It’s not all glamour in this industry. There are rules to comply with (so many rules). Here’s one way the Marketing Association advocates on your behalf to avoid unintended consequences of new legislation.
When you first considered marketing as a career, were you excited about the unique blend of glamour, creativity and influence it offered? Did you think it was perfect for someone like you with a passion for storytelling and a knack for creativity? Did you dream of shaping brands, developing compelling copy and ‘knock ’em dead’ promotional ideas? Yes, of course you did, and quite right!
You might not have realised there’s another side to being a marketing professional. It’s not nearly as glamorous and much more demanding of the left side of your brain. There are rules, industry standards and laws to obey.
These are set by bureaucrats, lawyers and politicians who seem to be intent on making life difficult for would-be entrepreneurs like you. Don’t they realise you have deadlines to hit, market share to worry about, KPIs to achieve?
Maybe not – but that’s where the Marketing Association can help.
One of the MA’s most important roles is having a strong voice to ensure lawmakers understand your needs when new legislation is being considered. Every new law seems to make our lives more complex, and every new minor amendment creates a new playing field. My job, as compliance consultant to the MA, is to make sure those changes don’t bring unintended consequences for marketers.
Take for instance an apparently innocuous change to the Privacy Act 2020, currently being considered by the Parliamentary Justice Committee. This amendment to Principle 3 of the Act will require you to inform an individual whenever you collect any personal information from a third party. So, if you exchange, rent or buy personal data from anyone other than that person you must inform them. It seems simple and logical… or is it?
Very little personal data is exchanged commercially on a permanent basis. It is commonly ‘rented’ for a once-only use. The data is not permanently collected or held by the marketing organisation, it’s simply used to send one direct mail piece or make one phone call. So what’s the point of advising the person you have their contact details if you’re not holding them permanently? It creates more expense and administration for the marketer and information overload for the consumer.
The Marketing Association met with the Justice Select Committee and made these four recommendations:
- Personal contact information obtained from a third party which is the subject of a single-use agreement should be exempt from the requirements of the proposed IPP 3A. Similarly, data containing contact details is often rented for a limited time period covered by a legal contract.
- Where data is exchanged for a limited time period it should be exempt from the requirements of the proposed IPP 3A. Think for a moment about registered charities. They are often staffed by volunteers and have no marketing systems. They depend on acquiring prospective donors by renting data and running a low-cost campaign. The costs and systems required to comply with the new amendment will be difficult to bear. The same applies to the 560,000 small businesses in New Zealand.
- We recommend that registered charities should be exempt from the requirements of the proposed IPP 3A, and that strong consideration be given to extending the exemption to small business. Individual New Zealand consumers will clearly receive more unwanted communications as a result of the proposed amendment because organisations will be contacting them to advise that they have received personal data from a third party. This will simply annoy thousands of individuals as they receive continuous notices advising that their data had been exchanged or shared.
We do not believe that is the intent of this bill. A far more effective solution would be to allow consumers to reduce the number of unsolicited communications they receive by registering themselves on the MA-operated Name Suppression Service. In other words put the fence at the top of the cliff rather than the ambulance at the bottom! - The facility to opt out of receiving unsolicited marketing communications though the MA Name Suppression Service should be ratified in law.
There were a few more recommendations about interpretation of the wording and queries about exclusion clauses, but let’s not keep you away from planning your next promotion any longer. This amendment to a piece of legislation that most people either don’t know about, or don’t care about, is just a small example to give you an idea of the work that goes on behind the scenes at the Marketing Association.
This was first published in the 2024 September-October NZ Marketing Magazine issue. Subscribe here.
