15 FEATURE Data and the tipping point of trust
Warren Buffett famously said, “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it.” In the last 12 months, society has witnessed a mammoth rupture of reputations – from the #metoo movement and its perpetrators, through to an ever-increasing army of young workers standing up to global employers in the wake of wage rorts. In the world of marketing, the breakdown of brand reputation has resulted from massive data breaches that appear to happen when companies put profits ahead of ethics. But is it really a case of good versus evil when it comes to data mining for marketing, or is it simply that we have not yet mastered how to make sense, and use transparently, the insights technology enables? Before diving into the answer, first we need to understand the matchstick responsible for reigniting the 2018 debate on data.
Facebook fallout?
On 2 April 2018 Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, apologised in court for his company’s role in the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data scandal that included the collection of the personally identifiable information of up to 87 million Facebook users. “It’s clear now that we didn’t
