, what we are going to do with it and what they are going to get in return. Often our interactions come across as transactional and robotic with no human overlay so it's no surprise that according to Dentsu Digital Society Index a third of people globally have opted out of giving away their data and receiving personalised ads in the last year. In fact, half of us as marketers believe we are offering a fair exchange to our consumers for their data whilst only 37% of people agree with us and there is a greater disconnect in what people expect to get back in return for giving us their data ('the value exchange').
This is further reinforced by some qualitative research we did recently on the highly sort after Gen Z audience (16–24-year-olds) who simply want to feel respected and valued by brands. When asked what a bad brand exchange looked like they said words such as 'false', 'impersonal', 'staged' however a good interaction felt 'supportive', 'tailored, 'fun' with many references to getting ‘rewards' and 'free stuff' in exchange. Not asking and listening to your consumers represents a missed opportunity especially with this GenZ cohort who have grown up being very at ease with interacting with branded content online (evidenced by Dentsu CCS).
So, what do we need to do?
Simply ask your customers, what they want from you in exchange for sharing their data. Run user surveys and interviews to understand their expectations, in fact they will appreciate being asked and being listened to; remember they are human too! And at the end of the day, if this doesn’t convince you, developing this human relationship is good for you and your brand, brands that have a high EQ have been proven to outperform share price performance by 400% over the last 10 years (Carat brand EQ research).
So PLEASE remember to 'Listen, don't interrupt, don’t tell lies and just be polite!'
Thank you for your time that you’ve taken to read my thoughts 😊
To find more information on this topic download the dentsu report The Cookieless World - A Guide for the New Era of Digital Marketing