In order to build engagement and loyalty in a climate of intense competition and distraction, media companies have to understand their customers, viewers, and readers as fans.
In 2014, I spent a lot of time around soccer fans. I regularly hung out at the sports bars frequented by Los Angeles’s official Real Madrid supporters club. My friends constantly shared with me, via email and social media, soccer-related websites, articles, and videos highlighting soccer fans and their love of the sport — and I clicked on them. I posted on soccer blogs, and rang up a bunch of credit card purchases in Brazil in July, during the World Cup. If my phone, the sites I visited, and the merchants I patronized had been collecting all the data associated with the places I went, the people I spoke to, and even the purchases I made, an analyst could easily have concluded that I was an ardent soccer fan (or, as people outside the U.S. would say, a football fan). But I’m not; at least, I wasn’t. At the time, I was studying sports fans as part of a research project with Havas Sports and Entertainment, to understand their passions and how they engage with brands — especially the brands that sponsor players, teams, and events in hopes of giving sports fans the experiences that they want. In doing so, I wound up becoming a case study in my own project.
My data trail marked me as a soccer fan, and continues to do so to this day. As I go about my business online, I am continually served automatically generated soccer-related recommendations and ads.
My experience is, of course, not unique. The widespread use of mobile devices has shifted the way we think about, understand, and participate in the world. Sometimes by permission (but often without our awareness), we continually funnel our locations, habits, desires, and selves into a pool of knowledge that every company wants to drink from in order to better understand and serve us. Each of us increasingly leaves behind trails of data that become crucial in shaping our digital identity.
This story is from the Autumn 2016 edition of strategy+business.
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This story is from the Autumn 2016 edition of strategy+business.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
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