What does the future hold for marketing and legitimate interest?

FEDMA is thrilled to have published an article entitled “What does the future hold for marketing and legitimate interest ».

This article was first published on the front page of Privacy Laws & Business International Report, June 2020, privacylaws.com/reports whom we thank very much for this opportunity. It provides an overview of the tennis association case in the Netherlands, for which FEDMA had previously published a call for industry support.

The Tennis Association in the Netherlands (non-for-profit) forwarded their members’ names, gender, postal addresses to a sponsor so as the sponsor may promote its products or services to the members (some were tennis related, others not) by postal mail. The association equally shared the same data with, in addition, the data of birth, to another sponsor for telemarketing. The telemarketing campaign was cancelled, and the direct mail campaign continued. On March 3, the Dutch Data Protection Authority published their decision to fine the Dutch Tennis Federation €525.000. This decision is a threat to the whole infrastructure of prospecting for new customers, for all of Europe’s Businesses, including first parties (e.g. brands, retailers, associations) and third parties (e.g. sponsors, list brokers).

If unchallenged, all prospecting activities would have to be based on a consent from the individual. For this consent to be valid, the requirements are: informing of the name of the prospecting company to the individual prior to the collection of the consent, separate consent from terms and condition and, most likely, one consent for each individual company. FEDMA recently provided feedback to the EU institutions and the European Data Protection Board. FEDMA and DMAs remain available for further discussion in this topic.