GDP What?
I've been working on this for weeks now and I've only just found out what the letters stand for. I knew that it was all about privacy and personal rights and have learnt what we needed to do in order to comply. We were pretty much there already and today I've finally updated our privacy policy. To be honest not much has changed for us but it’s been a bit of an eye opener so I thought I'd share a couple of observations.
It’s basically about profit.
Companies (large and small) use our personal data to sell products and services in order to make money. Simple. It’s been going on for ever and no one has got hurt. It’s just that in the digital era, it has become so much easier to capture and store vast amounts of data from how many tins of beans we buy to our favourite web sites and what and when we watch Netflix!
How does it work?
The basic premise is that customer information such as spending and browsing habits can be used to predict what we like. Companies who used to spend vast amounts of advertising money on blanket TV campaigns, can now spend vast amounts of advertising money on carefully segmented online campaigns.
But this isn't new
I remember when store cards came out and didn't really think much about it - have you ever considered how much the big supermarkets know about you or at least about you weekly shopping habits? Of course for me, they know my favourite beer, they know that I'm partial to chocolate biscuits and I only ever eat a full meal once a week and that's a curry on Saturday night. They are probably lining me up for all sorts of special offers (2 for 1 pizza on a Sunday?) and will have given the local the health service the heads up of a future drain on their resources.
So what's changed?
Well finally, someone has taken control of this, and that someone is the EU. They've taken some stick over various regulations and directives but in this case, I don't think that anyone can argue that our information belongs to us and it is time to make that crystal clear to everyone in the marketing world, and that we all have the right to control who has that information. Admittedly it’s been a bit of a pain and I haven't enjoyed the deluge of GDPR begging emails. I also don't think that the it’s all over yet, but when the dust settles I believe that we will all be happier and be confident in sharing our details with brands that we not only like but trust.
It’s not just about trust
Just as you trust our shoes to be totally safe for your baby’s feet, you can also trust our approach to our privacy policy (basic compliance with GDPR). But more than that, we feel that by staying away from the legal speak, you can really see what we mean in our policy. In other words, our approach to this has been to keep things simple, really simple. You can see a copy of our policy here.
In a nutshell
We do collect data associated with orders such as name, address and items ordered and we will contact you with order updates etc. and to check that we did a good job and that you are happy. What we won't do is hassle you with sales and promotional messages and we absolutely will not be sharing your data with 3rd parties.
You do have the choice to opt in to marketing messages that we send out periodically of course you are welcome to follow us on social media where you can stay in touch with what we doing etc.
And did I forget to say, GDPR stands for General Data Protection Regulation.
