In April we reported that a revolution is brewing in branded content with a look at Haptic technology. Here is part 2 of that article…

Insight #2: The movement for Privacy

People are fast becoming wise to just how much their digital lives are being monitored, and scandals like Google and the NSA only further incite many to expose and amplify the negative elements of online tracking, profiling and targeting of the masses. This means the desire for increasing levels of Privacy just isn’t going away.

That’s why Blackphone – ‘the phone nobody else dares to make’ – caught our attention. Instead of competing on HD (or 4K even?!) cameras, or some other new gizmo, Blackphone simply offers users a completely untrackable digital life. And if you have doubts about how important this might become to the masses, pause to consider how much of a must-have a Blackberry once was, largely down to its secure mail and innovative BBM platform.

However, the most interesting aspect of this movement for ‘total privacy’ will be the impact on brand and product marketing if the movement really does leap into the mainstream.

Consider the reliance the Digital places upon having an ability to track, monitor, group, profile and target people. Now picture a time (in the near-future) when that luxury has been removed, and it’ll likely be the desirables who’ll disappear from your view first! Clumsy moves and careless abuse of what’s still a relatively young platform means all but the most the trusted brands may stand to lose their ability to seemingly ‘read minds’. And if consumers do enable ‘stealth mode’, it’ll mean no more targeted ads, no more personalised experiences, no more interruption/disruption marketing.  Whole industries will have to radically rethink their approach.

How will brands find and acquire new customers? How will you even identify existing ones? What might be the new model?

We predict that this will be a natural tipping point for many to finally embrace the more modern idea of starting movements to attract critical masses around you, switching your customer acquisition model from ‘push’ to ‘pull’ (which, incidentally, is far cheaper and more sustainable anyway… making it laughable that more brands haven’t caught this Jetstream already).

What can we say, old models die hard (but they do die!).

Via Vision Nine