ADMA at SXSW Sydney: Privacy, the marketers of the future, and Dark Patterns

The present and future of marketing were put in stark relief at SXSW Sydney this year, with ADMA leading the way with three powerful sessions offering marketers inspiration and actionable insights to tackle the challenges of a rapidly changing digital landscape.

Topics were focused on the marketers of 2030, whether marketers are the weakest link in privacy, and the ubiquity of dark patterns in the modern media landscape. The result? Conversations both on stage and afterwards spanning far and wide.

If you didn’t catch it, or want a refresher, here are the key highlights from these important sessions.

Am I the weakest link? The Privacy Edition

Dr. Rob Nicholls, Manager of Regulatory and Advocacy at ADMA, moderated this interactive panel featuring Dr Kate Bower, Consumer Data Advocate at CHOICE, Sarla Fernando, Director of Regulatory and Advocacy at ADMA, and Kate Friedrich, Head of Legal at Qantas. The key question was simple - are marketers the weakest link in the privacy chain?

All responsibility does not rest on their shoulders, however, as Nicholls explains: “Agencies assume that briefs have privacy built in, platforms have their own privacy and trust issues, and for board members, privacy can sometimes seem like a low risk issue. All stakeholders have a role to play - and each might be the weakest link.”

The panel came at an opportune time, as businesses across Australia prepare for upcoming Privacy Act changes. Among the slew of reforms, Bower from CHOICE highlights two in particular - changes to the greater transparency requirements around automatic decision making and penalties for smaller breaches.

“The first reform will have an impact because it sounds quite good in principle, but it can be quite tricky to implement. And when it comes to penalties for smaller breaches, we’ve previously only seen penalties around serious and repeated breaches of the act, which is a high bar. To this point, there has only been one business that has progressed to a penalty being paid. That’s a significant change,” says Bower.

For marketers feeling concerns or overwhelmed about yet another thing they must learn for their roles, there is some hope. Friedrich from Qantas stresses that marketers do need to upskill themselves, but to educate themselves in a way that’s proportionate to the data they handle.

“If you’re coming up with campaigns and you know there’s sensitive information in those campaigns, you probably need to familiarise yourself more than someone who’s just using basic contact details like names and email addresses,” she says.

“Marketers don’t need to be lawyers. But if you don’t understand whether or not something is problematic, then you don’t know to notify your compliance and legal teams,” adds Fernando from ADMA. “Marketers need to understand privacy at the operational stage. Remember, compliance is two things - it's the law and the actual way it’s applied.”

Who are the marketers of 2030?

“When I first started at Salesforce, we were doing a lot of lead gen and really ensuring our sales team were fed. Over the years, we’ve started running more brand campaigns, and now our brand ambassador is Matthew McConaughey.”

This statement from Leandro Perez, SVP & CMO Asia Pacific, Salesforce, about how not just his role, but the role of marketing in the SAAS giant, has evolved over the past 10 years. It is a clear sign of how quickly and rapidly the marketing world evolves - and why the marketers of the future may be working off a very different skill set than those today.

It’s this topic that took centre stage during a panel discussion moderated by ADMA CEO Andrea Martens, who asked her panellists to share the key skills and abilities that marketers a decade into the future will need to know.

One of the key themes that emerged was the importance of being open to opportunities.

“Whether it’s formal or informal, tertiary or in your job, you always have to be learning. We want to see our people demonstrate continuous improvement,” says Stuart Tucker, Managing Partner for Hourigan International.

“If we do have continuous learning and curiosity, which is what I hire for, we can have a team that’s better than the competition,” adds Perez.

But Kate Young, Executive Manager of Marketing Strategy & Capability at ANZ, warns that the “pendulum shouldn’t swing too far” towards constant change.

“What we really need to be conscious of, as we embrace future capabilities, is the fundamentals of marketing that will never change and will always stay the same,” she explains.

One of the areas that she does highlight for today’s marketers to focus on, with support from Perez and Tucker, is the importance of speaking the language of the business.

“One of the two key areas we focus on in terms of marketing capability is commercial acumen and measurement reporting. Ultimately the goal is protecting marketing budgets. The brand will only grow if you invest in it,” she says.

Finally, when panellists were asked what the one skill they would say marketers need to know to prepare for 2030, it delivered a variety of answers.

Young named hers as “power skills”, which previously would have known as “soft skills”, and curiosity. “It’s a really important skill set as a marketer. Be curious and be open minded.”

“For me, it’s the art of simplicity. That’s going to become even more critical going forward,” adds Tucker.

Perez rounds out the group by naming ‘critical thinking’ as his suggestion.

“Critical thinking is the ability to slow down time and ask, ‘Why are we doing this? Does it make sense? What about this option instead?’. Those are the people I want on my team, and those are the people who will have jobs five, 10, 15 years into the future.”

Brilliant marketing or Dark Art: Are you convincing or conning your customers?

Defined as “design features used to deceive, steer or manipulate users into behaviour that is profitable for an online service, but often harmful to users or contrary to their intent”, dark patterns raise considerable questions over whether some marketing practices are actually manipulating consumers, rather than persuading them.

In this panel held at SXSW Sydney, moderator Rica Facundo, Managing Editor of WARC Asia, gave her panellists, Sarla Fernando, Director of Regulatory and Advocacy at ADMA and Dan Monheit, CEO at Hardhat a chance to debate which marketing practices are manipulative and which are simply marketing tactics leveraging behavioural quirks.

As Fernando made clear, there is still a fine line between manipulation and persuasion.

“Dark patterns all share the common notion that you're manipulating consumers into making choices that they otherwise might not have made. The definition of effective marketing is persuading consumers to purchase something they may not have intended,” she explains.

“There are lots of things that we can all agree we just shouldn't do because they're shameful, illegal, or deceptive. There are also lots of things that we can agree are fine, like if you release a new version of a product, writing new on it is probably fine. There is an ocean in the middle,” adds Monheit.

Monheit outlines how there are even grey areas associated with common terms like “popular”, which, if it means popular for the consumer, is acceptable, but less acceptable if it’s being marketed that way because it’s popular with the sales team due to the commission.

But despite this vast grey area, both Monheit and Fernando have ways they define Dark Patterns for themselves.

“I often ask myself, if a consumer knew we were doing this, would they still be okay with it?” asks Monheit.

“When it comes to the grey area, it’s the context that’s really important,” says Sarla. “If you’re using misdirection, or tactics that nudge people towards a decision they would not have normally made, you have to look at the harm that may be done if they make that decision to help inform your strategy.”

Did you miss out on the ADMA sessions? You're in luck - the Clear Hayes House panels on privacy and what the marketers of 2030 looks like were recorded and can be be accessed below. 

Am I the weakest link? Marketers of 2030