Privacy Guidance
The Word of Mouth Marketing Association ("WOMMA") recognizes the importance of protecting privacy across all marketing and communications channels. While privacy is a multi-faceted issue, WOMMA believes that transparency and choice are at the heart of establishing and sustaining the meaningful connection between brands and consumers.
To assist its members and the word of mouth/social media marketing industry, WOMMA proposes the following Guidance for implementation into a company’s compliance philosophy. These Guidance, relating to the core business practices of brands and their partners, are submitted as aspirational principles designed to incorporate privacy protections into a company’s culture in a meaningful way.
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I. Transparency, Openness, and Honesty:
Brands should be open and honest about Personally Identifiable Information ("PII") that they are collecting, using and sharing from consumers. PII is to be interpreted broadly, as encompassing not only any type of information that could be used to uniquely identify a person - including, for example, a person's name, address, phone number, birth date, social security number, or credit card or bank account numbers - but "personal information" that can be used to identify or locate a person. Brands should communicate with consumers in a clear and conspicuous manner, and in a language that is understandable to the reasonable consumer or intended audience.
II. Limiting Use:
Brands should use PII collected from or about consumers for the purposes that they have clearly communicated.
III. Relevance and Necessity:
Brands should collect PII that is relevant and necessary to accomplish the specified purposes.
IV. Retention:
Brands should not retain PII for longer than necessary to fulfill the specified purposes or to otherwise meet legal requirements.
V. Consumer Participation:
Brands should seek to provide mechanisms for appropriate consumer review, access, and correction of PII that they maintain, to the extent practicable.
VI. Data Quality and Integrity:
Brands should strive to keep PII about consumers accurate and up-to-date.
VII. Security:
Brands should employ measures to protect PII based on the reasonable expectations of their customers, the sensitivity of the information, the nature of the brand's business, the potential of risks the brand faces, and the reasonable protections available to the brand. Brands should require that business partners who collect or use such PII on the brand's behalf also adopt appropriate security measures.
VIII. Accountability and Monitoring:
Brands should be accountable for complying with these principles, by providing consumers with a readily accessible means to express concerns or complaints regarding adherence to these principles, and brands should respond to such concerns or complaints appropriately.
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A Q&A for the benefit of the members concerning the Guidance is set forth below:
Q: What is the purpose of the WOMMA Guidance on Privacy?
A: Privacy is a key concern of regulators, legislators, policy makers, trade associations as well as consumer groups - each one weighing in on the debate. WOMMA wants to be a part of that conversation, as the issues being discussed impact the ways in which members do business. Specifically, the Guidance are designed to educate our members about the ways in which privacy impacts a company's core business practices as well as its marketing efforts.
Q: How did WOMMA come up with the principles or framework?
A: WOMMA's Legal Affairs Committee initially created a framework that was then reviewed by the legal staffs of some brand members. The version was then submitted to the Board for its review and feedback, which included review by some of their legal staffs as well.
Q: Is WOMMA mandating Guidance for privacy the way it did for disclosures in the Ethics Code?
A: No. The current Guidance are aspirational, using the word "should" not "shall" in the document.
Q: Why is privacy important to advertisers, marketers and communicators s?
A: Marketers sell products and services, and seek to create loyal customers who will share their enthusiasm for those products or services. During that "conversation" between the advertiser and customer, sensitive information can be transmitted, whether financial or personal. It is the sensitivity of that information that creates concerns about privacy. As noted in the opening paragraphs, WOMMA believes that transparency and choice are at the heart of establishing and sustaining the meaningful connection between companies and their customers.
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