Tom Stein: Is the golden goose cooked?
Tom Stein, chief creative officer at Stein IAS isn’t doing what most of us are doing at this time of year, which is looking forward to the start of the festive break, to the resolutions we plan on making (and breaking), to 2019 plans and targets. Instead, he’s looking back.
Is the golden goose cooked?
Yes, you heard that right. In the process of writing his upcoming book, Paradox: Feeling Machines and the Rise of Post-Modern Marketing, Stein takes a look at the foundations on which our industry was built during the ‘golden era’ of advertising. And the journey taken to enter this point - that he calls the ‘post-modern marketing’ era - built instead on the ‘golden goose’, which we all know as customer data.
“Way back in the beginning, the idea was beguiling. It was disruptive far before the word came into common use. Emerging digital brands and media would give you extraordinary convenience and value – never-before-imaginable in promise and fact – for free. As in zero. Zilch. Nada.
“Well, not exactly. Rather, you would get this tremendous value in exchange for just a little bit of your data.”
And so was born a golden goose.
Providing more measurability and targeting than ever before – marketers use customer data in a myriad of ways. As digital technology has advanced and taken a greater hold (and closer eye) over our lives, are we becoming slaves to it? And furthermore – has all the bad behaviour in milking the goose for all its worth, damaged consumer trust in brands beyond repair?
“Data breach after data breach until we almost turn a blind eye. The invasion of individuals’ privacy, corporations’ systems and intellectual property. Governments’ ability to function. Nations’ sovereignty. Facebook and Cambridge Analytica. The Russians and the North Koreans. Equifax and Yahoo. Ugly stuff, and it will get much worse before it gets even a little better.”
There is a backlash coming and according to Stein, for some that may well mean they are ‘up shit’s creek without a paddle’.
“This much is clear, at least to me. The goose may not be dead, but it is in the roasting pan and the heat is being turned higher. #DeleteFacebook and Zuckerberg’s congressional testimony mark an inflection point. As people and businesses decide to keep their data to themselves (with good reason), the data scientists and martech marvels may need to find new lines of work.”
Read more of Tom Stein’s thoughts in his new book, here.