Have Another Taste
London Fintech Week, Blockchain, and the Single Customer View

On Thursday I’m headed over to Prescot Street for day 4 of London Fintech Week 2017. The event promises a series of talks on blockchain and security, as well as plenty of opportunities to meet and greet the experts and the hotshots. It’s going to be fantastic. Blockchain is a divisive topic at the moment; it’s either a nascent technology with incredible potential, or an overhyped bubble soon to come crashing down. The success of the recent love/hate marmite campaign suggests that both camps will be attracted to the event, and that the infancy of the chain will prevent either argument from gaining solid ground.
“Love me or hate me, both are in my favour”
— William Shakespeare (possibly)
With lecture titles like ‘Machine Learning & AI: Is it OK to Panic Yet?”, the speakers are absolutely playing up to the media hype. But, amidst the click bait, talks like the 3:30 panel on the future of blockchain beyond financial services will provide a foundation for exploring the potential of the technology.
So what, you may ask, is a market strategist doing at such an event? My last post looked at the wider potential of blockchain to impact CRM, and here I’m addressing what I expect will be the first domino to fall, the single customer view.

An SCV is achieved by implementing a marketing database, allowing you to access all disparate sources of information about a consumer, and connect these to deliver one single overview. Currently Marketing automation / campaign tooling can be used as an overlay on top of all data sources and deliver this for brands. Examples include Salesforce, Adobe and Selligent.
Lots of vendors will tell you that this is the holy grail of marketing — it will allow your brand to communicate in a 1:1 relationship with each of these consumers on the basis of all the ‘why, what and how’ data you have about them.
The issue is that the impact of blockchain will be to prevent marketers from accessing the data in the first place. Any consumer on a chain platform will be able to take complete ownership of their data, and charge for each piece of information in a cryptocurrency of their choice. To borrow the words of Jeremy Epstein, CEO of Never Stop Marketing:
“In a blockchain world, marketers will have to earn customer permission in an entirely new way. Identity will be controlled by the users.”

It looks like an expensive problem, founded on the uncertain assumption that enough consumers will adopt blockchain technologies. So, why not just ignore it?
The answer is two fold. First, blockchain adoption is continually increasing. McKinsey predicts commercial deployment of the technology at scale by 2021. Focus at the moment is on financial applications, but these are inextricably linked to data ownership. For example, digital wallets represent the beginning of the process that will lead to automatic charges for data access, and a new study from MasterCard found that they were mentioned in 75% of tracked conversations that social media users had about new ways to pay.
In addition to this, a study by DMA found that consumers are most incentivised to share personal data with brands when they receive tangible benefits and control over their data. Blockchain gives them the power to choose how they interact with brands, and the ability to dictate what precisely constitutes a tangible benefit.
Second, the benefit of the blockchain isn’t only limited to the customer. Such a database has the potential to deliver maximal efficiency with rapid data retrieval, indisputable and unambiguous source attribution, and complete transparency of process. Requesting consumer permission will enable brands to personalise communications, based around the precise preferences expressed by an individual, improving acquisition and retention.
The answer then, whether you’re #teamblockchain or #teamutterrubbish, is to evaluate how you understand your customers, analyse the potential impact of data ownership shifting, and develop strategies for managing the change. I’m looking forward to seeing what mad solutions London Fintech Week has in store.
“A blob eventually came loose. Rincewind tasted it, gingerly. It was just possible that if you mixed yeasty beer and vegetables together you’d get — No, what you got was salty-tasting beery brown gunk. Odd, though…It was kind of horrible, but nevertheless Rincewind found himself having another taste.”
-The Last Continent
Adeptiv is open to collaboration in this space, either through exchanging thoughts on the impact for your business, or through discussing possible partnerships and developing proofs of concept.
