(We originally posted this on August 4, 2020. You can read more of our original ideas in our archive.)
Problem: Marketing still isn’t personalized. Moreover, when people attempt to personalize advertising, they sacrifice privacy.
Solution: The idea of 1:1 marketing is not new: Don Peppers, Martha Rogers, and Bob Dorf all wrote about it in the Winter of 1999 and described it as “being willing and able to change your behavior toward an individual customer based on what the customer tells you and what else you know about that customer.” Today, companies still struggle to implement personalized marketing while weighing the considerations of privacy. The business would focus on integrating aspects of differential privacy with marketing to develop even more effective 1:1 marketing while preserving individual liberties.
The purpose of the company would be to solve some open-questions and open-problems in marketing: (1) how do you dazzle consumers by helping them find new brands?, (2) how can companies innovate on marketing-tech to differentiate it from ad-tech?, and (3) given the complexity behind data-driven marketing how can new algorithms promote more efficient and better businesses. In short, this business would design a marketing-tech business that integrates privacy and designs privacy from the ground up. Given the value of data-driven marketing, this could quickly become a unicorn company.
Below is an image from the 1999 HBR article, “Is Your Company Ready for One-to-one Marketing” which still rings true today.
Monetization: Selling the algorithm that powers these services.
Contributed by: Michael Bervell (Billion Dollar Startup Ideas)