• by Adam Cahill , Op-Ed Contributor, June 19, 2023

I like to imagine an old-timey copywriter at Ogilvy with that quote taped to their desk, using its two lessons as a standard to measure every line of copy against. 

The first lesson is to respect the audience. The second lesson is to make it personal --  not to the reader, but the writer.

Remember that there is a real person on the receiving end of every ad. Think about a person you know and care about, and write with that level of care in mind.

As a writer, Ogilvy was thinking about how these lessons should be applied to words, but today words are only part of the respect equation in advertising.

I would argue that in our era the fundamental way that a brand can demonstrate respect -- or fail to -- is through the decisions it makes about data privacy.

For those of us who can influence how data is collected and used within our companies, it's time to think like Ogilvy and recognize that the data is your wife. Not literally, of course. The data is your dad. Your best friend. Your daughter. Your favorite high school teacher.  Your helpful neighbor.

The point is this: data is not an abstraction that lives in the cloud and comes to life in charts and graphs.

Data comes to exist when real people live their real lives. It is the record of what they do, where they go, who they know, what they like.

Data is a person, and brands should make every data-privacy decision with the respect that person deserves in mind.

Data privacy is a matter of respect for a very simple reason: it's what people want. For a moment, let's put aside the industry propaganda about relevance and personalization and how the internet would implode if tracking were limited in any sensible way.

Instead, let's acknowledge reality. People want their privacy respected.

They want to understand how brands propose to use their data, to choose what data uses they allow, and to control how their data is shared afterwards.

People overwhelmingly support regulation that would establish and enforce those rights, and to ignore all of this is wildly disrespectful.

There are altruistic reasons to demonstrate respect for people's data, but let's focus on the brand's self-interest. Advertising is about persuasion, and contempt for your audience is not persuasive.

Ignoring people's clear desires places brands in an adversarial position with its customers, which is an untenable business model over the long term.

Ogilvy wrote that consumers will punish a brand for telling lies by not buying its products, and they will certainly do the same to brands that are shady in their data-privacy practices.

I think there is a third lesson implicit in the famous Ogivly quote: do better. Be truthful, respect your craft, and raise the standard of your work to a level your customers deserve.

In the same essay, he went on to say “never write an advertisement which you wouldn’t want your own family to read.” It's worth updating that line for the work we do today and taping it to our monitors. How about this: “never use data in a way you wouldn't want your own family’s data used.” 

It's a principle that can be applied immediately, by any of us, without waiting for national privacy regulation or the FTC to call on you.

All it takes is bringing a different perspective to the countless data decisions that are made in every organization, every day, most of which happen without any thought about the person whose data is being used.

Next time you are in one of those discussions, see what happens if you ask this question: “would we all be comfortable with this use case if we knew our family's data was included?”.

Just asking that question can have a powerful impact, because it forces teams to take accountability for decisions that would typically go unquestioned. More importantly the question serves as a reminder that behind each bit of data is an actual person that is worthy of our respect.