Next Gen: Future thinking 2015 marketing and technology - Tomorrow's legal flashpoints
In just one month’s time, on 8 October at the London Film Museum, Results International is bringing together a diverse group of players in the world of marketing and technology. Tech entrepreneurs, agencies, brands, publishers and investors will be hearing about and discussing some of the biggest issues facing the future of the industry, with speakers such as Facebook, Cheil, Accenture, Vice Media and iCrossing. Tickets are available now here.
Here are some relevant key insights from Stephen Groom, a leading advertising lawyer at Osborne Clarke, one of the event sponsors:
The rule of law may sometimes seem no more than a judge's dream in a world where adtech runs hard to keep up with the connected consumer. But what about the role of law in a tomorrow where 'big data', 'programmatic' and 'disruptive marketing' will probably be as much on the verbal scrapheap as by all accounts 'LOL' is already on social media?
The answer is that if stakeholders will only wake up and smell the jurisprudential coffee, legal disciplines and principles will still have a huge role to play.
Take AI-driven online display: tomorrow's winners will be the players who recognise the importance of underpinning a complex process with coverage of the essentials any lawyer would expect. We are talking about data basics such as ownership, control, access and security.
Equally important is transparency: just who are the players in the campaign's eco microsystem, what parts do they play and what are the relationships? Don't forget accountability also, which only clear contractual principles can engender and embed into relationships.
Then there is 'post-digital' targeting and the elephant in the room that is consent. Perhaps the law has been shown to be an ass in the great EU cookie law debacle, but with class actions looking ever more likely to take the US lead (see Vidal-Hall & Ors vs Google), reforms on the way in Europe that are guaranteed to turn the screw on the industry and ad blocking tech gaining traction, threats like these will only be faced down by the future's marketers working hand in glove with enlightened counsel.
Consumer empowerment is also a sleeping giant. It started in earnest with the birth of the 'midata' movement in the unlikely cradle of the 2011 Davos World Economic Forum. The pace is now quickening. There is a looming threat of legal rights to call for delivery up of all financial service and utility-generated data. And the consumer arms race does not end there. Consumer rights laws, capped off with October's Consumer Rights Act, are building a formidable arsenal aimed at the marketing and sales process.
This will be topped off with a legal right to demand 'repeat performance' if a sold product fails to match up with anything said or written about it by the marketer to the consumer, offline or online. Here are game-changing roles for the law in the service provision and sales processes which cannot be ignored by tomorrow's advertisers and ad service providers.
So these are just three of the many arenas in which the role of law is guaranteed to loom large for 'Adtech Two' gladiators. And we haven’t even touched on social media engagement and an international landscape in which 'jurisdiction creep' means that all potential territorial data law touchpoints are to be ignored at one's peril. Interesting times ahead!
To buy your tickets for the Next Gen: Future Thinking 2015 conference, visit the website.