The Future as it relates to customer data

Quotes

• “If you think of picking up on yesterday’s conversation where privacy is what you’re not supposed to do with data and on day one we talked about what you should be doing with data, the abstraction between those to is really the answer to your question. This is the kind of conversation where I’ll just say, ‘I’m not really sure’ and anybody who tells you they’re 100% sure is probably wrong but I’ll give my thoughts on it.” -Max“I think what we’re going to see very soon maybe in the next four or five years is a world of finance collapsing or clashing with the world of marketing. What I mean is, take your marketer’s hat off for a second and put in your CEO hat running the business as such. If you think about how that business is evaluated, usually what’s going on when we valuate a business is someone is using a model like discounted cash flow or one of time-tested true systems for understanding the value of a company.” -Max“I have been noticing that the valuations in the market right now are inaccurate the more that we get into a world described by customer data. Concretely what I mean is, the way that you would cover an analog company is remarkably different from the way that you would cover Google, for instance.” -Max“Usage basis. That’s something that only digital companies can do and it’s one of the objectives that we aim at whenever we work on one of the digital transformation projects. We are aiming you towards a world in which you are going to be evaluated based on the signals that you understand and can take action on and the signals that you understand and you can’t take action on, you’re going to monetize.” -Max“This is what the big platforms that havebuilt the internet have done. They’ve created giant systems to collect as much data as possible, figure out who it is most valuable to and then monetize it to those people. They’ve since been able to bridge out into all sorts of other businesses using thesame dataset.” -Max“This is a call to marketers to realize the true value of what you’re doing. What we really should be doing at to value companies is, what customer intent are they capturing, can they supply that demand.” -Max“In the next four years I think we’re going to see this paradigm shift in finance as Wall Street who aren’t marketers aren’t necessarily technologists. They’re going to start figuring this out and get a clue that the ability to understand your customer is the primary function is a digital economy.” -Max“The reckoning is coming where the politicians are going to get involved in how data is collected.” -Ben “There are two possible futures at least in the way I see things. You can look at certain governments that are embracing data and it’s worth noting that the pandemic has only accelerated what is already happening.” -Max“Like the whole fight over Tik-Tok right? Who has access to every 18 to 28 year old in the US and practically in the world, which government is going to own access to that data.” -Ben “To a large extent, governments were the original creators, users, collectors of data because they needed to know who they were governing. In the Western world, this idea of the consent of the governed, starts to come in to what we’re talking about at the core of data privacy.” -Max“The fight over these data sets is going to play out one way or another either we’re going to see what Estonia is leading right now, which is sovereign identity. We may see some New York Stock Exchange of data.” -Max“The alternative is we leave it at its current inertia and if we do, we’re going to see more polarization and I don’t mean just political, I also mean the competition that we are seeing in the market to understand you in ways that you don’t understand and there is going to be the good guys and the bad guys.” -Max“Don’t forget your brand and the fact that your brand has an identity as well. We’ve conducted several studies now that confirms that the way you collect data, what data you ask for and your brand are all inter-related. If you ask for data that you don’t need, your brand suffers.” -Max“Also, when you use data you have to think about whether or not the use case or what you’re doing only benefits your business. Some things that only benefits your business are totally okay but usually those things that only benefits your business are only okay if it’s about providing you insights and not about bringing in multiple parties.” -Max“To CMOs out there who are looking to build a brand, while preserving a brand identity in a digital world, you need to think about data collection not just as something that you want to collect as much as possible then figure out what to do with it. You also want to think about it like a chef putting together a recipe and ask yourself, do you actually know what you’re cooking?” -Max“If you don’t know what you would do differently for your customer, then the question I have for you is why would you collect that information in the first place. I think in some level, you probably haven’t done the necessary diligence to really deserve that data.” -Max