DMAi Convention 2013: ‘People will not give you data if you abuse that data’

The question and answer sessions on day one of the DMAi Convention underway in Mumbai (4 and 5 June) saw topics like data collection, relevance, regulation and analytics being discussed in good measure.

Responding to a query on how companies decide when to get rid of data, Abhay Johorey, head, Airtel Online, said there was a term for it: ‘purge’.

He added, “One part of it is about how long to keep the data, and what data to keep. If a customer doesn’t give you profit, you get rid of him.”

The other, he explained, was about keeping the data relevant. “There is big data and there is long data. You can study how a customer behaved over a period of time,” he said, adding that indicators from baselines could help predict future trends on behaviour.

The focus shifted with an audience question to the clampdown on data collection in markets like Europe, and its potential impact on digital marketing.

On the future of digital marketing if ‘no data could be collected’, Manish Vij, founder, Smile Vun Group, said, “Theoretically, it is possible, and a lot of these things (that prevent user data from being captured) have been available for a long time. There are commercial interests globally that will not let this happen. They will (probably) end up getting consumers to launch products that do the job.”

Johori added, “People will not give you data if you end up abuse that data. If you can add value to the consumer, why will he not give you the data? People with the right intent, will use it right to gain competitive advantage.”

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