Marketing in a Digital Age and CSR

This article discusses the impact of digital marketing and corporate social responsibility (CSR) in business organizations. It explores the business opportunities for Cambridge Analytica and the scandal it faced. The article also highlights the value of data in decision making and the relationship between data-driven organizations and public goodwill.

Marketing in a Digital Age and
CSR

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
Business opportunities for Cambridge Analytical.......................................................................3
Scandal 2017-2018......................................................................................................................5
Value of Data in Business and Political Decision Making..........................................................6
Services Provided by Cambridge Analytica for President Trump’s Election Campaign............7
Relationship Between Data-driven Organisations and License to Operate/Public Goodwill.....9
Ethical and Legal Challenges Faced by Facebook....................................................................10
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................11
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................12

INTRODUCTION
The emergence of new and innovative digital technologies and tools has changed the
way business organisation make use of digital and traditional channels of marketing to promote
and advertise goods and services. Digital marketers nowadays can collect, analyse public and
consumer data through digital marketing tools, to gain insights into how they can improve their
marketing functions (Brynjolfsson and McElheran, 2016). Though these new digital tools aid the
marketing endeavours of business organisations tremendously, they also bring to the forefront
new social and ethical concerns for the public in how these digital tools make use of public data
both in ethical and unethical ways by business organisations in their operations.
Business opportunities for Cambridge Analytical
Cambridge Analytical was IT service management company which offered specific
services in British political consulting firm that was combined digital assets, data mining, data
brokerage and data analysis along with strategic communication. There were various business
opportunities for organization such as
Digital marketing
It was best opportunity for the company because Trump’s election was there. Most of
the political parties preferred to choose digital marketing rather than strikes and others
(Wenzel and Will, 2019). Digital marketing introduced media platform which included Social
Platform, Programmatic, Ad Network, Publishers and Search Engines etc. required to published
person. Cambridge Analytical could took this opportunity to promote their brand image and
could generate high revenue.
Political campaign
It was another opportunity for the business which could help company to upgrade brand
positioning. Political campaign was a type of political marketing which was used for presidential
election, parliamentary election, regional election and local election. These kind campaigns

required high level technology so that could reach to each person in country. It wasn’t new
technology for the political leader because most of the leaders used this technology for
convince large number of populations to give vote them (Križanová, Moravcikova and
Moravcikova, 2017). So, organization could use this technology ethically and could took data of
users by taking their consent. It was not only built trust of people on company but also led high
profitability.
EU campaign
It was another opportunity for company because local election campaign was in EU as
well. Where company could take this opportunity to expand business in other country as well
because Europe had good technology performance and people were more updated for new
technology. Organization could support local leader by organizing local election campaign as
resultant could achieve trust of people and business profitability as well.
Organization captured this opportunity in wrong manner. They used digital marketing for
influencing communication with the public so that Trump easy to communicated with public
and could convey their information directly to UK’s public. By the digitals marketing provided
media platform to public and president where they could direct communicate with political
parties. As same political campaign was another opportunity for the company but captured in
illegal manner. For example by the political campaign led close to public with president by
offering KPI ( i.e. website page, Facebook, Instagram and twitter). Digital media played essential
role to publish political campaign because it gave access on the digital tool. When users got
trust on the digital media and political campaign. Organization used Facebook user’s data to
segment users along with influential content which could lead expected result for promoting
political parties. It was properly unethical and illegal because data was taken without consent of
users. When whistle-blower leaked information that company took Facebook users data
unethically, in that situation company had to pay high fine and had to exit their business. In
addition, organization generated high income but lost public trust. So, organization couldn’t
reopen their business in the future (Sheikh and Mannan, 2017). The reason behind was that
they used user’s data without their consent just for private gain.

Scandal 2017-2018
Before the scandal
 Organization could have been better before the scandal in 2017 such as they used
marketing communication strategy and message to gave high communication between
president and public. Company offered communication and IT services to customer. By
the communication strategy could have been give right platform to public without any
manipulation that could improve brand image among the public (Henriksen, 2019).
Whatever message written by users for president could ask to them for taking data
instead of stealing. It could influence trust of public on company and it could be possible
that organization didn’t have to cease their business.
 Organization could have been saved brand image Infront of public when took help of
corporate social responsibility which helped to Cambridge Analytical Ltd to resist them
before taking illegal action. Organization had aim to gain economical profitability but
there wasn’t any intention to do something wrong with their data. So, corporate social
responsibility could have been supported company to take users data by asking them.
By the initiatives could maintained brand image in business market. Apart from this, CSR
could support company to gain public trust by taking permission from users to take
data.
After Scandal
 When the scandal broke in 2018, in that situation organization could confess to people
about their mistake and could tell them about its intention. For example, organization
didn’t have intention to do something wrong with users’ data. They took user’s data for
giving to president because they offered money to gather voting status of people. Thus,
company could express feeling Infront of public (Risso, 2018). They could take help of
corporate social responsibility to communicate with public and regained their trust on
public by exposing involvement of Facebook’s owner and president in this scandal. To
take users data from Facebook were permitted by Marks Zuckerberg who was the
owner of Facebook. They showed their consent for taking users data and used for

targeting users so that president could get favourable result. This kind information could
help company to gain trust of customer on their brand.
 Digital marketing and communication strategies could use for influencing brand
awareness in public. Due to scandal got wrong brand image Infront of public because
they though organization took their data unethically only for their private gain. So,
organization could use media platform to tell about other parties’ involvement. Even
corporate social responsibility could give a platform. Where organization could confess
about it’s wrong deed and could give answer overall allegation, which was raised by
press media and other political parties like how many time, they took data of users and
who gave permission to take data of users. These type initiatives could help company to
enhance brand reputation and brand awareness between the public and other political
parties. It could have been possible organization didn’t exit their business.
Value of Data in Business and Political Decision Making
Business organisations can make use of public and consumer data in a variety of ways to
enhance their operational performance, productivity and efficiency. Public data can also be
used to great effect while making political decisions in order to accomplish a set of planned
objectives or tasks by the business organisation and political parties. Though business
organisations and political parties have to be immensely careful of the ways they use to collect
and gather the public and consumer data for their operational purposes as it can have
significant ethical, moral and legal implications that can also influence the brand reputation of
the business or political organisation in public and impact their operational performance and
productivity.
The public data gathered by business and political organisations can be analysed by
these organisation’s management and leadership to gain tremendous insights into the trends,
preferences and habits of the public, which organisations can make use of to improve their
operations and functions or to achieve a set planned political or business objectives and goals.
Business organisations can make use of public and consumer data to gain insights into the
market and consumer trends and preferences of their consumers in an effort to increase their

operational performance, efficiency, productivity and profitability in the consumer markets.
While political organisations can gather and analyse public data to gain insights into the public
perception and political trends in the public in order to improve their political strategy and
achieve the planned objectives and goals. This way public data is proven to be immensely
influential for both political and business decision making.
Though analysis of public data is highly valuable for the decision making of both
business and political organisations, the methods these organisations use to collect and gather
the needed confidential public data can have a massive impact on both business and political
organisation’s brand reputation, public perception in addition to various moral, ethical and
legal implications for the organisations (Park and Datnow, 2017). Gathering public data though
unethical and illegal ways to enhance their decision making can have immensely negative
influence on the business and political organisation’s public perception and brand reputation in
the world. Collecting and analysing public and consumer data through illegal and unethical
means goes directly against the organisation’s consumer social responsibility (CSR) operations
which aim to make the business organisation self reliable for its operations in the markets.
Gathering and collecting confidential public information and data by illegal and unethical means
also makes the general public loose confidence and faith in the political and business
organisations which is immensely negative for their operations, productivity and profitability in
the long run. These unethical measures also have a direct negative impact on the society at
large as the general public starts to become more untrustworthy and wary of political and
business organisations. Finally, the business and political organisation can also face massive
legal lawsuits, penalties and fines if they are found guilty of using illegal methods to procure
sensitive, confidential, personal public data and information.
Services Provided by Cambridge Analytica for President Trump’s Election Campaign
Cambridge Analytica was a British political consulting business organisation that
performed data brokerage, data mining and data analysis operations for their clients. It was
partially owned by Robert Mercer’s family, who in the American Presidential elections of 2016
supported republican candidates and aided their cause through Cambridge Analytica to try and

gain a competitive advantage over the democratic party’s candidates and win the elections for
the republican party. Cambridge Analytica was thoroughly involved with 2016s Republican
Party Presidential primaries and caucuses and had gathered and collected the sensitive and
confidential data of more than 220 million American citizens to analyse and make decisions in
order to aid their political objectives and ambitions though using illegal and unethical means by
harvesting the data of American citizens without their personal consent through Facebook.
Cambridge Analytica’s first major client from amongst the republican political nominees was
Ted Cruz, but after he dropped out Mr (Cadwalladr and Graham-Harrison, 2018). Robert Mercer
and his family started to support Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and applied all of
Cambridge Analytica’s data driven operations to aid and enhance chances of winning the
elections for Donald Trump by running multiple political advertisements and promotions on
Facebook in favour of the republican nominee. These advertisements were strategically
targeted to sections of the American public on Facebook, which Cambridge Analytica found
could be swayed towards switching to republican nominee’s favour in the Presidential
elections. The data that Cambridge Analytica procured from American citizens was collected
using illegal and unethical ways as Cambridge Analytica posted a survey on Facebook that vast
number of American citizens filled as it was only to be used for academic purposes. However,
flaws in Facebook’s design allowed Cambridge Analytica to collect, store and analyse this public
confidential data, along with their personal information to further their political cause. After it
was found guilty of illegally mining public data in America’s legal courts, the business
organisation shut down in 2018.
This report assesses the ways and methods Cambridge Analytica used to collect and
record American public’s confidential, sensitive and personal data to be highly unethical,
immoral and illegal in nature. This was a major breach of the American citizen’s privacy and was
used to sway the opinions of voters in nefarious ways for a strategically planned political cause
and objectives by Cambridge Analytica (Berghel, 2018). Facebook too played their fair share in
this scandal as their operational negligence towards the privacy and security of public data is
the reason Cambridge Analytica was able to tamper with the American Presidential elections of

the 2016s, which resulted in Mr. Donald Trump winning and becoming President Of The United
States.
Relationship Between Data-driven Organisations and License to Operate/Public Goodwill
For data driven technological business organisations to functions successfully in the
consumer markets, it is highly imperative for these organisations to harbour the goodwill of
their consumers and the public in the operational markets. As these data driven technological
business organisations constantly need and require the information and data of general public
for their operational analysis and evaluation, it is of utmost importance that they collect and
gather this sensitive and confidential public data through legal and ethical frameworks in order
to build and maintain the public’s trust and confidence in the operational processes conducted
by these business organisations (Laterza, 2018). If the public loses their faith, trust and
confidence in the ethical and moral values of the data driven technological companies, it can
have significantly negative impact on its operational productivity and profitability in the
consumer markets. Maintaining the public goodwill also allows the data driven technological
organisation to build up their brand value and reputation in the market which is immensely
essential to growing and developing the business operations of the technological organisation
in the long run. Having moral and ethical operational values soothes customer’s concerns
regarding the privacy and security of their confidential, sensitive data and information and
helps the technological data driven business organisation to build and retain a loyal customer
base in the markets which also increases their operational productivity and profitability. Using
moral and ethical operational practices also has the benefit of increasing employee motivation
and job satisfaction levels as the workforce of the data driven technological business knows it
isn’t committing any crimes or performing unethical practices for financial gains which can also
cause harm to public in the future.
Using moral, ethical and legal operational methods and processes for their data driven
functions also allows technological organisations to procure and maintain their legal license
required by governing authorities to operate within the consumer markets (Isaak and Hanna,
2018). This licence is essential for any data driven business to operate and can be cancelled by

the governing authorities, in the event the business organisation is found guilty of using illegal
operational methods and practices to perform their data driven operations, which puts the
security and privacy of the public’s confidential and sensitive data at risk of being used for
nefarious purposes by the technological business organisation. In addition to the cancellation of
the license, business can also be financially fined for breaching privacy of the public without
their consent.
Ethical and Legal Challenges Faced by Facebook
After Facebook was found to be involved in the Cambridge Analytica Presidential
Scandal of 2016, it faced major backlash and boycott from the public on its gross negligence of
how it treats the confidential and sensitive public data and information available on its website.
Besides the moral and ethical implications Facebook’s CEO Mr Mark Zuckerberg had to
personally testify in open courts of the United States on Facebook’s involvement in the scandal
and their culpability in it. Mr. Zuckerberg himself attested to this issue by saying that it was in
fact a breach of trust of public data and information and apologised profusely via various
magazines and personal letters on behalf of the organisation and pledged to reform, rectify and
address the lapses in Facebook’s operational processes that lead to the scandal in the first place
(Kozlowska, 2018). Though this was a positive move on his and Facebook’s part, the issue still
remains that Facebook’s operational processes aren’t transparent to the public and governing
authorities on how public’s confidential and personal data, information is collected and stored
by it. Many American citizens quit Facebook after their involvement in the scandal surfaced in
the public papers, which also lead to hugely negative headlines in the media about Facebook
resulting in a major decrease in the prices of its shares in the international stock markets.
Facebook’s involvement in the Cambridge Analytica Presidential Scandal of 2016 also
had major ethical and moral implications for the business organisations with its users losing
trust, confidence and faith in the business organisation’s capabilities to protect and secure their
privacy and their confidential, sensitive, personal data and information from external forces
which can make use of the public data for nefarious purposes. This issue still plagues
Facebook’s operations today as it no longer has the public trust and confidence that it

possessed before the scandals surface in the media (Heawood, 2018). The public’s social
interactions on Facebook have continually declined since the scandal emerged and continues to
decline in the present. Facebook although still a profitable organisation in the technological
markets, recorded an effective decrease in its brand value, reputation and perception in the
public owing to the scandal and still is impacted by its effects and consequences in its
operational productivity and profitability.
CONCLUSION
Through this report, it can be concluded that it is immensely essential for business
organisations to ethically, morally and legally source public and consumer data for their
marketing and data driven operations. Firstly, this report assesses the different business
opportunities that was available to Cambridge Analytica and the methods they used to capture
market opportunities. Then the report evaluates the operational ways in which Cambridge
Analytica could have performed better pre and post their 2017 data harvesting scandal. The
report also analyses the significance of data while making operational decisions in politics as
well as business. Further, the report examines the services Cambridge Analytica provided for
President Trump’s election campaign and its ethical, moral and legal concerns. Then the report
assesses the relationship between performance of data driven technological business
organisations and their public goodwill and license to operate. Finally, the report analyses the
ethical and legal challenges Facebook faces and the implications of these challenges and the
data harvesting scandal of 2017 on Facebook’s operations and functions.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Berghel, H., 2018. Malice domestic: The Cambridge analytica dystopia. Computer. (5). pp.84-89.
Brynjolfsson, E. and McElheran, K., 2016. The rapid adoption of data-driven decision-
making. American Economic Review, 106(5), pp.133-39.Cadwalladr, C. and Graham-
Harrison, E., 2018. The Cambridge analytica files. The Guardian. 21. pp.6-7.
Cadwalladr, C. and Graham-Harrison, E., 2018. Revealed: 50 million Facebook profiles harvested
for Cambridge Analytica in major data breach. The guardian. 17. p.22.
Heawood, J., 2018. Pseudo-public political speech: Democratic implications of the Cambridge
Analytica scandal. Information Polity. 23(4). pp.429-434.
Henriksen, E.E., 2019. Big data, microtargeting, and governmentality in cyber-times. The case of
the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data scandal (Master's thesis).
Isaak, J. and Hanna, M.J., 2018. User data privacy: Facebook, Cambridge Analytica, and privacy
protection. Computer. 51(8). pp.56-59.
Kozlowska, I., 2018. Facebook and data privacy in the age of Cambridge Analytica. The Henry M.
Jackson School of International Studies, Seatlle. 30.
Križanová, A., Moravcikova, D. and Moravcikova, K., 2017, July. CSR Communication on Social
Networks. In International Conference on Applied Economics (pp. 245-257). Springer,
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Laterza, V., 2018. Cambridge Analytica, independent research and the national
interest. Anthropology Today. 34(3). pp.1-2.
Park, V. and Datnow, A., 2017. Ability grouping and differentiated instruction in an era of data-
driven decision making. American Journal of Education. 123(2). pp.000-000.
Risso, L., 2018. Harvesting your soul? Cambridge analytica and brexit. Brexit Means Brexit,
pp.75-90.
Sheikh, M.S. and Mannan, M.M., 2017. Digital Marketing Communication: A Case Study on CSR
Axis.
Wenzel, M. and Will, M.G., 2019. The communicative constitution of academic fields in the
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