Loving the banner stands
So now I find myself combining what seem to be my two favorite themes of this year’s SXSW: privacy and neuromarketing. Woot! If you go back and look at a couple of my previous live blogs, you’ll easily find out that I have a deep seated interest in both subjects, as I firmly believe that as neuromarketing gains in popularity, privacy will only become a bigger concern for consumers. Thus, F**k Privacy: Neuromarketing Is the Web’s Future seems to be a perfect fit for those two interests. Apparently I’m not the only one interested in the subject, either, considering that 40 minutes before the session started the room was already 1/3 of the way full. Now, with 30 minutes to go, it’s at least halfway full with more people streaming in at a pretty steady clip.
20 minutes to go, and something tells me these might be awesome: 
Panelists:
Shaina Boone, Critical Mass
Joseph Carrabis, NextStage Global
Shaina: Privacy has typically been a pretty dry issue.
The Privacy Spectrum: Fear, Anxiety, Tolerance, Exuberance
Shaina: There’s a lot of emotion that goes on around this topic. You would think people were living and dying every day around this topic judging by the way the media handles it.
Forrester has a lot of good research on privacy. There’s a committee called Article 29 in Europe, made up of 22 people, the majority of which are lawyers.
People are really afraid of being watched, and don’t really think about what they get when they are watched. They feel bad and afraid, and don’t realize how them giving up some anonymous data has actually helped their day to day lives.
Concept of fair exchange: I give something and I get something. There’s a sliding scale between pain and pleasure, and you might get more pain if the payout’s greater. Are you willing to give for an equal get?
Now, the things that used to take us a lot of time take us very little time, such as paying bills (paying online vs. writing checks and mailing them), browsing Amazon and Netflix. Note: both of the presenters were in the last session I attended, on the Privacy Bill of Rights, and both had interesting conversational points to make. I thought then that they didn’t entirely agree with the presenters of that session, and now the why is clear. Love that these were back to back for me.
Joseph: Privacy is what I’m not willing to let you know. Health and financial information are good examples of that. You’re more willing to give up financial info if it’s something you want as opposed to something you don’t want.
Some discussion regarding what people would be willing to give up regarding employment, especially in light of reports over the past week about employers asking interviewees to log into their Facebook accounts during the interview process. Joseph’s thesis: you’re going to be more willing to give up some personal information if the job is one you really want and pays well–$100k per year as opposed to $45k per year. Money talks.
Audience member: Our lives are becoming public by default, which is where some of that anxiety comes from. “Everything I do is subject to the awareness of another. What do I want my identity to be now that it’s public by default?”
Shaina: It’s easier to attack marketing data than it is the health industry regarding privacy issues, but your health info is much more important than where you’re clicking on the Nissan website.
Audience member just brought up retargeting/remarketing and that most people don’t realize they’re being tracked. As people begin to catch on to retargeting, the backlash is going to grow. Another audience member said: “Why is it a bad thing that the shoes I didn’t buy at Zappo’s are now on sale and Zappo’s is letting me know about them?”
Not surprisingly, the Target story is coming up in this session, too. It’s a big story, and kind of exposed some inside secrets of marketing that consumers weren’t entirely aware of.
From here, the session got extremely unfocused and hard to follow. With 12 minutes left the presenters finally started talking about neuromarketing, but only after there had been a mass exodus. To truly get a feel for how this session went, I suggest you take a look at the Twitter stream.
Twitter feed: https://twitter.com/#!/search/%23FkPrivacy
Hello and thanks for this post. Sorry I’m just seeing it now. Please do ask me any questions you wanted addressed during the session. I can’t guarantee I’ll provide satisfactory answers and I’ll do my best.
Joseph
Hi Joseph! Thanks for responding! Looking back, I think the primary issue was combining two subjects like that into an hour–each subject on their own could easily take up multiple hours on their own! I really did want to learn more about neuromarketing–best practices, how it’s currently being used, what the future of it is, etc. Do you have any content on it that you would be willing to share?
Thanks!
Aubrey