The gold standard
“GDPR should not be too much of a culture shock.”
The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) affects marketers and brands in Australia with any form of establishment within Europe or data held on EU citizens. In the lead-up to the 25 May commencement date, many analysts recommended legal counsel to ensure compliance, as organisations face fines of more than AU$30 million for non-compliance. Proposed in January 2017 but currently with a delayed deadline, the EU’s ePrivacy regulations focus on protecting the confidentiality of personal communications and data will run parallel to GDPR’s focus on everyday data will also require consideration and compliance from Australian marketers. Lourens Swanepoel, digital market unit lead at Avanade Australia, speaks with Marketing prior to GDPR’s deadline, and says organisations that have had a strong foundation of protecting user privacy and data built-in ‘by design’, shouldn’t be too far off compliance, and that the regulations’ framework sets a solid standard for all marketers and organisations using data.
Marketing: How will the GDPR affect Australian businesses?
Lourens Swanepoel: There are quite a few perspectives for the industry. First, the fact that even though businesses operate based out of Australia, GDPR can still affect them if they do business or have entities within the EU, or if they transact, store data or hold data from EU citizens. That constitutes a big, compelling event for businesses within Australia.
From a marketing perspective, there’s this ‘holy grail’ or nirvana of providing personalised experiences, where we are
