Click.New.Idea - Data Blog

An Open Letter to Governments from Covid-19 Marketing Team

Tue, 28 Apr 2020 21:23:00 +0000

Dear Governments from all around the world,

As covid-19 worldwide tracker continues to report new cases and deaths, you are all updating social restrictions and wondering about the future of your country, your people and your businesses.

Most of you have already been relying, or going to rely soon, on location tracking Apps to inform your National Alert Systems. Below, I’ve analysed the performance of some of these Apps, since I think it’s a vain mirage to rely mostly on location data to defeat the infectious enemy.

Status Update on Contact Tracing Apps

Here is a list of the twenty-eight countries currently using a contact tracing App: Algeria, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Brazil, Bulgaria, Colombia, China, Czech Republic, India, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, Pakistan, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, United Arab Emirates, Georgia, Iceland, Norway, Poland, Romania, Russia, and Ecuador.

What do they all have in common? Something to do with culture, political history, and modern social constraints. Somewhat different from other countries such as Italy, Spain, France, and the United States; who have all delayed deployment of their contact tracing Apps due to government discussions around data ethics. Although privacy concerns could be somewhat resolved with mandatory regulations or facultative incentives, something else is preventing full functionality of the App.

Performance Review

Let’s analyse the actual performance of such contact tracing Apps, just like we would do after launching a marketing campaign for a new service App. First of all, we will want to take a look at potential and actual reach, calculating success rate based on Mobile KPIs, such as CPA and downloads.

In the era of covid-19, the only KPI that matters is the number of new cases or deaths. So, I looked at the numbers of new cases and deaths registered in the last 24 hours* among those twenty-eight countries and only two countries reported zero new cases and deaths.

Moreover, across a random sample, the success rate of the App is way below average and still far from reaching ideal targets. Why? Because to make a contact tracing App useful to track and prevent covid-19, you don’t need only the cool factor but a minimum target of downloads and active users. At least 40% of the population must have downloaded and enthusiastically using the App, like an influencer is using TikTok, as reported by ABC.

Sample of countries who have implemented contact tracing Apps.

COUNTRY	POPULATION	APP DOWNLOADS	SUCCESS RATE
INDIA	1,353,000,000	50,000,000	-91%
COLOMBIA	50,000,000	1,200,000	-94%
AUSTRALIA	25,000,000	2,000,000	-80%
AUSTRIA	8,900,000	400,000	-89%
SINGAPORE	5,600,000	1,120,000	-50%

Numbers are approximate but based on actual population numbers and total App Downloads, as reported on official sites. Note: The analysis is optimistic, considering that I've used downloads rather than actual daily users.

There are several technical and social limitations related to the use of these Apps. For now, it’s a sci-fi fail, considering the inaccuracy of bluetooth and GPS technology in a situation of social distancing, as well as the slow adoption from consumers. Nevertheless, more countries are investing tax-payers money into funding more of these techy solutions, engineers and MIT Academics rather than sending a tampon to those who have declared to have symptoms.

So, dear governments, here is a tough performance review of your covid-19 efforts, necessary to reset expectations and determine next steps:

Overall performance is stagnant and falling behind.
You are far from reaching the minimum target and keep counting new cases and deaths globally, with or without creepy location tracking.
It’s hard to believe you can optimise and achieve a positive success rate given the broad and stubborn target audience.

We have to wait for Apple & Google to save the day, which is scheduled to happen in mid-May. Two more weeks, hopefully by then governments will consider all social implications and require a decentralised approach. Otherwise, it will be a couple more weeks/months of long discussions on ethics, putting more projects on hold and counting more deaths.

Reviewing People’s Motivations (to download a contact tracing App)

Austria and India: Two countries, one similar App, same virus but different cultural struggles. From a geographic analysis, they look very similar as they share a border with two of the most infected countries (Italy and China). Therefore, you would expect a higher success rate of downloads, perhaps driven by panic but that’s not the case.

While in Austria, people might be driven by fear, they are also more respectful of rules and regulations attaining to social distancing thanks to their population density. In India, the motivation to download the App is not dependent on fear but rather smartphone accessibility (58% of the population doesn’t own one).

On the other spectrum, there is Singapore. One of the most innovative places in the world, considered a smart city by many, technologically advanced in toto. Still, only 20% of the population is using the App and trusting the government.

Interestingly, it’s not the level of technology and adoption that makes the difference in a crisis situation like this one. It’s rather political views, human values and cultural differences that prevent countries to innovate, or in this specific case, safeguard the health of entire populations.

Closing Remarks

Covid-19 is like digital marketing, it’s in constant evolution. So, we have to move away from our traditional way of testing & learning. A solution to this pandemic may not lay in the use of the most technological systems but in a collective and multi-disciplinary dataset, to be translated into new social norms and cultural habits.

It’s great to find techy ways to make things safer but we have to make sure we educate everyone first, to increase our chances of tech adoption in the future. Imagine if data privacy wasn’t an issue today, if it was considered a non-essential service/benefit, shifting the weight of essential onto human judgement.

Perhaps, this is the time to start defining privacy in different ways and for different purposes. Educating our populations that doing a personality test online is just as intrusive as sharing location data. However, one can save your lives, the other one is just for fun. Fun Fact: In the last 30 days, “personality tests” online have been trending up worldwide, +252% above yearly average.

May this quarantine help you understand the critical role of cultural sociologists, anthropologists and social psychologists to find solutions for your global citizens and businesses. AI and machine learning have already thought us that human judgement is a key priority and is not going to be replaced, not even with a virtual ID to track our movements.

Kind (cultural) regards

In conclusion, I want to make clear that I’m not opposed to contact tracing Apps. As a data analyst and sociologist, a researcher at heart, the more data the better! But, we have to be careful of not falling for the syndrome of omnipotence, which drives our global society to feel invincible when we are not. Our society is evolving, so we must rely on cultures and human values, more so than technology. This is the time to assess our past and current limitations, while planning for post-pandemic with a team of experts.

In the meantime, I hope you do a lot more tests. I’m not talking about the A/B testing, but covid-19 diagnostic tests (swabs) and antibody blood test! Allocating most of your National budgets to send swaps to at least 40% of the population, educating people on topics such as public health, civic education and data privacy, while training and re-allocating your workforce into testing centres to scientifically identify and monitor the spread.

Data Privacy Big Match: EU Parliament 3 - Facebook CEO 1

Wed, 23 May 2018 10:27:00 +0000

Last night, there was something far more entertaining than any Netflix TV series or movie: Facebook's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, finally decided to testify in front of the European Parliament.

After going through a round table of tough and specific questions, Mark Z started with a classic storytelling novel about his garage and the first years of Facebook.

BIG Mistake #1! I went to High School in Brussels, specifically the European School I, and I grew up around members of the European Parliament, Council and Commission. If there is anything to know about the European Parliament, one thing is key, storytelling BS doesn't fly well among those members. Those are the top niche politicians representing 28 states and cultures, one of the largest democracy of our current world, they are not easily impressed by the emotional tactics of American "code of communications". Plus, we already know the story of Steve Jobs, Mark's garage can't compare with that.

Mistake #2: It's great to hear about the advancement and vision to leverage more AI (Artificial Intelligence) to fix most of Facebook's problems. However, dear Mark, you have enough historical data stored in your data centers and that's enough to train your machines and fix the problem of data privacy VERSUS "fixing while doing" and harming our society.

As stated during the debate, in the next 18 months we are going to face important and critical elections globally. So, it is unacceptable to receive vague answers on targeting advertising/content/news and show lack of a proper contingency plan.

Cambridge Analytica is not once in a lifetime event. I'm a marketer and consumer behavior professional and I can still use certain third parties to create modeling look-alike and deliver customized content through DSP into Facebook. In fact, Italian politicians are using this tactic right now to promote their 2x1000 campaign...or should we call it Propaganda?!

To add to that, below is a video of my favorite quote/question of the whole debate, by EU's politician Guy Verhofstadt. It reminds me of the question I posed at my TEDx Talk a couple years ago "What do you want to be remembered for?"

Mistake #3: Feeling so confident about GDPR and not responding to specific questions about Facebook's properties and their use of data.

In 2017, the European Commission fined Facebook €110 million ($122 million) for “providing incorrect or misleading information” about its 2014 acquisition of WhatsApp. A year after issuing a warning, European Union privacy regulators are still concerned about illegal data sharing between the Apps. Yesterday, no further clarification was provided by Facebook's CEO.

Last summer, Mark came up with a new Facebook mission statement __insert fluff about friends, family and a better world__ but was it really an ethical statement? The EU Parliament asked, Mark did not answer.

Perhaps, he would be better off by pausing Facebook Ads until his data privacy is 100% compliant with new GDPR regulations, while focusing on his other social media properties that are growing globally and beating Facebook engagements (Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, Internet.org). Turning off Facebook doesn't mean to switch off completely that business, but rather investing and building the largest team of AI specialists and creating new educational programs for Gen Zs, while also developing new social communication theories with experts that are not biased by business models. Economy will still go up and Facebook will finally stay true to its statement of "doing good" among circles of friends and families around the world.

In conclusion, Mark is definitely a good business man with a good defensive presence and many good points jotted down on his notepad. On the other side of the table, we have members of the European Union, those are philosophers, industrialists and activists of privacy regulations. A controlled non-verbal communication is not enough to impress them and keep them quite. In fact, the opposite happened at the end of a too-short meeting (one hour meeting is ridiculous even when talking about business strategies with a small biz owner).

The only thing in Mark's favor was the format of the European debate, allowing parliamentarians to ask many specific questions and express all valid concerns, but not allowing the same time to answer 101. Completely different format from the tête-à-tête between US Congress and Mark Z live streamed last month.

Moreover, if this was meant to be an interrogation in front of the European law, it was not Mark's right to end the speech by saying "to be mindful of time". Europe has been waiting a confrontation with Facebook's CEO for months (if not years) but, at the end of the meeting, he decided when it was time to end that uncomfortable conversation and logout.

Did you watch the debate? What do you think is the future of Facebook?