Cambridge Analytica: The Muscle Behind Brexit and Trump?

Details of how CA does what they do are unsurprisingly sketchy but it seems they39ve developed a way of incorporating all sorts of data from multiple sourcesamp160including Facebook into a psychological profiling of many millions of people amp160As the Observer report states quotOn its website Cambridge Analytica makes the astonishing boast that it has psychological profiles based on 5000 separate pieces of data on 220 million American voters Its USP is to use this data to understand people39s deepest emotions and then target them accordinglyquotWe39ll leave others more qualified to comment on the ethics of this sort of profiling but there are a few implications for the media industryThe first is that if as the Observer piece claims Mercer is all about dismantling the media establishment then the established media ought to realize that in this particular arms race it has a pea shooter to combat the most efficient and accurate machine gun ever devisedOne example makes the point I39m a longtime subscriber toamp160and member of The Guardian Yet almost every online article I access from their site begs me to become a member and to support their journalismamp160The Guardian can39t even work out that a member and a subscriber doesn39t need to be asked to subscribe or joinamp160So much for big dataYet Cambridge Analytica are busy providing the framework to allow their political customers to finetune the messages sent out in such a way that they resonate powerfully with those receiving them And one group of messages in the US is around how the mainstream media aren39t to be trustedamp160Like it or not all you have to do is pick up a newspaper or turn on a TV to know that that theme has certainly resonatedOur industry struggles to tailor creative messages based on those reached Far too often we place the same ad in The Guardian as in The Daily Mail two titles at opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to their readers39 attitudes about most thingsA columnist moving from The Guardian to The Daily Mail as one or two have done doesn39t write the same stuff they tailor the message to the audience Yet we can39t do that with ads it seemsThe quotproduction costquotamp160argument doesn39t stand up any more if it ever did after all most of the time we39re talking tone not 100 different executions We haven39t yet moved to the point where data contributes to creativity as opposed to merely measuring its resultWhatever you may think of Cambridge Analyticaamp160and the people they work for the fact remains that they appear to have built a system far ahead of anything in our business despite all the selfproclaimed big data experts inhabiting our worldRemember when we used to mock politicians39 inane attempts at marketing Well no moreReportedly CA has no great interest in brand work Probably just as wellClick the social buttons above or below to share this content with your friends and colleaguesThe opinions and points of view expressed in this article are exclusively the views of the author andor subjects and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNet Inc management or associated bloggersamp160amp160

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Cambridge Analytica: The Muscle Behind Brexit and Trump?

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Brian Jacobs

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Cambridge Analytica: The Muscle Behind Brexit and Trump?

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