56 Marketing Trends found for Corporate / Legal

...  General Data Protection Regulation [GDPR] which will take effect in May 2018.

It’s fair to say that legislation has failed to keep pace with the speed at which technology and big data has advanced – particularly the ability of a company to gather, store and analyse data.

GDPR is specifically intended to enhance data protection and the right of EU citizens to privacy, giving them greater control over their personal data and its use by marketers.

The new Act represents a complete overhaul of the legal requirements that must be met by any company handling EU citizens’ personal data – and that also includes employees’ personal data.

The implications of GDPR are not to be sneezed at. Companies who fall foul of the regulation and are found to be misusing personal information face stiff fines of up to €20m or 4% of annual worldwide turnover, whichever is the greater of the two.

Read the original unabridged Forbes.com article.

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... intensify counter-terrorism efforts within the EU.

For example this might require the creation of an EU-wide system for storing all airline passenger data.

This would require a careful balancing act, as the EU Home Affairs Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos notes: "On the one hand, the fundamental role that telecommunications records could play in the fight against terrorism and, on the other, the importance of adopting a cautious and measured approach".

According to the minutes of the Commission's meeting, Mr Avramopoulos intends to launch a consultation on the issue to determine whether a new law on data retention that respects privacy rights could be prepared over the coming year.

Following the proposed law's initial rejection by the European Court in 2014, Britain rushed through emergency legislation requiring UK-based telecoms firms to retain customer data for one year thereby prompting criticism from privacy campaigners.

Read the original unabridged Reuters.com article.

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... furiously lobbying ahead of the vote in the hope of negotiating a lighter-touch regime that takes into account the interests of business. 

Argues Malte Lohan, director of public affairs at the WFA: "The European Parliament wants to make the toughest privacy law the world has ever seen. The EU is championing the rights of citizens, but it's not that straightforward - this could undermine the digital economy."

The first crucial issue is around the definition of personal data.

The Data Protection Regulation could include not only personal information like names, bank details and passport numbers, but all sorts of identifiers that marketers routinely use – and consider to be anonymous -- in the world of big data.

The second - and equally crucial - bill centres on the definition of consent.

It seeks explicit, prior, opt-in consent at every turn, asking consumers to negotiate a cookie wall before they can engage in such routine activities as checking the weather or viewing the news.

Posits Mr Lohan: "From a marketer point of view it's totally disproportionate."

The proposals were first outlined last year. Since then, Jan-Philipp Albrecht, a Member of the European Parliament who represents the German Green Party, has been working on refining the complex document.

Reports AdAge: "Mr Albrecht specializes in civil liberties and is tough on privacy issues."

Read the original unabridged AdAge.com article.

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... shorten the minimum length of contracts and cut the costs charged by broadband providers when switching customers.

In a recent report Ofcom said upgrading from slower connections was becoming cheaper, and is increasingly popular with businesses and consumers alike.

However, the watchdog also found that switching between one superfast provider and another remains expensive.

Currently, ISPs [insternet service providers] using BT's superfast Openreach network must pay BT a £50 fee if they want to switch a customer on to their service - a charge that is frequently passed on to the customer.

Ofcom plans to slash the cost of switching from the current £50 fee to between £10 and £15. The regulator also plans to reduce the minimum contract length to one month.

According to Ofcom, the proposed measures are intended to ensure that BT's access charges for its fibre network are "fair and reasonable".

Read the original unabridged BBC.com article.

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... following suit.

Thailand requires graphic labels on packs of cigarettes, while Turkey and Russia have enacted strong tobacco control laws.

The latest campaign has renewed smokers' interest in quitting, claims Dr Thomas Frieden of the US government's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"Quitting smoking is the single most effective thing you can do to improve your health," he said.

But quitting isn't easy. Only 10% of smokers will quit in a given year according to Joanna Cohen of the The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Explains Dr Cohen: "Tobacco use is an addictive behavior, and it's a human behavior which is very complex. So just think of any behavior on your own that you want to change, and it's not easy."

In Russia, according to Cohen, the stop smoking campaign was only partly due to health care costs. "Their citizens were dying off early, way earlier than they should be," she said. 

Among the stark facts highlighted on World No Tobacco Day:

• Tobacco kills up to half its users
   
• Tobacco kills almost six million people a year
   
• Annual death toll could reach eight million by 2030
   
• Nearly 80% of the world's smokers live in low and middle-income countries
   
• Consumption of tobacco products is increasing globally.

According to the WHO, four out of five tobacco related deaths are in low and middle-income nations - countries that bear the greatest burden of disease and premature death.

These countries are where the tobacco industry is energetically seeking new smokers!

Read the original unabridged Voice of America article.

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... "calling for a total ban."

He told the BBC in a message sent via anonymised email service Hushmail: "Rather we want people to actively set social and physical bounds around the use of technologies and not just fatalistically accept the direction technology is heading in."

Based in London, the STC campaign began on on 28 February, he said, and the group did not expect much to happen before the launch of Google Glass in 2014. 

However, the STC launch coincided with a Google campaign on Twitter aimed at persuading people to think about what they would do if they had a pair of the augmented reality spectacles.

The camera-equipped headset suspends a small screen in front of an owner and pipes information to that display. The camera and other functions are voice controlled.

Google's push, coupled with the announcement by the 5 Point Cafe in Seattle to pre-emptively ban users of the gadget, has generated a lot of debate and given the campaign a boost, said the campaign's mouthpiece.

Posters produced by the campaign warning people not to use Google Glass or other personal surveillance devices have been downloaded thousands of times, claims an STC representative.

Google Glass, however, is not the only threat that should concern campaigners.

It was reported today by Reuters that China's largest search engine, Baidu Inc is developing prototype digital eyewear similar to Google Glass. The initiative will leverage Baidu's strengths in image search and facial recognition.  

Read the original unabridged BBC article.

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... EU citizens' data stored on US servers is not protected from access by a third party.

According to a report commissioned by the EU and carried out by the Centre for European Policy Studies, America's so-called Patriot Act gives US authorities the legal right to access foreign citizens' data stored within US borders.

Commenting on the report, European Parliament member Jan Philipp Albrecht insists that "this study is absolutely not about generating panic." 

According to Mr Albrecht, most users don't even know where their data is stored. 

"It's a simple fact that the US data protection law only applies to US citizens." "But there are special laws that target the surveillance of non-US citizens", he added.

"This happens when sensitive data from big companies, like Microsoft, Amazon, Twitter and Facebook, are made available to US authorities for investigations." 

Thilo Weichert, data protection commissioner for the northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein is also concerned at the power wielded by the US over EU citizens' data.

Mr Weichert has been following the implications of this development closely for more than two years, while pushing Facebook to allow its users to remain anonymous.

"The long arm of US law stretches as far as Europe," he said.

Read the original unabridged Deutche Welle article.

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... how much, if any, of their data is sold to advertisers.

The legislation, if implemented, could have serious financial repercussions for the web's two social network titans, FaceBook and Google+. Both are expected to vigorously resist any such limitations on their monetisation models. 

Reuters claims to have seen a report produced by Mr Albrecht which adds even sharper teeth to a proposal for more rigorous data protection, as announced by the European Commission in January 2012.

Albrecht and other EU lawmakers want to limit companies' ability to use and sell data, such as internet browsing habits, to advertising companies, especially when people are unaware their data is being used in such a way.

Facebook and Google, who were among the first to profit from users' data, have been lobbying against the curbs. Other data-reliant sectors such as health services, rail and smart-meter makers have also voiced concerns.

The European Parliament, the Commission and the bloc's twenty-seven member nations will seek an agreement on the new rules in coming months.

Says Erika Mann, Facebook's head of EU policy: "We are concerned that some aspects of the report do not support a flourishing European digital single market and the reality of innovation on the internet. The digital market is inescapably global in nature, and includes important partners in the United States."

Ms Mann did not elaborate on the precise implications of her statement.

Read the original unabridged Reuters.com article.

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... extensive, boosting emphasis on safety and technology factors in the marketing of new auto models.

Calls to the new service could be triggered by on-board sensors such as those in the airbag detecting a crash, or by any car occupant pushing a button.

The eCall system will also use satellites and mobile telephony caller location to determine the location of the crashed car. Based on the location, eCall will contact the nearest emergency centre, also transmitting a minimum dataset that includes time, the direction in which the vehicle was travelling, vehicle identification, an indication if eCall was automatically or manually triggered and information about a possible service provider.

Sending the extra data is likely to reduce misunderstanding and stress and helps to eliminate language barriers between the vehicle occupants and the operator, said a Parliament news release.

And in a reassuring nod to data protection actives, Parliament has also decreed that the system must not be used to monitor a person's movements or determine his or her location unless that person has been involved in an accident.

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... concerns such as privacy, security and who has access to data collected by governments and companies.

Seen by some to be a Wellsian vision of the future, the Internet of Things [IoT] is nearer than we may think. Indeed others think it it has already arrived!  

Rob van Kranenburg, founder of a European think tank called the Internet of Things Council, believes the concept first surfaced around the end of the 1990s under the term "ubiquitous computing."

According to Mr van Kranenburg, the fast-falling cost of data storage and emerging web analytics has already made it possible to "get rid of the mouse, get rid of the keyboard." Connectivity, he says, is coming "out of the computer and into the real world."

In one example of how the IoT might work in tomorrow's world, not only would your bathroom scale recognise you when you step onto it, it would also synchronize weight information with your smartphone, personal computer and other data unique to you and stored on cloud computer servers.

The technology involves fitting objects with a microchip and a communications antenna, explains Berlin-based strategy consultant Martin Spindler.

Using radio frequency identification [RFID], every real object in the analogue world could have a unique identifying number, like an IP address.

Examples of the likely benefits of this Sci-Fi technology?

Howzabout kitchens that order your food; washing machines that turn on when energy demand on the grid is lowest; cars that call emergency services if you get into an accident - all could all be part of the IoT new world.

To read the full Deutsche Welle article click here.

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