Our strategy director Paul McGuigan was recently featured in the Financial Times, discussing the challenges the health sector face in building up consumer trust into how, and why, their personal data is stored.

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Financial services was one of the first sectors to focus on cyber security in its advertising — in part to reassure customers as apps and digital services replaced in-person visits to branches. For example, in 2017, HSBC’s “The Secret Den” TV ad promoted its voice-activated security. However, now the emphasis is on cyber security education, says Paul McGuigan, strategy director at brand consultancy ThreeTenSeven. He cites a campaign from challenger bank N26 in which normal people — like a club bouncer and a fisherman — explain cyber security concepts.

In the health sector, marketing campaigns about data protection and usage tend to serve a very different purpose to sales-focused advertising, says McGuigan. For many healthcare services, the priority — and the challenge — is to increase consumer trust by clearly communicating why personal information is essential for healthcare services to collect and use.

“Generally, there’s a lack of understanding that, to keep moving forward at pace, healthcare and medical science need to access and share data — for purposes like research and joined-up care,” he says. “There are safeguards in place, but they are poorly understood and therefore untrusted by the public.”

He thinks healthcare has been less proactive and strategic in telling a compelling story about the benefits of allowing personal data to be used — an approach that has been shown to reduce consumer anxiety about security.

You can read the full article in the Financial Times here

Photo by Chris Liverani on Unsplash