Reg Baker, North American Regional Ambassador at ESOMAR, argues that the COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically accelerated both the volume of personal data being collected and the scope of its use, far beyond typical advertising and marketing purposes. Drawing on Pew Research data, Shoshana Zuboff's work on surveillance capitalism, and ESOMAR's own research, Baker makes the case that the market research industry must recommit to privacy-by-design principles and self-regulation before regulators close the window on the profession's traditional exemptions. The talk closes with four concrete actions the industry should take to distinguish itself from advertisers and protect the individuals whose data it relies on.
Key Takeaways
- The pandemic has pushed personal data collection to an all-time high, expanding its use well beyond marketing into public health surveillance and government tracking, with limited public consent.
- Americans are broadly aware their data is collected and broadly opposed to it, yet continue going online anyway. This privacy paradox is a known challenge, not a new one.
- Transparency is a practical tool, not just an ethical one. ESOMAR research found 70% of people are more likely to share data when collectors clearly explain why it is needed and how it will be used.
- Fines alone have not changed big tech behavior. More structural interventions are needed if privacy regulation is to have real effect.
- The research industry must actively distinguish itself from advertisers by never delivering individual-level profiles back to clients without explicit consent, and by applying privacy impact assessments to every project.
- Professional associations, trade bodies, and brands that buy research all have a role to play. Brands can reinforce good practice by preferring suppliers that subscribe to a recognized code of ethics.
Questions & Answers
- Is there a code of ethics you can recommend?
- Baker pointed to the ICC/ESOMAR Code as the primary reference, available on the ESOMAR website. He noted ESOMAR also publishes a family of guidelines that translate the code into specific research settings. Three guidelines were in development at the time of the talk: one on primary data collection and consent, one on secondary data and big data, and one on duty of care. He also named the Insights Association in the US, the Canadian Research Insights and Intelligence Council, and the Market Research Society in the UK as organizations with strong codes.
- When you say distinguish between what market researchers do versus what advertisers and marketers do, how can this effectively be done when much of the data is used and consumed by marketers and advertisers?
- Baker drew the distinction at the individual level. Researchers can deliver segmentation tools, typing tools, or strategic guidance back to clients without delivering individual-level records. A client may then use a typing tool across its customer base, and someone might receive a marketing message because they belong to a demographic or attitudinal segment, not because their individual survey record was handed over. The critical line is not delivering identified individual profiles to clients for direct action unless the individual has explicitly consented and understands how the data will be used. He acknowledged this is harder to enforce with large secondary or big data sources.
- Should we be worried that data privacy concerns will affect the advancement of biologically based research methods such as neuroResearch?
- Baker said he did not think so. He found the neuroResearch presentation earlier in the day genuinely interesting. His view was that the governing question for any research method is the same: what are the risks to the individual from having their data used in this way, and how are those risks mitigated? He recommended privacy impact assessments as a systematic tool for identifying where data could be disclosed, intentionally or inadvertently, and putting appropriate measures in place before the project launches.
Session Notes
The Starting Point: Online Privacy Is Effectively Gone
Baker opened with the premise that, for all practical purposes, online privacy no longer exists. He traced the trajectory from a 2000-era book predicting "a hundred big brothers" driven not by totalitarianism but by capitalism, free markets, and the unbridled exchange of electronic information. He noted the prediction turned out to be roughly 30 years too pessimistic. It happened in about two decades.
"The future we're rushing towards isn't one where every move is watched and recorded by some all-knowing Big Brother. It is instead a future of a hundred big brothers that constantly watch and interrupt our daily lives."
Baker pointed to Shoshana Zuboff's concept of surveillance capitalism as the operative framework. Behavioral data harvested from everyday online activity is packaged as prediction products and sold into behavioral futures markets. Critically, he noted Zuboff's finding that from the start at Google it was understood that users were unlikely to agree to this and that the methods therefore had to be undetectable.
How Americans Actually Feel: Pew Research Data
A 2019 Pew study Baker cited showed a consistent gap between awareness, concern, and action:
- ~74% of US adults say all or most of what they do online is tracked by companies.
- ~80% say they are very or somewhat concerned about how companies use their data.
- ~59% admit they understand little or nothing about what companies actually do with that data.
- Only 18% feel they have any control over their data.
- 81% say the potential risks of data collection outweigh the benefits.
- Social media sites and advertisers are the entities people trust least with their data, yet those are precisely the entities that hold most of it.
COVID-19 as an Accelerant: Two Vectors
1. The Surge to Online Activity
Social distancing requirements pushed enormous volumes of people onto platforms they used less frequently before, accelerating data collection by Facebook, Google, and cloud-based communication tools. Baker cited a physician's screenshot showing a 185% week-over-week increase in personal screen time, most of it on social networking.
Zoom was used as a case study. Its user numbers went from modest to off-the-charts within weeks. Baker noted the platform has faced lawsuits for sharing personal data with Facebook, incidents of "Zoom bombing," and a privacy policy described by one expert as "a bucket of red flags." Several companies and the US Senate moved to restrict its use. Baker's point was not to single out Zoom but to illustrate how fast adoption outpaced privacy scrutiny.
2. Expanded Government and Health Use of Location Data
Countries including the US, China, South Korea, Singapore, Germany, Israel, and Poland moved quickly to use mobile location data for pandemic response. Some applications were relatively benign, such as anonymized analysis showing socioeconomic gaps in who could actually stay home. Others were more invasive:
- China dispatched drones to disperse gatherings detected through location data.
- Contact tracing in multiple countries relied on credit card records to reconstruct movement.
- Apps in the UK notified users when they came near someone diagnosed with COVID-19.
- Tagging individuals by disease status and location raised direct civil liberties concerns.
Baker flagged concern that the US might follow the post-9/11 Patriot Act model and embed pandemic-era health surveillance into longer-term legal infrastructure.
Why This Matters Beyond Targeted Ads
Baker outlined four categories of harm that flow from unchecked personal data use, particularly as AI-driven automated decision-making expands:
- Loss of opportunity: Employment, insurance, housing, and education decisions made on the basis of profiled data.
- Economic loss: Credit, mortgages, and even product pricing shaped by behavioral profiles in discriminatory ways.
- Social detriment: Public embarrassment, stigma from group membership, or unwanted targeting.
- Loss of liberty: Data used as evidence in legal proceedings.
Two Options for the Research Industry
Option A: Recommit to Privacy by Design
Baker argued the research profession has strong historical roots in privacy and anonymity that need to be actively refreshed rather than quietly abandoned. The core of privacy by design is making privacy the default setting and prioritizing individual interests at every stage of data collection and processing.
An ESOMAR study with Kantar across the US, UK, and India found that 91% of IT, research, marketing, and advertising executives agreed there should be a minimum standard level of data protection in all countries. Two thirds agreed that businesses share data too freely with third parties.
A separate ESOMAR study on location data in the auto industry found that 70% of participants were more likely to share their data if the collector was clear about why the information was needed and how it would be used. In Brazil, 52% and in China, 60% said they were more likely to buy from companies that handle personal data responsibly. Baker read this as a business case for transparency, not just an ethical one.
Option B: Follow the Advertising Industry's Lead
Baker acknowledged that some firms in the sector are moving toward the advertiser model, treating behavioral data as more reliable than stated opinions and attitudes, and resisting privacy practices as a cost and hindrance. He argued this path does not serve the profession well, both because it undermines trust and because it invites regulatory scrutiny that could eliminate the exemptions the industry has historically enjoyed.
Four Actions the Industry Should Take
- Rebuild a culture of self-regulation. Baker expressed concern that professional ethics have drifted toward whatever is legally permitted or whatever clients demand. The "bright red line" protecting respondent identity from clients, even for marketing follow-up, needs to be restored.
- Clearly distinguish research from marketing. Regulators have noticed the industry has changed. The exemptions once granted to researchers as scientists are harder to sustain. Active differentiation from advertising practice is essential.
- Trade bodies must engage regulators directly. Not just to lobby for the industry but to co-construct regulatory frameworks that protect all stakeholders. Baker pointed to the GDPR concept of "co-regulation" as a model for how industry and regulators can work together.
- Buyers of research should use their leverage. Brands and insight teams can reinforce good practice by preferring suppliers that subscribe to a recognized professional code of ethics. Baker said this point was raised at a Quirks event in Brooklyn in early March and he endorsed it directly.
Transcript
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hi everyone thing that it's just about the top of the hour we're gonna go ahead and get started as always we're going to start off with just some back some basic ground rules one thing that's just about the top of the hour we're going to go ahead and get started all right sorry about that I had some echo got that I was a resolving there I hope everyone's had a good quarantine conference so far I hope everyone got some food and some coffee it just is you I have a kind of a weird little setup going on right now I have my computer sitting on a couple of books and apologies for the little fall you saw right there okay just as always um sorry for those that have been here through since the beginning and how many times you've heard this talk but for those just joining us want to go over a few things um this is a virtual conference and so in none of us are per se its heck experts and so we are at the mercy of the technology here if something gives out please be patient with us and we'll try to get back online as soon as possible please be respectful of the presenters here there they did their very best to get all this wrapped up for us in like a span of two weeks sometimes some even fewer than that and we do feel like sometimes we as humans feel like we want we can hide behind the background of a screen we can hide her face night be a little more anonymous that being said please remember that these are real people with real feelings and doing their very best to just share information with you also just as a live conference we are we encourage you to network and engage with each other so you can go ahead and if you're using the zoom out to talk to us and watch this whole thing you can interact on the chat function you can also go to youtube I use the live stream chat function there and also on both Twitter and LinkedIn we are using the hashtag QV I see 20/20 and we've had um plenty of good concert there so far so we would love for you to go and add to it already our next presenter is reg Baker he is the North American regional ambassador at SLR and he will be talking to us about the deck about data privacy in this weird time all right and with that rag doll going laser okay um can you see my screen can you see my screen hello hello Oh like I believe your mic might not be going no it's fine okay you okay now Oh like I believe your mic might not be going no I do okay I don't think so I'm not I'm you so you can't hear me we can hear you know you can hear me now okay we're just not seeing your screen okay alright so let me share my screen okay do you have it now perfect perfect I wouldn't say that okay hi everybody thanks for for joining and thanks for coming in to listen I'm afraid I'm one of those people who has to hide behind the screen today because even though I have been pretty much virtual since I retired from full-time employment in 2012 for whatever reason here in this time of crisis for all of us my camera has decided it's not working very well so I apologize for that what I wanted to start by saying today is that I decided to do this presentation in part because I become alarmed at how much of our personal data is being sucked up from each of us every time we go online and then how it's being used but also because I think it's been fascinating to watch the degree to which personal data has been brought into play part of whether it's out of fear or whether it's out of this desire to understand more clearly just you know how the pandemic is spreading but we're seeing a not only increased use of personal data for those purposes but at the same time because now we're all going virtual we're all spending all this time online the rate at which personal data is being collected is that it's at an all-time high but before I go I just want to get into the details I just want to make sure that everybody understands who SMR is for those you don't know us we're the only truly global Association for market research in data analytics we have over 6,000 members worldwide and then 130 different countries normally we put on something like 70 local or global events around the globe every year but like everyone else we're finding that our events increasingly this year have all been been virtual our value proposition to members is built around the whole concept of adequacy for the profession and for the sector as a whole and you can check us out at WWDC morg and if you choose to go there please be sure to have a look at our Cove at 19 pages where you will learn a lot more about how the global insights community is dealing with this pandemic that we currently are all suffering through now let's start with this bold statement I expect all most of us would agree that we are now at a point where for all intent and purposes privacy at least in the online world is dead what I hope to talk about here is then the way in which the code 19 pandemic has both dramatically increased the amount of personal data being collected and accelerating its use beyond typically what we're used to which is its purposes for advertising and marketing this is a reality that should not surprise any of us this quote is from a book published in the year 2000 or 2001 I forget which which sort of lays out kind of what the future looked like at that point in time and I'm going to read it to you the future we're rushing towards isn't one where every move is watched and recorded by some all-knowing Big Brother it is instead a future of a hundred big brothers that constantly watch and interrupt our daily lives George Orwell thought that the communist system represented the ultimate threat to individual liberty over the next 50 years we will see new kinds of threats to privacy that don't find their roots in totalitarianism but in capitalism the free market advanced technology in the unbridled exchange of electronic information so I think you read that and you have to say yeah it was very prescient and the part that that Simpson got wrong was that it would take 50 years because it's really pretty much taken only about about two decades because we're now in a world where for better for worse technology is everywhere it's omnipresent it's an important part of our daily lives the most obvious example of that is the fact that there are now normal or mobile connections there are people in the world and these these charts always fascinate me I love them you produce from time to time you know what happens in an Internet minute which tells a lot about how this technology is is being used and you can go through and you can look at this stuff and you know it runs from the sublime to the ridiculous so you know it's very clear it's showing you know what we buy who we buy from it's you know how we spend our time you know what we watch on TV what apps we use what software we use I mean it goes on and on and you can look at this and you can see the degree to which it's possible to for any one individual construct almost a diary of what their lives look like and then more recently a book which is getting a lot of press and is really it's really a fascinating read even though it's a door stopper as one critic called it being 750 pages but this notion of surveillance capitalism which is which is what was available in the previous quote that I read to you but shoshanna's Olaf is a academic at Harvard has written a number of books about technology and she I don't think invented the phrase surveillance capitalism but as she calls that it's the unilateral claiming a private human experience the chatbox is in the way so I can't read it to you as free raw material for translation into behavioral data now this should sound very familiar to all of us in this session here today these data are then computed and packaged as prediction products and sold into behavioral futures markets that being business customers with a commercial interest in knowing what we will do soon now sooner or later now the part that's particularly chilling for me is this next part that right from the start at Google it was understood that users were unlikely to agree to this unilateral claiming of their experience and its translation into behavior data it was understood that these methods had to be undetectable if we were in a room I would ask for a show of hands as to how many people find that as alarming as I do and as a way to look at what's really happening I often am amazed for example that some that that Chrome is the most popular browser on the Internet it's free it comes from an advertising company why in god's name would we continually expose ourselves to it on an everyday basis so in a very short period of time we have gone from this which used to be one of my very favorite cartoons about the internet to this and the span between these two cartoons is is about 25 years okay so how do Americans feel about all this and this this is this is I just find it very intriguing you know this is from a Pew study that was done in 2019 and you know you can read as I can but it's just amazing so the percent of US adults who say all are most of what they do online is tracked by companies okay so that's almost three quarters 304 people they are very or somewhat concerned about their personal data is used by companies eighty percent okay almost 60 percent admitting that they interest little or nothing about one companies do with that data and a mere 18% admit to having some control over their data and then the the the benefit that people get from it is really so limited 28% and a whopping 81 percent saying the potential risks outweigh the benefits the question this immediately begs is then why do people go online and this is something which I'm not going to get into but which a lot of people call the privacy paradox on the one hand people want to protect their privacy they don't want to deliberately share all the their personal data that they share when they go online but they go online nonetheless so here's some more pew data and and the point of this is just to show who people trust and in terms of who they're concerned about having their data and social media sites of course are right at the top of the list as our advertisers and the company that people buy things from and there are a number of studies that's been done by the global research business network globally that looks at who people trust with their data and wave after wave of those surveys show that people do not trust or they trust social media the least advertisers are also you know close to who they do not trust but indeed those are the people who mostly have the data that's so concerning to folks so okay so this is going on out there we all know what's going on nobody's surprised by probably anything that I've shown on the screen at this point in time and along comes this pandemic and it's kicked both the collection and the use of personal data into overdrive and I want to look at two areas one is what we're doing here right that's the whole rush to online caused by you know social distancing requirements and and and you know the need to continue to be productive to work virtually to stay touch with our families with our friends and in general to try to do the best we can to have something that approaches a normal life and the other thing is the increased uses of location data in the fight of the pit of the fight of the pandemic now here are some headlines that you know you see you know coming across your screen from time to time which talk about this enormous rush that's happened in terms of people going online and doing things that they've not necessarily done in the past people flocking to social media search engines in massive numbers setting in to of all these expanded virtual interactions and what this means is that Facebook Google and all the cloud-based communication platforms that are supporting the virtual meetings the happy hours are learning more about us at a faster rate and with more granularity than ever before and as we just looked at the Pew data we do this even though survey after survey shows that of all online services we use social media networks we trust the least so these headlines sort of give us a good sense of what's going on there's an upside to all this I should say in that despite this crush the Internet has held up extremely well there's a real argument that there been some productivity improvements that have better results in particular this we virtually I think you know will mute the other side of the pandemic the way in which we work is probably going to be changed forever so these are all you know positive things but you know on balance the amount of information we're sharing is especially problematic and when you look at this little graph on the screen here this I I grabbed from Twitter and I think actually the guy who posted it was was a physician of all things who was alarmed because he sees that his screen time it's up by Haiti one hundred eighty five percent from last week and when you look at the bottom to see how that's time being you know it's productivity time is about the same as other social networking is over-the-top so this is sort of the kind of world that we're living in now as we cling to these tools as a way to continue to keep in touch with what's the world outside of our own homes I feel a little badly about this slide because I'm on zoom and hopefully the link doesn't get severed but this is a good example zoom of kind of what's happened in terms of these virtual interactions you can see zooms been around for a while not all that impressive these data I should add are from a website called similar web that tracks website visits and then suddenly you know as we've gotten into social distancing use is is off the off the charts now part I hesitate to say is that zoom is not without its problems particularly in areas of security you know they're currently being sued for having sold personal data to Facebook hacking in the zoom calls as we all know the famous zoom bombing has become a thing their websites been hacked in personal conversations and data has been stolen one privacy expert that I happen to stumble upon reviewed theirs own privacy policy and it's described it as a bucket of red flags and now we're beginning to see a number of companies actually prohibiting its use and and in fact even the US Senate has come out against using zoom because of concerns about you know privacy violations and poor data protection practices now I'm agreed also that the CEO tsums aware of these problems that there's an article in Businessweek this week for example that says no one is more surprised than he is about the level of traffic that they that they're experiencing but it's an example I point out here not because of their privacy issues so much is say that look at this kind of dramatic increase in use of of this kind of technology even though there are these these privacy concerns so let's switch here away from all this data that's now being collected as we've all become more and more virtual and talk about the use of mobile location data you know there's a bullet at the top of the screen that says a willingness to trade privacy to fight the pandemic and you know just when I was looking at the presentation I thought to myself I'm not sure this was really as a willingness you know I'm not sure anybody was asked whether we could use their personal data to go ahead and fight the pandemic but I don't hear a whole lot of objections about it happening it is fascinating to watch how various countries have gone ahead and climbed on to it u.s. China South Korea Singapore Germany Israel Poland in many countries are all in now I should say that you know there are some very legitimate uses of it in which data is is basically called anonymous there was an interesting for example article in New York Times a week or so ago which showed that while that there was a real socio-economic bias in terms of social distancing and that people at the top end we're finding it possible to stick to their homes and to not have to go out while people at the lower ends with jobs that didn't afford that kind of freedom we're still having to go out into the world and do work and expose themselves to the to the virus so that's an interesting kind of policy issue that using this data brings up but you know it's it's become a bit scarier than that a friend of mine in the UK a colleague actually SMR sent me this cartoon on the right which appeared in the Sunday Times I guess this past week and I thought it was just kind of cute etcetera so I poked it in here and then I read later there are actually instances of the British police going out and scaring picnickers away for violation of social distancing policies scarier still are things I read that for example in China where this data is being used very extensively when they detect crowds forming it shouldn't be forming they send out drones to scare everybody away so this is this is really kind of frightening surveillance that's possible once you really tune into to this data and increasingly it's finding its way not just into people who might be processing it for health related reasons but also governments Israeli government for example is making making broad use of it and there's also this process of you know how you establish contacts when someone is diagnosed and one favorite tactic is to go to credit card receipts so that one can see exactly where someone went who they might have interacted with and in both scariest of often my point of view is to the tagging of people based on their disease status in their location and examples for example in the UK of a company that has an app that will buzz you if you get close to someone who has been diagnosed with the disease so there's a lot of real issues buried in here you could say these are mostly good things which are really helping us to halt the advance of the pandemic but they're also one has to admit some pretty serious violations of privacy and if you go to the US in particular a lot of people are now worried that we are going to see the same kinds of legislation that we saw after 9/11 in the form of something like the Patriot Act applied now to health status and so for example this headline from the National Review saying questionnaire considering using personal patient data to create national coronavirus surveillance system it's kind of a scary thought at least that the government maybe possession of my health dossier and may even be for example you know having biometric data on my phone that for whatever purpose they may think is an honorable purpose still represents you know pretty profound violation of our personal freedoms so the important thing here to remember I believe is that the privacy risks are more than simply targeted marketing it's not just you know that we all start our day by going into our email and getting rid of all of the ads that came in overnight and all the spam it's much bigger problem than that and your four areas in particular and this especially becomes an issue as we rely more and more on artificial intelligence which these data streams feed and other means of making automated decisions so they include for example loss of opportunity an employment access insurance other benefits housing education all places where you have to apply for something and based on some review you may may not you know be welcomed into that Club economic loss is of course a concern you know grant granting of credit mortgages even pricing of goods and services can can be discriminatory and narrow in general narrowing of choice the social detriment emotional dress public embarrassment should there be information about you that is is it somehow becomes public whether you're a member of some group that gets stigmatized in some way or simply the whole problem of this selected advertising and of course there's always the possibility that these data can be used as part of court proceedings that result in loss of Liberty car serration in the worst case so there's lots of ways in which these data in the wrong hands can be very problematic so okay dark story you may or may not agree with but I think we all have to kind of look at this issue of once the pandemic is over how do we get this genie back in the bottle friend of mine same one who sent me the cartoon actually sent me a piece from The Sunday Times a few weeks ago in which columnist theorized what the world would be like if big tech used all of its power and all the information all the resources it has for good instead of for other kinds of things and how this could make a much better society for us I personally think that's probably not going to happen I think there's too much money in what's being done at the moment and so the challenge before us is how do we ensure that as the pandemic come eases that we can somehow get these new tools put back in the drawer now as citizens as well as brands and researchers we really need to insist on stronger regulation of the collection especially the use of personal data in the u.s. which is you know here's some more pew data you can see there's strong support for that across party lines but with the exception of a few individual states and for reasons we are all painfully aware progress has been slow you know and it's not just these pew data in the Zuba book she looks at 48 surveys that conducted over several years that all talked about the desirability for enhanced privacy protection and finds that there's lots of support for that in in 46 of those 48 surveys companies themselves are concerned so this data happens to be from a study that SMR did with cadence and the respondents here were RTI excuse me IT research marketing and advertising execs in three countries the US the UK and India so this is this this is the business people this is not individuals who are worried about their own privacy being compromised and so two points on this graph streak me you strike me the top-line businesses share too many - excuse me share data too freely with third parties two thirds of people agreeing with that and then at the very bottom you know 91 percent saying that there should be a minimum standard level of data protection you know all countries I should have noted that there are three countries here US UK in India the data in this chart here is just for the US so you know big tech will resist and they are resisting any and all attempts to kind of bring all this under control they are not going to suddenly become a force for good as I said there's too much money at stake and you know even very large fines of the sort that we see coming out of you all the time are not a deterrent these companies have deep pockets they just pay the fines they keep on trucking until their behavior is normalized we need to find more fundamental ways to strike at the heart of their business if we're going to change their behavior I'm not going to hypothesize on what those might be simply note that finds have shown that they're ineffective so I want to shift I mean what I've been talking about here is mostly about sort of the societal concerns and want to get down to the concerns which we all have whether we're data collectors as brands or we're going to use em our companies how do we succeed in an environment where people feel like their personal data is under assault and that they are more and more I should say less and less inclined to respond to requests that we put in front of them to share that data with I think for this I think we have two options I think option a is really to refresh and recommit to the historical values of this profession which are strongly rooted in privacy and anonymity and protection of personal data and one way to do that is to commit this whole philosophy of privacy by design and the S&C of privacy design is to always have privacy as a default setting as we design our data collections and to always put the privacy and interests of the individual as the first priority and that's true whether we're doing you know face to face data collection and online surveys or whatever or even you know in the course of processing what we everything that falls under that heading of a big data we really know kind of how to do this with surveys that we do we know we need to be transparent about the information we collect its purpose whom we're gonna share it with and in what form that's kind of routine for us I think there should be in terms of the consent process that we've been used to for many many years but now there's this market out there for buying personal data and rich profiles maybe not with exactly the variables we want but nonetheless you know very attractive stuff and you know one of the problems with that is while there lot of legitimate sources for the state and a lot of it is dubiously source by which I mean that people have no idea that it's being collected on them and and so one of the things I think responsibilities we have respect for individuals it's not to use those kinds of sources we also however under the privacy design concept have to make sure that when we're using that kind of say big door resource whether it's social media data or whether it's you know something that client customer files clients provide to us that word we're managing in such a way as to mitigate the impacts on individuals transparency is really the key element of this when we're talking about direct collection from people via surveys or focus groups or whatever here's another study this one SMR did in conjunction with a company called here which is a u.s. excuse me an EU company that does a lot of work with location data to go to the auto industry in Europe and in to sort of interesting answers in the course of that survey the percent of participants who say they are likely to share their data if the data collector is clear about why the information is needed and how it will be used 70 percent of people saying they're more likely to do that if if that sort of information is provided to them and what's really interesting is that they strongly agree they are more likely to buy or use the services of companies that handle personal data as they should and why you might look at that and say ok 33 percent it's not a huge number it's interesting that when you look at it at less developed countries this would happen to be it's a study across ten markets fifty-two percent of respondents in Brazil said they're more likely to buy from a company that changes their data fairly and sixty percent in China so this this is a really strong argument it seems to me for us indicating that respect for people's personal data promising to protect it and indeed following through and that promises can be an important feature of how we interact with people in the course of doing research but you know there's an option B right and and unfortunately their companies in our sector which seem to be following it and that is to follow the lead the advertisers the first draft of this presentation I talked about a bargain with the devil but that seems a bit extreme but you know the reality is that that you know we're industry is going through something of a transition there is a strong belief for example that behavioral data is much more reliable than what we're accustomed to in terms of opinions and attitudes intense things of that sort and so when you're talking about behavioral data that's a kind of path that often leads to all those things we put under that general heading of big data and many people argue that big data is the new paradigm and that really puts us in many ways potentially at least into the same kinds of data collection and analysis procedures methods that that are used by advertisers and another element of the whole advertising world is is opposition to robust privacy practices and always presenting them as a hindrance to doing business costing the economy you know millions and millions of dollars and you know that's the kind of position that I think does not serve us well as an industry but it certainly is something that we see working itself out you know across the globe as country after country after country does take up the challenge of trying to have more effective privacy practices so ok so to sum up the quote which some of you may recognize is actually from the old casserole code maybe you may remember casserole before it urged with the hamare to form the insights Association you know we this notion needs to be updated because we're not just talking about research participants anymore it's hard to say where someone who you know when a company collects Klein it's like sadita on one of its customers that that person is research participant so you get into legalese like data subjects and thing of that sort but in general it's still true right I mean our business really is processing personal or collecting and processing personal data to help our clients make better decisions and and so whether that comes from participation and giving it up to us in the course of survey or some other mechanism they deserve the same level of respect in the same protections so I think you know there are four things that we need to be doing come as an industry first I think we we really need to establish the culture of self-regulation I worry that we have lost that and our ethics have fallen to whatever is legal or worse yet what clients may require for us to get business there used to be this thing called the bright red line which basically said we protected the identity of our respondents even from clients to prevent any kind of follow-up say to deliver marketing messages or whatever we need to rethink that and get back to that kind of protection secondly you know everything all the signs point to the fact that the regulators have noticed that we're not the same industry we were 20 years ago and so the kinds of exceptions we used to enjoy by virtue of being scientists rather than for lack of a better phrase the neighbors of intrusive marketing are harder and harder to come by so it's more important than ever that we clearly distinguish what we do from what marketers and advertisers do and third I think you know the professional associations and trade bodies not just SMR but you know but you know in countries around the world must play an essential role not simply to lobby on our behalf the industry but also to work with regulators to establish new regulatory frameworks that protect the rights of all the stakeholders a phrase for example which is embedded in the in the GDP are in Europe is a notion of Co regulation which implies the same partnership between regulators in industry which is a way of recognizing the unique needs of individual industries and finally I think it's critical that the industry at large from between buyers and sellers support Association efforts in their price through membership through financial support and working toward a common cause I talked about some of these issues that the quirks event in Brooklyn back it seems like forever now and early March and someone from a brand come asked me a question and said should we simply be hiring companies who subscribe to an association professional code of ethics and my response to that is yeah I mean that's one way that a brand can support you know what we're trying to do accomplished here so so that's what I have to say and I guess now if people have questions I'm happy to answer them you my record looks like we do have one question from Russ in the chat um it says is there a code of ethics you can recommend well um you know I'm from SMR right you go to the SMR website you can very easily find the ICC SMR code which which details at least at a principled level what it is we should be paying attention to and also one of the things that SMR does on a regular basis is issue guidelines and standards a whole family of guidelines and standards in fact that that take that code and kind of translated into research setting so right now we happen to be working on three made such documents one is what we're calling something on primary data collection which is those instances in which you actually interact with a research subject of research participants for example they get consent a second guideline on secondary data which is the terminology that SMR uses to describe all those things that fall under the heading of big data and they're the issues are much different in terms of establishing grounds for being able to epicly process a data set complicated stuff which we're still thinking through and we also have a guideline that hopefully will come out on this summer on duty of care the very first article in the SMR code says that researchers have a duty of care to those whose data we use and so it goes into some detail about how exactly to deliver on that on that on that premise but reality is there are lots of associations and they all have codes and many of them also are very consistent with what's in the SMR code so in the u.s. you have the insights Association if you happen to be from Canada the Crick the council let's see a Canadian research and insight in intelligence council I guess happen to use a slightly modified version the SMR code research center in the UK has a terrific code associations all over the world have codes which kind of reflect what the situation is in individual countries awesome that was a well fleshed out answer we also have another question from Victoria that says when you say distinguish between what marketing researchers do versus what advertisers and marketers do how can this effectively be done when much of the data is used / consumed by marketers and advertisers as an mr and enabler ah yeah that's you know this is the old story right oh gosh we don't we sell the guns but not the bullets I guess it's one cynical way to put it you know it's yeah we're all using the same data the question really becomes from my point of view is what are the impacts on the individuals whose data we're using so for example you know in this drawn from what I'll call the old days right when all we did was surveys we would just we would do segmentation studies client would give us a sample of their clients and we would go ahead and maybe do some additional interviewing then we would do the segmentation work and we would pass back to the client not those individuals which they you know the records for those particular individuals but we would pass back you know what for lack of a better term would be a typing tool and the client would then go ahead and apply that typing tool to his or her entire customer base now as a result of all that someone who's in that sample might get a marketing message from that client but they got that marketing message by virtue of being part of a demographic or attitudinal group some segment they didn't get it as a result of having participated in a survey so I think finding those ways to to distinguish between you know the science of it applying the tools and providing guidance on how clients can do what they do better is distinct from building profiles and individuals and then selling those profiles to clients so that they can take direct action against the that's the distinction that we're trying to make here and that carries over into you so secondary data sources where you know it's the data comes from someplace else may come from a customer's files it may come from social media site whatever the critical thing is that we're not delivering back to people information on individuals unless we ask if it's okay we're clear about what it's going to be used for and that client and that individual says yeah you can go ahead and do that you know you can do that in the context of traditional survey research you can't really do that when you're talking about you know big databases and various kinds of sources of big data so your hands are a bit a bit more tied in those particular instances gotcha makes sense ready I actually had a question of my own as well so earlier today we had a panelist speak about a very interesting topic of neuro research and being able to judge more of like brainwaves and such to get information and data and you mentioned earlier behavioral versus opinion based are you worried at all or should we be worried about how some paranoia about data sharing will affect the advancement of more biology based research no what I I don't think so I saw that presentation I thought it was really really interesting you know the you know it all comes down to what are the impacts on an individual by virtue of his or her data being used for in the course of a research project okay and how do we identify what the risks may be to that individual as a result and make sure that we we mitigate those risks one of the things that we have been espousing that companies should engage in on a regular basis is something called a privacy impact assessment where you systematically look at the design of your project how all the data is going to be handled whether those who are the subcontractors I mean all that stuff etc and you look for you know where where are the leaks right where are the flash points where that data could be disclosed either intentionally or inadvertently and make sure you put the proper proper measures in place so that that doesn't happen so I mean that's that's what we're trying to say here it's pretty simple we want you know we're gonna use all the same kinds of data but you know it's it's really making sure that there are no consequences to the individuals involved for us having having used that data and did we have any other questions [Music] well right even well thank you so much reg for your time oh and thank you and thanks everybody for listening right and of course Reich has his email right there if you have any other questions that pop in your mind later on you can reach out to him there also we highly recommend reaching out on our on our different social networks so if you reach out on Twitter or LinkedIn with the hashtag QV I see 20/20 and follow up with anything anything that sports spirits in your mind from this presentation all right thanks very much great I'm good day bye-bye


