Experiential Privacy — An Investment Opportunity for the Experience Business

Later this week, Adobe Summit EMEA 2018 will kick off in London. This year’s event will focus on making experience your business — bringing together marketers from Europe and around the world to gain and share insights on creating exceptional customer experiences, keeping customers engaged, and driving brand loyalty and growth. Which makes this year’s Summit EMEA the perfect stage for another topic I am quite passionate about — I call it “experiential privacy.”

What does experiential privacy mean?

I first wrote about the concept of experiential privacy in my blog post for Data Privacy Day earlier this year. Experiential privacy means that when done right, privacy is a positive part of the experience and further delights the customer. In my earlier blog post, I give the example of an airline explaining through a just-in-time notice in its app why access to GPS data is needed to help users find their cars upon returning from a trip. Or the example of a coffee company creating an on-brand experience to obtain the needed consent, rather than doing so through a plain pop-up banner.

One of the driving forces for my joining Adobe was the opportunity to provide thought leadership and the ability to help build Privacy by Design into the products and services that so many of the world’s leading brands are using for digital transformations. As a privacy professional who has been thinking about — and helping chart the course on — data privacy issues for nearly two decades, this is unquestionably one of the most exciting and transformative times to work in the privacy space.

Here at Adobe, we are committed to GDPR readiness both as a data controller and processor. On the enterprise side, it couldn’t be more energizing to tell our privacy narrative and help our customers develop their own privacy stories. Beyond that, it also has been rewarding to hear from, and delight, so many of our enterprise customers worldwide by anticipating and responding to their privacy needs.

The road to GDPR readiness — Ready, set, go

Leading up to the May 25 effective date of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), brands have been spending a great deal of time thinking about how the new rules will impact their ability to provide tailored content and offerings to their consumers. Adobe has been leading the way in helping brands transform into Experience Businesses. We believe that privacy — and GDPR — should be viewed as an opportunity and a competitive differentiator in the experience we provide to our customers — rather than a compliance obligation. At a time when customer experience is top of mind, GDPR is the perfect opportunity to lean into customer centricity and advance the customer experience.

As a trusted partner on the journey towards GDPR readiness, we want to help our customers look beyond mere compliance to build a robust privacy framework for their marketing efforts. Adobe’s four guiding principles on privacy and responsibly unlocking the power of data are to:

We have a strong foundation of security controls and Privacy by Design, and have been implementing new product features and processes to prepare for GDPR. On the Digital Experience side of our business, Adobe is offering tools, processes, and technologies to help our customers more easily meet their GDPR obligations as part of our shared compliance journey. Here are a few examples:

Experiential privacy is an investment in the future

We believe that privacy is an essential element of consumer trust and that responsible privacy practices power great experiences. Thinking and designing experiences with privacy in mind and becoming GDPR-ready is also a smart investment in the future, since the core privacy principles that underlie GDPR will serve as a solid privacy foundation for emerging and future global requirements.

As brands and marketers, we need to lean into customer centricity and look at GDPR as a great opportunity to make our customers’ experience our business. We need to put the customer at the center of everything we do. And rather than thinking of the more stringent GDPR consent requirements as a risk to the marketable universe, we need to embrace the new requirements as true indicators of brand engagement and loyalty, as well as customer satisfaction and trust. If we provide our customers with the experiences they are looking for and continue to earn their trust, they will want to continue engaging with us.

GDPR @ Adobe Summit EMEA

At Adobe, we are prepared for and excited about GDPR. If you are attending Adobe Summit EMEA this week, we invite you to visit the Adobe GDPR booth and/or attend one of our GDPR sessions or hands-on labs:

Breakout sessions

Hands-on labs** **

If you are not attending Adobe Summit EMEA and are looking for more information on Adobe’s GDPR efforts, visit https://adobe.com/go/gdpr.

We look forward to continue partnering with you, our customers, to support your privacy needs, all while helping you Make Experience Your Business.