GDPR is set to have a gigantic impact on the relationship between brands and consumers, and yet it still seems to provoke more yawns than interest. We ask what it is, why it’s so scary and where the gilt-edged opportunities are for enterprising brands and agencies.

IN THIS EPISODE ⇩

Richard Madden, Head of Strategy for CRM and Direct, and strategist Jacob Lovewell discuss:

- The General Data Protection Regulation - a blessing and a curse.

1. The right to be informed (opting in to use of your data)

2. The right of access (who owns your data)

3. The right to rectification (requesting inaccurate data be corrected)

4. The right to complete erasure (getting your data deleted)

5. The right to restrict processing (opting into processing and sharing your data)

- The hefty new penalties for non-compliance - making an example to encourage the others

6. The right to data portability (being able to move your data)

7. The right to object (preventing abuse of data by government)

8. Rights related to automated decision making and profiling (the right to a human second opinion)

- Building renewed trust in corporations, one customer at a time

- The rise of the PPI-style ambulance chasers

- How ready are brands?

- Why the burden of responsibility tends to fall on the marketing department

- Alerting the C-suite to the state of your data

- Forcing Direct and CRM to do good work

- The creative revolution - placing genuine emphasis on the importance of creativity

- (Very limited) examples of very good work

- Clients taking the blinkers off

- A new breed of creatives and strategists

- Direct - the Cinderella of advertising

- Getting ‘junk mail’ and ‘spam’ out of the dictionary

- Creating a new value exchange - a new relationship with consumers

- From My Quantified Self to My Monetised Data Self

- Reasons to be cheerful

- Opportunities for enterprising brands and agencies

- Particularly trust-challenged categories like financial services

- The death of programmatic advertising as we know it

- The advantage for large scale platforms

- Redressing the power balance between businesses and consumers

The 'FacebookGate' data scandal poses huge and difficult questions about who has our data, what they use it for, and marketing's complicity. We ask what this crisis means for brands and consumers, and if, indeed, Facebook can change its ways even it it wants to.

IN THIS EPISODE ⇩

Ben Shaw, Head of Strategy and data strategist Jack Colchester discuss:

- What FacebookGate is and where it came from

- What micro-targeting is

- The difference between demographic and psychographic micro-targeting

- Attempting to micro-target the hungover

- The type of data Cambridge Analytica accessed

- How this was an excellent use of platform, but a questionable use of data

- How the public don’t understand the quantity of data they give up and how platforms are using it

- How this could be the beginning of the end of the advertising funding model of the internet

- The trend towards subscribers paying for quality content

- FB shifting from micro-targeting to broadcasting at scale with reach and frequency buys

- Twitter’s openness about data

- Procter and Gamble’s dramatic $140m reduction in online ad spend

- Byron Sharp versus micro targeting

- Why data on its own isn’t enough and the role of an impactful message in creating behaviour change

- Whether micro targeting actually works and where

- What FacebookGate means for brands?

- The impending impact of GDPR

- The need for brands to consider their social impact

- Purpose vs trust in brand comms

- Whether media is killing social media by allowing brands to disrupt the ecosystem

- How brands have reacted - Mozilla and Elon Musk (and Cher)

- YouTube and brand safety - can brands trust the programmatic model and are brands using data in a responsible way

- The reasons most brands won’t walk away from Facebook

- How Facebook is turning into a massive site for banner ads and why brands aren’t seeing results

- Consumer apathy and outrage, and whether consumers even understand how their data is being used

- The staggering amount of data tech giants have on us

- How it could all get much worse with AI and Voice

- The weirdness of AI creating its own AI babies

- The prospect of further skeletons in Facebook’s closet

- Whether it’s possible for Facebook to change

- A hope that we will see a rebalancing of media to creative

The first in an occasional series called Tom and John Go Outside, in which intrepid BBH London strategists Tom Roach and John Harrison go outside advertising to talk to experts from other fields and bring back fresh insights.

IN THIS EPISODE ⇩

Tom and John meet Call Centre Workers - the undisputed experts in handling even the trickiest of customers - and learn 5 important lessons.

From 1’45:

1. Confidence - the key to building instant rapport and trust

- The power of expertise

- The importance of the one to one relationship

- Taking ownership - saying ‘I’ rather than ‘we’

From 4’30:

2. Instant gratification - rising expectations of getting it sorted immediately

- The importance of composure under stress

- Technology’s role in resetting expectations

- The Americanisation of culture

From 7’00

3. Empathy - being on the consumer’s side

- Overcompensating for the absence of body language

- Being observant and picking up signals

- The challenges of delivering a personal relationship at scale

- The importance of listening and asking questions

- The difference between sympathy and empathy

From 10’30

4. Make it easy - reducing customer effort

- Helping consumers who don’t understand

- As an antidote to a complicated world

- Finding a balance between under and over simplification

- Communicating at the right level

From 13’45

5. Finishing on a peak - ensuring people are happier than when they called

- The narrative structure of a conversation

- The importance of making people feel they matter

- Emotion’s role in making memorable experiences

‘Voice’ is this year’s most hyped technology and a fresh front in the clash of the tech titans. But is the rise of the ‘virtual assistants’ an exciting new dawn for brands or a terminal threat?

IN THIS EPISODE ⇩

From 1' 30: Henry Cooke, Head of Voice for BBC R&D

- Interaction and interface design for Voice

- Use cases and the BBC’s Voice interactive radio drama ‘The Inspection Chamber’

- Feeling out the creative space

- What brands can learn about Voice from the BBC

- How a brand talks and the sound of a BBC station

- Design and branding problems with Voice

- Discoverability and attribution on Virtual Assistants

- The Voice hype bubble and the narrowing gap between hype and promise

- The BBC’s role on Virtual Assistants and flying the flag for audiences

- The Cambrian explosion of new tech

From 10' 10: Marcel Kornblum, Head of Creative Tech at BBH London

- Reaching the human threshold in voice recognition

- What the data says about uptake and usage of virtual assistants

- The opportunities and dangers for brands from virtual assistants

- The problems for brands of consumers shopping by Voice

- The existential threat to brands from Amazon/Alexa

- Is your virtual assistant listening to you?

- The creepy thing about contextual data

- Google’s failed experiment in Voice advertising

- Telling your virtual assistant you love it

- The space for branded content, branded entertainment and branded utility

- The PR value of new tech

- How brands should develop for Voice

From 17' 30: Sarah Watson, BBH Global Chief Strategy Officer

- Literally giving brands a voice

- What creative agencies can bring to the party

- The new era of AI marketing

- How brands can filter the hype from the reality around Voice

- Changing consumer behaviour through voice control

- The pitfalls of Voice for brands

- Paring back your creative and avoiding making digital landfill

- The skills of the new age marketer

From 23' 40: Renowned futurist Brian David Johnson, Professor of Practice at Arizona State University

- Effects-based modelling: what it is and how to use it

- Science fiction prototyping and how brands can use storytelling to change the future

- Being more human with our devices

- Defining the AI for your brand

- Towards an age of sentient tools and relationship-based interactions with our tech

- Why tech disruption will always be with us in marketing

- Why we shouldn’t be worried about the rise of tech

- How brands can innovate for new technology: if you can imagine it, you can build it

- Adam Steltzner and how to land a rover on Mars

- Being the hovercraft person

- Writing ‘Wizards and Robots’ with Will.i.am

- Empowering young minds

With interruptive marketing in decline, entertainment a.k.a. branded entertainment a.k.a. branded content has been much lauded as an alternative, but the relationship between brands and entertainment hasn’t always been an easy or successful one. We explore the who, what, when, where, how and why of brands moving into entertainment, with perspectives from BBH Global ECD Pelle Sjoenell, BBH London ECD Anthony Austin, BBH LA Head of Strategy Agathe Guerrier, Head of Entertainment William Swann and strategy director Melanie Arrow.