By Louis DiGiacomo, VP of Product
I get a good number of cold calls each month - we all do. Some are from recruiters reminding me they have the perfect candidate, some are from vendors saying how they can enhance our cookieless technology, and some are reminding me that my car’s extended warranty has expired.
I realized last week, a huge pet peeve of mine is when I answer the phone and the person on the other end just says, “Hi is this, Lou?”. No introduction, no mention of their name, where they’re from, why they’re calling, etc.
To a degree I get it; they want to make sure the contact info they sourced from their aggregator is clean and maybe move on to the next lead if it’s not. But something about the abrupt intro just sets an uncomfortable tone in my mind.
After some thought I realized what specifically bothers me here- they’re asking me to confirm my identity without giving me any indication of who they are or why they want my information. They’re asking me to transform their third-party data into zero/first-party data (ICYMI: Add Collecting Zero-Party Data to Your 2022 Marketing Plan) without any relationship in place. To give them my personal information with no trust established and without communicating the value exchange for me as the owner of the data.
It was a good reminder to delve into the mindset of the modern consumer and their journey through NextGen content consumption. There are many websites, brands, publishers etc. currently using Dark Patterns to facilitate accidental opt-in consent- e.g., making the “Accept All” button big & colorful and the “Manage My Preferences” button much less luminous. And I think a lot of these behaviors will hopefully come under greater scrutiny in the next few years. Probably won’t stop the less-than-tactful cold calls, but hopefully, there begins a greater privacy trend toward that side of the data world as well.
As our industry pushes forward and blazes a new trail in data usage, we need to keep in mind the consumer’s trust and choice are the most important elements of any modern data exchange. Without those elements, the value exchange can’t be adequately completed.
Now something tells me the car warranty solicitors will not seek CCPA compliance- although, maybe we all actually opted in at some point? And they’re not wrong about my extended warranty. Could they have the true holy grail of cookieless tech? And we’re all just years behind?
