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 ener­gis­ing 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:

• Design our prod­ucts and ser­vices with pri­va­cy in mind
• Pro­tect and respect the data entrust­ed to us
• Build and sus­tain trust with our customers—and help our cus­tomers build and sus­tain trust with their consumers
• Grow Adobe’s strong pri­va­cy part­ner­ship with our customers

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:

• Adobe’s GDPR API will help our cus­tomers facil­i­tate and scale the pro­cess­ing of indi­vid­ual rights (e.g. access and delete requests) for data they con­trol, and which is stored across Adobe Expe­ri­ence Cloud solutions.
• Our GDPR User Inter­face (UI) allows brands to exe­cute GDPR requests using a visu­al inter­face. This UI is best suit­ed for one-off requests, where­as the Adobe GDPR API is best suit­ed for han­dling large amounts of requests at a time.
• Addi­tion­al­ly, Adobe is pro­vid­ing a GDPR ID retrieval tag that can be used to cap­ture con­sumers’ user IDs for Adobe prod­ucts. By deploy­ing this tag on form pages where con­sumers sub­mit data access or delete requests, our cus­tomers (as the data con­trollers) can quick­ly and eas­i­ly cap­ture con­sumer IDs and send them to the Adobe GDPR API or UI to process those data access or delete requests. The GDPR API can sup­port a broad range of cus­tomer IDs across both cur­rent, and lega­cy Adobe solutions.
• Cus­tomers can use Adobe Mobile Ser­vices SDKs (ver­sion 4.15 or lat­er) to sup­port GDPR retrieve and delete requests from their mobile apps.
• Adobe Expe­ri­ence Cloud cus­tomers who use Launch by Adobe, our next-gen­er­a­tion tag man­age­ment solu­tion, and are look­ing to imple­ment a con­sent man­age­ment tool to meet their expand­ed GDPR con­sent oblig­a­tions can lever­age the pre­built inte­gra­tions from Evi­don, TrustArc, and OneTrust.

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 cen­tre 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

• **OP3 – Adobe is GDPR ready. Are you?
  **Thurs­day, May 3, 13:00 – 13:45, Adobe Break­out Room 7
• **AN8 – Pri­va­cy by Design: GDPR & your Expe­ri­ence Business
  **Thurs­day, May 3, 17:15 – 18:00, Adobe Break­out Room 12
• **AN16 – Pri­va­cy by design: GDPR and Adobe Audi­ence Manager
  **Fri­day, May 4, 14:00 – 14:45, Adobe Break­out Room 12
• **EM10 – GDPR & Adobe Cam­paign: Reduc­ing anx­i­ety when deal­ing with privacy
  **Fri­day, May 4, 13:00 – 13:45, Adobe Break­out Room 9

Hands-on labs

• **TL6 – Are you pre­pared? GDPR and the Expe­ri­ence Cloud
  **Thurs­day, May 3, 12:00 – 12:45, Cap­i­tal Suite Lab 8
• **TL4 – Are you pre­pared? GDPR and the Expe­ri­ence Cloud
  **Fri­day, May 4, 12:00 – 12:45, Cap­i­tal Suite Lab 8

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.