Digital Marketing: Cambridge Analytica's Impact and Analysis

This report provides a detailed analysis of the Cambridge Analytica case, exploring its business opportunities, data acquisition methods, and the ethical and legal implications of its marketing practices. It examines how the company leveraged data from social media, particularly Facebook, to influence public opinion during political campaigns, focusing on the 2016 US elections. The report delves into the actions of CEO Alex Nix, evaluating decisions made before and after the scandal, and assesses the value of data in influencing decision-making in both business and politics. Furthermore, it explores the services provided to Trump's campaign, considering the ethical dimensions of these services. The report also examines the relationship between public goodwill, data-driven technology companies, and the challenges faced by Facebook, concluding with an overview of the scandal's implications for the future of digital marketing and data privacy.

Marketing

Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY.................................................................................................................................................3
What was the business opportunity for Cambridge Analytica? How did the company capture it?.........3
Stand in the shoes of CEO Alex Nix: What could have been done better before the scandal in 2017 and
earlier? What could have been done better after the scandal broke (early 2018)..................................4
How do you judge the value of data for influencing decision making, in business as well as in politics..5
Explain the work and service Cambridge Analytica provided Trump’s campaign. Apart from the legal
side, in your perspective, was it right for Cambridge Analytica to provide this work for Trump.............5
How do public goodwill/license to operate and data-driven technology companies interrelate?..........6
Facebook continues to face major ethical and legal challenges and what implications these challenges
and the case of Cambridge Analytica have for the future of Facebook from your perspective?.............7
CONCLUSION...............................................................................................................................................8
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................................9

INTRODUCTION
Marketing at digital age involves a platform where the company communicates with
their customers through internet connected devices like social media marketing, content
marketing as well as email marketing that are the essential tools of digital marketing. The role
of marketer is to create the content on the basis of online consumption that helps company to
enhance their sales and successfully promote the offerings of business. Recently, digital media
acts as a boom for company that helps to identify the preferences of customer on the basis of
their consumption pattern Jobber and Ellis-Chadwick, 2012). Accordingly, this data is used to
attain the predetermined purpose successfully. This report covers the case of Cambridge
Analytica which extensively used the data from digital media and manipulates the interest of
public during the time of elections. Moreover, such unethical use of the social media especially
Facebook to gather the people data resultant into the global controversy. This report cover
topics like business opportunity gained by Cambridge Analytica along with that discussion is
made on the actions of Alex Nix before as well as after the scandals. Express the values of data
in influencing the business decision making and interrelation of data driven technology to
maintain the interest of public. Further, analyse the legal and ethical challenges faced by
Facebook.
MAIN BODY
What was the business opportunity for Cambridge Analytica? How did the company capture it?
Cambridge Analytica was a British political consulting firm which is well known for its
scandal of misusing the digital information from the internet before the 2016 US elections. The
company found the opportunity to support Republic party by the means they have, the motive
behind all this was to give political support to the Donald Trump who stood against Hillary
Clinton. They used social media that is Facebook to gather basic information about the
residence of US. The business opportunity for the Cambridge Analytica was to get a share out of
the gain which will be happening to Republic part at the time of elections. The information
helped Republic party to run the campaign in social media and find out what the public is
actually looking for and then pitching them the product accordingly. They were able to get
insight the head of the pubic psychologically and appeal them to vote for the prevailing party.
This reflect the data available in social media not just help in the promotion of the products but
also in helps in achieving the political agendas of different parties by manipulating them to vote
for the specific party (Ranga and Ranga, 2014). By getting into digital marketing company hopes
to get huge number of market share by that they can do business globally which may result in
increase in sales, profits and market share of the company. So the company used the elections
of US as an opportunity as the exploited Facebook data and hand it over to a party in US due to

which they can exploit the data for their political agenda and company can get huge returns
from the case. Further, to exploit or capture the business opportunity the company also took
the help of Professor Kogan to build application which offered users some money to complete a
survey on the condition that they grant permission to access their personal details through
Facebook. After this Kogan gain the advantage to access the basis information such as city of
residence, details about friends and also data from the profiles of their Facebook friend. This
helped Kogan’s industry to build personality and psychological profile of billions of people that
data was used by Cambridge Analytica as a favour to serve the Donald Trump during US political
party. They indentified where they can get high concentration of public and organise rallies
accordingly due to which republic gain huge support. Thus, the efforts of Cambridge Analytica
manipulated the interest of people by showing them the advertisement and run campaign
according to the likings of local residence in order t gaze their interest for Republic party.
Stand in the shoes of CEO Alex Nix: What could have been done better before the scandal in
2017 and earlier? What could have been done better after the scandal broke (early 2018)
Before the scandal company should have adopted the following measures so that they
could have got a clean image in public. They did all the data mining while keeping Republic part
into the mind and they were able to trace out lot of confidential data without the knowledge of
customers that where the data has been used. So transparency could have be adopted by
company as it could assist in making whole research legal as it is done with knowledge of the
customer. Proper communication needs to be done and the survey used could have been
unbiased that is not avoiding interest party (Yasmin, Tasneem and Fatema, 2015). In this type of
tricky situation marketing communication becomes a vital thing as it is important to proper
communicate the ideas and vision to the public, so that public is aware about where they are
putting their time into. Having a transparency with the public would have made the case more
favourable towards Cambridge Analytica. The CEO of the company should have frame rigid
policies which do not allows its employ to cross some necessary boundations so that everything
could have been practiced keeping legality into consideration. Proper follow up needed to be
done so that the top level management can do study on where they are going wrong and what
can be the measures which can be implemented to right the wrongs. Proper training need to be
given to the employees and ethics should never be compromised even if the company had to
compromise with profit for some period of time; ethics comes first and then come the other
secondary things. It is the responsibility of the company that they are accountable to the
society in which they are practicing their business, so it was very important that the tools they
had shouldn’t have been used against public as an unfair means, they should have used it in
favour of society so that trust can be restored which they were failed to practice.
The whole controversy went against the company as the company had to face lot of evil
criticism and trust of the public was lost, some of the public also questioned the company

ethics and some starting boycotting the product and services provided by the company. After
the controversy the focus was vitally needed to transfer to restore the trust of the public which
was hamper. The company need to work in practicing fair activities in interest of general public,
they should have more focused in CSR activities which would have help them to connect with
the public and the quality of the work need to be premium so that to avoid any complaint from
the public, they should have work on satisfying customer wants.
How do you judge the value of data for influencing decision making, in business as well as in
politics?
Data plays an important role in influencing decision making in both business and politics,
as you can see from the above case lot of public was taken into consideration and that data was
used to motivate public why they should vote for a specific govt. If talking about the business if
the data which company have is of good quality and huge amount, they can use it to identify
their potential market where they need to concentrate and what customer is looking for which
product so that company can pitch the product accordingly (Hanna and Rowley, 2015). If it is
done in a positive manner value of data can help the customer to pitch them a right product
according to their requirement. But at the same time customer can be misguided by motivating
them to vote them for a specific party which is not in good public interest. The company should
think of using the data in favour of society so that it can give a positive impact and the data
available in social media is used wisely. Psychological study of the public can be done and it can
make the life of public and business easier as the business house will be aware about the needs
of the society and can cater them accordingly, so in that case data will help positively. Having a
database obviously influence the decision making, as company can target the audience and
advertise their product to them, they can do segmentation of data and can pitch different
product to different audience after doing research so that they can catch the right customer
base for the products. In the above mention case, the data use was to favour one party which
was termed as illegal as transparency was not there and misleading of information was also
done, so company should make sure that no such activity is practiced which is against the law,
it will not only hamper the image but it can result in closure of the company too. Ethics are the
responsibility of any business they should have an ethical code of conduct so that the
environment around them is not harmed (Crewe, 2013). Company should use the data
ethically, it should be used in welfare of company as well as society and if any situation arises
where company needs to chose between profit and ethics, they should always opt for ethics as
it will help in obtaining trust of public and the image of the business will be in tact i.e. doing
operation in a planned manner and using the data wisely.

Explain the work and service Cambridge Analytica provided Trump’s campaign. Apart from the
legal side, in your perspective, was it right for Cambridge Analytica to provide this work for
Trump?
The company plays a vital role in the victory of Donald Trump government. It Help them
by using the digital media mainly that are present in social media or Facebook. Company find
out lot of unethical data from Facebook as the market share in the Facebook was very high so
the company focused on finding the basic information of the public and uses them to aid Trump
government. The data was found with the help of a researcher under the data there was lot of
things mention which was personal information of general public (Leeflang, Verhoef and
Freundt, 2014). Data like basic information, city of residence, place of birth, and even the
profile of friends in the Facebook was obtained and segmentation was done so that campaign
can be done in the most efficient way. Ads was shown to the public in which all the positive
work of Trump was reflected and which indirectly motivated the public to vote for him as as-it-
is give them a sense that the mentioned government is better than the others who are
competing. Facebook also help to the company to identify Core Trump fan. After identifying the
core supporter’s influences was given on those so that they can help in spreading the word of
mouth. Other public was also targeted and multiple speech were played in their screen in which
trump has promised for more jobs to the citizen of US and improvement in work culture. So the
whole focus was to aid trump government digitally and by and help in changing the psychology
of people so that they end up voting trump and it was successful as it gather attention of
millions of public (The Facebook and Cambridge Analytica scandal, 2018).
Other than this company also run lot of campaign in Facebook so that to understand the
taste and preferences of the public and whole data was provided to the trump government so
that detailed study can be done and public is pitched accordingly. The company went beyond
the line to help trump campaign as they appointed a researcher to prepare a survey for the
public which may help in making life easy for the political party. Users got an amount for
allowing giving permission to access personal information and that personal information helped
them to pitch trump government psychologically in head of public. So these are the ways how
the company helped trump campaign unethically and illegally.
How do public goodwill/license to operate and data-driven technology companies interrelate?
With the availability of data around the globe, the company can use it positively as well
as negatively, just to increase the business of the company. As in the case mentioned above,
the data which company got from facebook was used to change the belief of the public using
social media so that the goal of the organisation can be achieved. The goal of the company was
to give trump govt a political edge by getting more and more votes from the public (Siricharoen,
2013). Different measures were used by the company in terms of ads, speech etc to turn public

in favour of trump. So by this example it can be seen that how data driven technology can
change the mindset of public and how can a company can pitch their product in the heads of
the public. The company can use these data positively too by providing the right products for
the right set of audience it can be done by proper research by analysing what public actually
wants and providing with the same. So it works both way and it is upto the company to follow
the ethics and use it positively in the betterment of society.
Facebook continues to face major ethical and legal challenges and what implications these
challenges and the case of Cambridge Analytica have for the future of Facebook from your
perspective?
Facebook is one of the widely used social media sites as it claims that it keeps the
personal information of people confidential and seeks out only basic information like the age,
gender and email id. This led to the emergence of wide interest of public and help in building
the virtual community of friends and family (Malhotra and Malhotra, 2012). The Cambridge
Analytica controversy took place after the efforts of whistle blower Christopher Wylie who was
the former employee of company. Whistle blower put forward the image that prevailing
company influences the behaviours of public at the time of 2016 President Election campaign
and promoted Leave side during BREXIT referendum. So this whole controversy put forward the
contribution of Facebook in terms to deliver the favourable data of the user. All this scandal
leads to ethical and legal challenges for Facebook which are discussed below:
Privacy breach: Most of the user interest gets shattered after the Facebook controversy
due to which public raised their attention by posting negative comments and deactivated their
account. This led to the huge loss in the goodwill of company although Mark Zukerberg
described that they didn’t leak the information. But the existence of controversy affected the
market share of company especially in US where it has maximum number of users. Although
today Facebook is trying to come up with more privacy options and deleted all the information
of user in order to connect wide participation of public.
Mislead the interest of audience: Facebook along with the Cambridge Analytica
showcase display online advertisements or prepare campaign to different category of customer
on the basis of their interest and preferences. These campaigns were designed in favour of
Republic partly that leads to ethical issue in terms to manipulate the data which leads to the
legal and ethical implications of company. Still today the company is bearing negative
reparation to build and retain the interest of stakeholders (Morgan, 2012).
Implications of challenges in the future of Facebook: Cambridge Analytica was the
major controversy that outbreak the interest of existing as well as potential customers. This
affect the long term sustainable plans of the business and gives opportunity to the other social
media sites in terms in switch the interest of customer from Facebook. Even the government

has interfere the operations of company, other sites are Instagram and What’s app gazed the
huge attention of the customer and they prefer to remain more active on other sites like
Instagram and What’s app which is now owned by the Mark Zukerberg. Thus, there is a low
possibility for company to bear the risk bur still they need to cautiously work and secure the
data of customer to rebuild or reinvest its lost market. Hence, emphasize needs to be given to
launch additional features for the better engagement of customer (MacFadyen, Stead and
Hastings, 2012).
CONCLUSION
From the above report it has been determined that digital media plays a strong role to
appeal the interest of customer, also it is the significant source to derive out detail data and
build long term relationship with customer. Even it is the responsibility of company to keep all
the data confidentiality otherwise they may have to face several ethical and legal challenges.
The illegal use of the data by Cambridge Analyse misguides the trust if customer and make the
world understand the use of data in terms to manipulate the political decision of the country.
Thus, data needs to be successfully used for the welfare if company as well as customers.

REFERENCES
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Online
The Facebook and Cambridge Analytica scandal. 2018. [Online]. Available
through:<https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/3/23/17151916/facebook-cambridge-
analytica-trump-diagram>