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Most privacy notices are created by privacy teams, composed of lawyers and tech leaders. They are often couched in legalese and sometimes can run to pages of incomprehensible text.
Did the marketing team have sufficient input in its creation to ensure it reflects the brand values?
Savvy consumers demand more
A growing shift in consumer opinion has acted as a catalyst for forward-thinking companies to look again at their privacy notices, questioning not only if they are fit for purpose, but whether they reflect a company’s brand values and aspirations.
Clear and transparent messaging
Our latest research with 3,000 US consumers underlines that consumers are looking for clear and straightforward messaging from a privacy notice. Of those polled, around 85% stressed that good, transparent notices are very important to them having trust in the brand.
A privacy notice needs to be as transparent as possible. The consumer should understand what personal data is being collected and why the company wants to access it. Users want assurance that their data will be used in a responsible way and not sold on to third parties.
Our recent webinar, Privacy Sells: The Value US Consumers Place on Privacy, co-hosted with the American Marketing Association entitled, reviewed the importance of clear, straightforward communication. Panel member, Amy Nixon, the Senior Vice President Strategy at 9Rooftops Marketing, highlighted the disconnect that sometimes exists between a brand’s overarching marketing messages and its privacy notices and challenges marketeers to ensure closer connection to the brand’s existing voice.
“It's very interesting that brands who are extraordinarily thoughtful about the ways that they communicate with their customers, on all kinds of points, default mostly to the legal requirements on communicating privacy to their customers.”
Not just words, there are other ways to make privacy more accessible
Marketeers also need to consider the user journey in the privacy notice. For more ‘edgy’ consumer-facing brands, this could be in the form of a pop-up with the type of language used in the rest of the site. For more conservative companies, it may be more formal.
The design of the notice, the colours, the typeface used and the way opt-in options are presented, all needed to be carefully planned and constantly re-assessed. Given that so much content is consumed via video, considering this format is also relevant.
During the webinar Ben Rapp, Founder and Principal of Securys, said he believes there can be many approaches to delivering a privacy policy.
“There's video, there's popups, there's infographics. There are many options for interaction which are part of demonstrating that you've thought about privacy and are trying to create a trust relationship with your customers.”
Another increasingly popular option which some marketeers are behind is the layered privacy option. This entails providing privacy information to consumers in digestible chunks, so they can consume it in small parts, rather than wading through a weighty document as their only option.
Conclusion
The challenge for marketers is to take the privacy notice to a new level and match, or even exceed, the expectations of consumers. In many ways privacy notices are ‘low hanging fruit’, but they can be the start of a collaboration where marketing personnel and other departments overhaul privacy strategies to ensure they are ready for 2023’s customers.
