Establishing Consent With Loyalty Programs

Phil Rubin

Phil Rubin is the Founder and Principal of Grey Space Matters, a consulting firm that works with companies ranging from early-stage and emerging growth to global brand leaders across various industries and sectors. He is a customer-focused strategic growth leader with more than 30 years of experience driving growth for global brands.

Recognized as an industry thought leader, Phil is a keynote speaker for events across North America, Asia, and Europe. He has been quoted in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and numerous other trade publications. Before GSM, Phil led Global Insights and Strategic Partnerships for Bond, a loyalty and customer marketing firm.

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Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

  • Phil shares his journey in the loyalty industry
  • The common forms of data loyalty programs collect and how they utilize them
  • Are customers using integrated loyalty experiences?
  • How privacy laws impact loyalty programs
  • Blockchain’s role in loyalty programs
  • Phil offers expert privacy advice

In this episode…

Airlines and other brands utilize loyalty programs to generate customer insights and enhance experiences. For instance, Delta Airlines has partnered with American Express and Lyft to offer frequent flier miles and discounted transportation — but this raises concerns regarding data collection. So how are brands collecting customer data, and how can you take precautions to protect privacy?

According to Phil Rubin, brands collect two types of data: zero-party data that customers share willingly with the company and first-party data, which brands collect and own directly from their customers. When leveraging loyalty programs, brands should remain transparent about data collection methods to avoid costly privacy breaches. Customers join loyalty programs to receive value and benefits, so it’s crucial to provide useful services and establish trust to increase consent.

In today’s episode of She Said Privacy/He Said Security, Jodi and Justin Daniels interview Phil Rubin, Founder and Principal of Grey Space Matters, to discuss data-sharing in loyalty programs. Phil explains integrated loyalty experiences, the common forms of data collected for loyalty programs, and how privacy laws impact these programs.

Resources Mentioned in this episode

Sponsor for this episode…

This episode is brought to you by Red Clover Advisors.

Red Clover Advisors uses data privacy to transform the way that companies do business together and create a future where there is greater trust between companies and consumers.

Founded by Jodi Daniels, Red Clover Advisors helps companies to comply with data privacy laws and establish customer trust so that they can grow and nurture integrity. They work with companies in a variety of fields, including technology, ecommerce, professional services, and digital media.

To learn more, and to check out their Wall Street Journal best selling book, Data Reimagined: Building Trust One Bite At a Time, visit www.redcloveradvisors.com.

Episode Transcript

Intro 0:01

Welcome to the She Said Privacy/He Said Security Podcast. Like any good marriage we will debate, evaluate, and sometimes quarrel about how privacy and security impact business in the 21st century.

Jodi Daniels 0:22

Hi, Jodi Daniels here. I’m the founder and CEO of Red Clover Advisors, a certified women’s privacy consultancy. I’m a privacy consultant and certified informational privacy professional, providing practical privacy advice to overwhelmed companies.

Justin Daniels 0:37

Hello, Justin Daniels here I am passionate about helping companies solve complex cyber and privacy challenges during the lifecycle of their business. I am the cyber quarterback helping clients design and implement cyber plans as well as help them manage and recover from data breaches.

Jodi Daniels 0:53

And this episode is brought to you by terrible symbol Red Clover Advisors. We help companies comply with data privacy laws and establish customer trust so that they can grow and nurture integrity. We work with companies in a variety of fields, including technology, ecommerce, professional services, and digital media. In short, we use data privacy to transform the way companies do business together, we’re creating a future where there is greater trust between companies and consumers. To learn more, and to check out our new best selling book, Data Reimagined: Building Trust One Byte at a Time, visit redcloveradvisors.com. Very smart G today.

Justin Daniels 1:36

I am I think it’s in our book on sale right now.

Jodi Daniels 1:39

I have not checked the latest sale price. Okay, but it’s on sale at Amazon all the time. You can always go to Amazon and

Justin Daniels 1:49

yeah, because I had someone who wanted to buy a copy yesterday and I think it was on sale.

Jodi Daniels 1:53

I am not sure Amazon does things that I don’t understand.

Justin Daniels 1:57

Yes. Well,

Jodi Daniels 1:59

you are on Amazon. We’ll be delivering something today, just like every other day.

Justin Daniels 2:03

I know. But you’re a damsel who’s constantly in distress over corporate privacy data collection practices and policies

Jodi Daniels 2:10

as a lot of fancy words right there. I

Justin Daniels 2:12

know. Well, I’ve used it in our presentations. Alright, let’s get on with today’s awesome guests.

Jodi Daniels 2:17

It’s gonna be so much fun.

Justin Daniels 2:18

So today we have Phil Rubin, who is recognized as a global leader in the loyalty industry with a 30 plus year record of driving growth for companies ranging from global enterprise and fortune 500 leaders to emerging growth and startups. Prior to Grey Space Matters. He founded our dialogue which was acquired by bond in 2020. Ooh, sounds very James Bond.

Jodi Daniels 2:45

They probably get that all the time.

Justin Daniels 2:46

You’re right. That probably wasn’t a very good pun. Well, Phil after that hilarity Welcome to our show. We’re very pleased to have

Phil Rubin 2:53

you. Well, thank you very much. It is pleasing to be had. No, I’m thrilled, thrilled. Thrilled to be here with you guys. A remarkably cute couple. But But I think more importantly, I love that sort of the intersection and the the, the Venn diagram between each of your professional passions.

Jodi Daniels 3:15

Our kids do, too. They really love hearing about privacy and security all day long. So, Phil, we always ask people how they got to where they are today, if you can share a little bit about your journey to loyalty and what you’re up to these days.

Phil Rubin 3:34

It I don’t know, it’s probably not an uncommon story in terms of how I got here, but I was in the right place at the right time. In that I was I was finishing my MBA, which I went back to get to because for some reason I thought I wanted to be an investment banker, which still sounds fun. But I was flying to Chicago, where my family is originally from and my grandparents would pick me up if I flew into Midway Airport. And I flew midway air midway airlines, which was the first airline that started after deregulation flying up to Chicago to interview at Leo Burnett, which was the best ad agency in the world at that time. And so I flew into midway because they would pick me up they didn’t want to schlep out to O’Hare. And I fell in love with the airline and I managed to convince them to hire me in their marketing group in a newly created role, heading up frequent flyer marketing. And this was 1989, literally the first decade of modern loyalty programs. And less than a decade after American Airline air, the American Airlines launched advantage and was this amazing time to be part of this high growth entrepreneurial airline and help drive the business and learn what to do with the frequent flyer program and loved it. Love the industry loved all we could do. And I was fortunate enough, just, you know, I am fortunate enough to still sort of be in and around that, that world a long time, long time. The

Jodi Daniels 5:21

question is, do you still have a lot of American Airlines points living in a city that is all things Delta?

Phil Rubin 5:30

No, but I go back and forth to New York and DC alive. So I do sometimes fly American and F status on American but no, most of my millions of miles are SkyMiles. And I was fortunate enough in 1995. To launch it’s gotten to be part of the team that launched SkyMiles when I worked for a company called the LASIK group. And so we did a lot of really cool things with delta. And I think they’re still probably the best airline and actually probably one of the best loyalty companies in the world.

Jodi Daniels 6:04

It is really amazing how loyal it is. I mean, there are other airlines that fly in and out of Atlanta, there are some choices depending on where you go. But it’s truly amazing how they’ve connected so many different beyond just line right? You can take your car, you can take hotel points, the credit card and how people. It’s just very, very fascinating. I’m excited to dive on

Justin Daniels 6:26

Yes, I’d much prefer to take delta than sockless credibly

Jodi Daniels 6:31

loyal people, if we have, you know, we’re very American Express friendly, does it that is our first choice are always Delta friendly.

Justin Daniels 6:39

I’m really interested to hear more from Phil’s perspective as we get into it about the psychology behind it. How this evolved, now we have the data privacy. So we have a lot to unpack here today. So Phil we’re gonna dive in, and the first question is, you know, what are the common types of data loyalty programs, or I’m sorry, the common types of data, loyalty programs collect that people may not be thinking about?

Phil Rubin 7:05

You got to so why did God create loyalty programs, right? They it was really like loyalty programs were created because the airlines wanted to attract customers, which is the font the foundational reason, or what should be the foundational reason to collect data on customers to create insights to do what Nike calls notice serve, which is used the data to deliver a better experience for that customer. Now over 30 plus years, 40 years since the the first frequent flyer program was was created. That is often perverted in a lot of industries, which I know you get, which creates a lot of opportunity probably for both of you, in your in your other careers. But it starts with zero party data, right, you have to enroll, and that there’s an implicit and an explicit proposition or sort of quid pro quo between the customer and the brand or the frequent flyer program or the loyalty program or what the membership program or whatever you want to call it. There’s there’s there’s an implicit and explicit trust in terms of there’s there should be right communication in terms of what data is collected, how it’s used, that’s obviously evolved over time. But we, in our work, have always tended to think about in terms of zero party data and first party data, which are now sort of common ways to describe zero party data is what I share with the brand. And the first party data being what other data that they get from tracking me from paying attention to me, which is transactional. So it’s purchased data, it’s shopper data. So it might be things that I looked at but didn’t actually buy its engagement data, am I opening emails? am I responding to campaigns of various types? Am I doing different things to engage with rent? Now, not everybody captures all this data. And certainly, the overwhelming majority don’t do a great job of using all this data. You mentioned delta and American Express. That’s a great strategic partnership. And you could do a whole show just on that partnership. But that whole thing is predicated on payments and data, which is a whole nother set of data that delta has access to and American Express has access to because of the tight relationship between those two companies. So payments and loyalty are very much intertwined because payment data is so valuable because the best data to predict future customer behavior is existing behavioral data. And so when you mentioned Jodi all the different partnerships that airlines like delta have, all those partnerships are also created on the value of data. Because if you know somebody’s flying, then chances are they want, they’re going to need some sort of transportation from an airport to wherever they’re going, they may need a place to stay, they may need to rent a car, they may need to go to Starbucks. And, and so there’s a whole ecosystem of other transactions and behaviors that go with that, that are what bring value to delta and American Express as as those examples, but ideally, it brings value to the customer to, in one way shape, or form transactionally, because you earn miles and you can earn free flights, but also, hopefully, and this is where a lot of loyalty is going today. It’s unlocking a better experience.

Jodi Daniels 11:00

So Phil, you talked about how payments and flight data and sort of the multitude of different data points. Can you maybe share an example of how, how deep some of that data goes, right? If we think about from a privacy perspective, do they know that Jodi bought these bracelets and these chocolate chip cookies at these bakery? Bakery stores? And is that what is shared? Or is it just you know, person one shared these types of things, I think that would be really helpful for our audience to understand

Phil Rubin 11:35

their examples where both of those things take place. So staying on the Delta example of delta and its partners. And this is actually for somebody like me, pretty exceptional. And an example of delta, which used to be a follower, like Delta was a laggard, like I didn’t even know delta.com. When URLs were born, it was delta dash air.com. But Delta has really become like I, like I mentioned earlier, a loyalty leader. So the most recent, one of the more recent partnerships that they announced is a partnership with Lyft. And, and this is this, to me is like a best in class example of a partnership. But now went and I’ve linked my Lyft account to my SkyMiles account. So now around four hours before my departure, I get a notification on my phone from Lyft, knowing that I’m flying, taking a flight in four hours, and prompting me if I want to click and set up a ride to the airport, through Lyft. And so it’s the beginning of what I think the future of loyalty is, which is really not just this transactional model. But it’s an experiential model, where trusted brands like delta, like American Express, have the opportunity to create connected experiences. So it’s not just that I’m earning miles for every dollar I spend with Lyft. But more importantly, actually making my life easier, because they’re nudging me to say, Hey, if you want to take lift to the airport, we’re making it easier for you to do back to that Nike line notice serve. If you know somebody’s traveling in your lift, you’re going to offer him a ride to the airport, just like if you and I are neighbors, and I know you’re going to the airport, and I’m going to the airport, I’m gonna offer you right, and that that’s a great example of how to brands can build relationships with customers, with members that do more than just give them free stuff.

Jodi Daniels 13:44

My little privacy antennas went on, I have that same lift and delta connection. But I it’s been so long since I’ve looked and I haven’t paid as close attention to have they sent me those notifications or not. I can’t recall. My question is thinking about those interconnected experiences? Are you finding more companies are making that opt in? Where I get to decide is that okay, yes, I really want to know about that great Lift service four hours in advance or a default, we’re just going to share it and then let you opt out.

Phil Rubin 14:21

So I don’t honestly recall if I opted in, but I would be willing to bet a large amount of money that even though gambling is not technically legal in Georgia, can you say that being about that?

Justin Daniels 14:37

I think if you can go to the FanDuel website, you can bet on a sporting event that can be subterfuge for this

Phil Rubin 14:42

video. Now I lost my train of thought so I’m sure when I went and I linked the accounts. There was language that said they have permission to do that. But I also recognize and I think we all sort of suffer from this, that we we do have these other sort of gates that we can close like through an iOS through an Apple operating system where you can just say, No, you can’t send me notifications anymore. But it to me, this is an example where I’m loyal to Delta, I trust, Delta, and delta numeric suppressor to two companies and two brands were number one, the customers really important at a business strategy level at a corporate strategy level, not just from a marketing standpoint. So you think about like American Express in their campaign, which is called powerful backing, not for their CO brand cards, but for their proprietary cards that says they have your back as a card member, which is another way of manifesting that they’re loyal to their Cardmembers Delta, if you listen to Ed Bastian talk in the pre flight video or you listened at Bastion talk plate, you know, places like ces where they announced free, free Wi Fi, which which is a whole nother that’s, that’s a data collection and privacy thing, right? We should talk about that. Those brands have a level of trust so that the card members, the SkyMiles members, in the case of delta are from a loyalty psychology standpoint, you’re gonna be more likely to trust those brands. And trust those brands with their data because they’re actually doing things that unlocks value for you, the member, whether it’s free Wi Fi, or, for some of us, it’s convenient. To be able to say, Yeah, I want to lift to pick me up two hours before my flight. And ultimately, I’d love to be able to program that, if I always want to take lift to the airport. You enjoyed your free Wi Fi. I did enjoy my

Justin Daniels 17:06

free Wi Fi. I’m just trying to think about because when I signed up for it, they just said, Hey, we want your SkyMiles number. And delta has already got that they know it’s connected with me. And so I, you know, to Phil’s point, I had no problem. giving that to them. I guess where I haven’t challenged with sometimes the SkyMiles programs is when you want that free flight that is so incentivizing to use the program, now you’re seeing it such that getting that flight or the miles required to earn it have gone up and the times you can use the flight have become more limiting. And then lastly, the lines for getting in our sky club have become longer. So I guess like everything else, your loyalty plan has to evolve as what your members want changes. And then I guess, though I get I hadn’t thought about it. But yeah, I trust those brands more to collect my data. And I’m kind of assuming they’re securing it. Well, I kind of have to make that leap of

Phil Rubin 18:09

faith. Well, you mentioned a couple of things. One is the reality that never in the history of the world, as any loyalty currency, frequent flyer mile or any other type of point, or whatever it’s called, actually gone up in value there. They’ve always been over time, deflated in value. You know, and we’ve seen so much demand, pent up demand, and just ongoing sustained demand for travel, then it’s shifted so much from business to leisure travel, that it becomes a problem. And delta becomes a victim of its own success, especially in Atlanta, where I mean, especially given the operational problems with Southwest, among other problems with Southwest, including the fact that fares are, you’re basically paying the same price to fly Southwest as delta most of the time. And, you know, people pay for a better experience. And you’re gonna get a way better experience on Delta, including free Wi Fi. And so what part of the opportunity for a company like delta, just from a marketing standpoint is okay, it’s harder to get into the sky Club, which is a real problem. It’s hard to get into American Express Centurion lounges, too. And they’re charged, you know, they’ve raised the threshold for elite qualification, and they yield manage the redemption of SkyMiles for flights based on the price of those flights. You know, what delta has always done is they and this is also why they’re really good at what they do from a loyalty standpoint. If you’re a, if you’re a low yield, or a highly elastic leisure traveler, you’re not you’re not event, you’re never going to be a high value customer for Delta. They built their whole business around operating it for high yield premium passengers, which is why they’re partnered with American Express and not Visa or MasterCard, which is why they do, they are approved up, typically a price leader, they’re not the ones it’s instigating fair sales. And, and in return, they’re doing things like offering free Wi Fi, because that’s increasingly an expectation that we all have as travelers if we want to stay connected and productive, but we just want to be entertained. We want, we want to have internet access. And we were talking about American earlier not to, not to diss American but I flew American a couple of weeks ago, and I paid for the Wi Fi, and it was like, dial up, you know, circa 1990, whatever. Like, literally it was important, like it just didn’t work. And so the contrast between that, I mean, aside from the fact that that whole aircraft on American needed to be refurbished, like the whole Delta experience, including the seat, and the Internet access, was just was far superior. So if, if you’re in the right segment, of the pocket of the traveling population, delta is going to love you, because you’re gonna be willing to pay more, are there better experience, and then in turn, they’re gonna give you a better experience, and have your back and be loyal. And it’s why same thing with American Express not to make this a Delta american express love fest. But people pay more for an American Express card. And if you look at the math in terms of membership, rewards, points, and what those turn into there, it’s not as rich as a program, like with Chase, Sapphire, or Capital One. And they’re doing that because of their brand. And they’re also doing that, because American Express is always going to take take, have the back of the card number.

Jodi Daniels 22:06

That’s the exact reasons why I have an American Express card, not a chase sapphire card, all those exact reasons. With all this data, though, that we’re talking about, and how they can connect Justin’s SkyMiles number to the Wi Fi and all his travels back and forth to ski areas. If he lived in California, as opposed to Georgia, where there are no privacy laws. In California, we have CCPA. Right, the California Consumer Privacy Act, and that has some really interesting provisions around loyalty. What are you seeing about how those requirements are impacting loyalty programs?

Phil Rubin 22:55

Well, it’s hard if you’re a national brand, or a global brand, you can’t not do business in a in a state the size of California, right? What’s the population 40 million people, something like that? It is. And, and likewise, I think with GDPR, if you’re a global brand, you cannot do business outside the US and on the continent of Europe without being GDPR compliant. So it sets even though we don’t have privacy laws in Georgia. I’m so tempted to make comments about other laws in Georgia that we do have. But I’ll not do that. You basically like you can’t you can’t be a legit brand, even like a local brand like Sid Mashburn has to be mindful that because they run an online business and they do business in California, right? So it sets a higher bar for privacy and empowering or protecting the consumer. Because until more recently, and you guys know this better than I do. There was less sophistication and less awareness of how many bad actors there are, in terms of misappropriating customer data in terms of selling it without permission, in terms of losing it without permission. Not that anybody has given us permission to lose their data. But but, you know, looking at the value of the data and putting the right kinds of fences around it, but also I think importantly, what California has always done is they’ve been very kind of pro loyalty because of the level of transparency that can be provided and because it at least ensures there are some more minimum threshold for value, consideration back to the consumer in exchange for the data. And that’s ultimately what the trade with the with the the foundational transaction between a customer and a brand is relative to loyalty, it’s as the customer, I’m willing to share my data with you because I expect and trust and in California, you legally have to do great value for me in exchange for my data, and you have to be more transparent about it. And you have to give me access to cancel it, to remove it to lead it, if I so choose. And it’s not I don’t think it’s fair, I don’t think there are a lot of companies to wake up where people wake up in the morning, go, how can I screw my customers and misuse their data? I think part of it is there’s a lack of education, which I’m sure you you see in your work. And the other big challenge is there’s a lot of legacy systems that make it really hard to identify where all the data is much less ensure that that that it’s properly secured. And that if somebody is malicious, they they’re there to sort of the appropriate warnings, defenses guardrails to, to protect that, but also think at the same time. And we look, we saw this with Facebook now meta, and and the 2016 election, that there are a lot of people who see the value in data, not necessarily for altruistic or, or, or even legal purposes. That was fair point.

Jodi Daniels 26:48

But that could be its own episode.

Justin Daniels 26:50

Where how ChatGPT might create a loyalty program?

Phil Rubin 26:55

We could ask it, maybe we will. Well, I have asked ChatGPT about certain loyalty programs, it’s pretty interesting to say like some basic things that they glean from things that other people have published. And yeah, I mean, sadly, better answers than you get from a lot of human beings, including a lot of human beings in the industry. I mean, that could be a whole nother, that’s a whole nother show.

Jodi Daniels 27:29

It is, it’s very interesting to see what’s happening in that universe, very top of mind.

Justin Daniels 27:36

So I did want to ask you. One other thing that we talked about prior to recording, which was blockchain, the whole industry is really reeling from what went on last year. But one bright spot is enterprise blockchain. And Starbucks announced a deal and I’d just love to get your perspective on what you think around blockchain use cases that involve loyalty programs.

Phil Rubin 28:04

Great question, Justin. And it’s really interesting. Where, when you read about what Starbucks is doing with Odyssey, and there are a lot of people and companies focused on let’s call it like, not my term web three, right, which is both new applications, and also the metaverse. So much of blockchain leads down to crypto and lefties. And what I would sort of think of as really bright, shiny objects that are huge distractions for a lot of foundational functionality. I mean, it’s, it’s 2023. And this, that delta lift example is something that in my prior life, we were talking about with big global brands who could enact such a thing. It seven, eight years ago, so those they’re not new, but technology is now making it a little bit easier for things like that to happen. That’s a big part of the value that I’ve seen with Blockchain. And it’s not so much about NF T’s that like all all upper cap, NF T’s, but really what we think of as lowercase NF t, which is how do you tokenize certain things. Because when you are transacting on a blockchain when you’re trend when you’re transacting on a blockchain, there are certain things that become way more efficient and way more exact, foundational things like contracting foundational things like accounting and settlement for transactions. And so from that standpoint, and also the ability to have the chain open or private because in From what I’ve learned in the work that I’ve been doing, and full disclosure, I’m an seed investor in, in a Swiss blockchain royalty company. And yes, they’ve done NF T’s for brands, but what they, the bigger use cases are things like private marketplaces, private b2b marketplaces, where it’s just easier you think about a delta in an American Express, but but maybe not, at that strategic level, the ability for for a large brand to have a bunch of different partners, whether it’s transacting loyalty, you know, purchases and redemptions, or just any other type of commercial relationship. It, it says a lot of legal and accounting, contracting and accounting work, when those transactions take place on a blockchain, it also allows for moving different things. And this is where tokenization is really valuable. And because of the security layer of encryption, things can be shared, moved, transferred in ways that are more expeditious and more efficient, and require less less overhead. To do so. Thank you for,

Justin Daniels 31:26

for sharing that. I just think blockchain has some really interesting use cases in your area with loyalty programs, I guess we’ll just have to see what develops, it will probably happen faster than we think.

Phil Rubin 31:37

It they are. And some of it, I mean, we were we were it, we’ve stumbled into some of these new use cases where there are things that companies are doing that are very much manual. For example, a global brand issuing loyalty, currency, across border, cross different borders, and across different currencies, financial currencies. So imagine you’re a company in the US and you’ve got customers earning your loyalty, your delta, you’ve got customers, earning your loyalty, currency in Europe, in euros, and in Asia, in yen, or whatever other currency. And so you have to both you have to account for the issuance of the sky mile. But then you also have to, it’s sort of a two dimensional transaction or a third third, there’s a third dimension, the transaction between the two parties, because it’s, it’s a SkyMiles. But it’s a sky mile denominated in dollars here, and it’s denominated in this other currency here. So you have sort of two simultaneous transactions that require that it requires a lot of a lot of brain damage in the back office, a lot of people to do that much less get it right and accurate. And so you think about certain businesses, and you think about the we’re talking about betting early and think about the gaming business, and the potential risk of not getting some of those transactions accurate. It could give real expensive,

Jodi Daniels 33:22

very interesting perspectives, I had not appreciated the currency conversion piece. It’s fascinating to me. Now, when you know so much about data and how companies use it, we always like to ask people, What is their best privacy tip that you could

Phil Rubin 33:43

offer? So I think at the old Reagan line when they were doing I think it was the START treaty with Russia, you know, trust but verify. I think you have to flip that today. And you have it has to be more like verified, then trust. Because how many times do we end it’s data loyalty, privacy, nerds, like ourselves are all like myself, I’ll often put bad data out just to see what brands do with it, and to see where it ends up. And you could do that in the old days with like, with your postal address, and see who all of a sudden starts mailing you. Well, you can do that now with different email addresses, or other sorts of profile information that’s attached to that and you can actually see where that I mean, it’s not maybe that scientific or or that scalable, but it’s pretty staggering. So So I think sort of verify, then trust. And you just I think you have to just be fully conscious in to Like today that any data you share online is potentially vulnerable. It’s also why like, for me, I’m huge Apple loyalist. Another great example of a brand that we all pay a premium to do business with. But they’ve been at the forefront in that category, especially relative to metta relative to Google, at least from my perspective, of being more aligned with the customer, or the user as technology people liked, say, and giving empowering people to do things, through a breath through browser settings, through email settings, and through through other hardware and software settings, to read, maybe not eliminate, but to reduce and better manage your own data yield, and what data is shared and who’s able to collect it. And, and also to be able to a little bit more easily block, you know, potentially cancel brands, or, you know, publishers who are doing things that don’t appear to be trustworthy.

Jodi Daniels 36:21

I always find the apple Google sides and camps. So interesting. I was, I don’t remember where I was the other day, and there were people who were commenting, they were always Apple people. And then they moved to Google. And they liked some of Google’s features better, they liked the physical camera and some of the other things that they felt like they couldn’t do in an apple. But I’m like you and I, I like all my Apple devices. I like how they sync together. I like the privacy and security features of apple and I’m hanging on my apple camp. I’m a very loyal person. Once I like brand, you also don’t want me and I don’t like your brand.

Phil Rubin 36:57

Well tell people, most people, by the way, Jodi are loyalists. We did research back at our dialogue, and a real quant research 83% of people that we surveyed describe themselves as loyalists. The challenge and the question is well as to what? And that’s, that that’s what makes? Well, it’s what makes the market so interesting. So when

Justin Daniels 37:26

you aren’t advising or talking all things, loyalty, what do you like to do for fun?

Phil Rubin 37:33

Oh, geez, well, that I can start the answer to that with the fact that I was lucky enough to grow up in New Orleans. So, um, you know that on its own means I love music, I love most art forms, including eating and drinking. But that also is what led me to a number of years ago, start being a pretty avid runner. I still run probably 30 miles a week, I cycle when I’m feeling too old to run. And I’m really fortunate to to I mean, I love photography, I love sports and entertainment, travel, obviously having started work in the travel industry that was sort of the dream job to be able to get on a plane anytime and go somewhere. You know, and I The other thing that I’m really that I spend a lot more time on today. Helping helping people especially helping younger people figure things out in terms of areas that they’re interested in. And I think the last thing is like trying to be mindful of what’s happening around us in the world and and both in terms of like volunteering and supporting different organizations, call them social Oregon, not not social in the like Mardi Gras social clubs, but organizations that are trying to affect policy change, to make our world though, at least a marginally if not significantly better place. So there are a lot of things that are fun to do besides loyalty, but they all relate they can all be tied back to loyalty.

Jodi Daniels 39:35

And a good data strategist would be able to do that. Absolutely. Do you continue to celebrate Mardi Gras?

Phil Rubin 39:43

I do. In fact, we had occasion my sister in law was lovely enough to send us a Kincaid from New Orleans the other day. I will not be at Mardi Gras this year. But I have gone back we our oldest daughter got married during Mardi Gras Last year, and I’ve written in, in one of the big parades a few years ago, and it’s a lot of fun. So it and it is Mardi Gras season. So

Jodi Daniels 40:14

where can people connect with you if they’d like to learn more.

Phil Rubin 40:19

So my website is greyspacematters.com preferred spelling as Dr. E wide. But I think if you type if you miss if you spell gray the other way, you end up in the same place. And I’m usually Phil_Rubin, like on Twitter. And and I’m on post news now one of the one of the few people on post news just to see where Twitter’s going and see an alternative universe to that. And of course on LinkedIn.

Jodi Daniels 40:51

Wonderful. Well, Phil, thank you so much for sharing such fascinating information. And we’ll, we’ll have to see where loyalty and data and privacy I’ll continue to go.

Phil Rubin 41:02

I expect I will see you guys at Hartsfield airport in a sky club at some point soon.

Jodi Daniels 41:07

Only if we can get in apparently there’s long line

Phil Rubin 41:09

or we’re in the line. Thank you very much. It’s it’s really fun to talk with you guys today. And I love what you’re doing.

Jodi Daniels 41:18

Thank you

Outro 41:24

Thanks for listening to the She Said Privacy/He Said Security Podcast. If you haven’t already, be sure to click Subscribe to get future episodes and check us out on LinkedIn. See you next time.