When has the “cookie” turned into a “monster”? Dan Frechtling, CEO at Boltive on staying safe online and the impact new legislation regarding data privacy has over B2B online marketing strategies.

The Jake Dunlap Show

There is no secret that our online activity and research are constantly monitored. But what really happens when you accept “cookies” and consent to your data being collected by websites? How do companies use that data to configure their marketing and sales strategies?

Two years after his wife’s passing, Dan Frechtling was still inundated with ads related to treatments and studies about cancer. That made him realize how abusive and invasive social media can be and how sometimes ineffective privacy laws are in protecting customers. Through his work as the CEO of Boltive, he is dedicated to helping brands and publishers ensure that websites and ad platforms comply with data privacy laws and adhere to the choices of internet users.

In today’s episode of the Jake Dunlap Show, Dan shares his journey from journalism to entering the world of B2B sales and marketing and later joining Boltive in their mission to secure advertisers and publishers against invasive media. He talks about the beginnings of targeted advertising, what really happens when we accept sharing our personal information online and how new legislation on data privacy and online security is forever changing B2B companies marketing practices.

Time stamps:

(02:32) Back in time- growing up in the D.C. area and getting intrigued by journalism;

(04:20) Getting into Northwestern University and realizing journalism wasn’t the right path for him; deciding to stay on and choosing economics as his second major;

(05:41) Going back to school and getting his MBA;

(06:19) Learning Chinese after his parents housed a student who ran away from China after the Tiananmen Square protests; visiting China, studying at the Nankai University and working with different developers there;

(07:43) His innate curiosity and desire to learn new things attracted him to business- making a pit stop in public relations and working on the Gatorade account, getting hired as an undergrad at General Mills, and leading the marketing department for Stamps.com;

(11:03) Deciding to make the leap into the B2B sales world and learning a new approach to sales and attracting customers;

(16:33) The beginnings of targeted advertising and marketing (from the apparition of the cookie to interest-based ads, online behavioral advertising, and the GDPR protection policy);

(22:09) Do you really understand what happens when you “accept cookies” and allow access to your private data?

(26:35) What you need to know about privacy laws and how they impact the sales marketing world;

(30:30) Boltive’s mission- making the internet safer; launching “Privacy Guard”, a secret-shopper technology ensuring that privacy violations are detected and opportunities to reach a targeted audience aren’t missed;

(38:16) The future of marketing- strategies need to be optimized so that they respect customers need for privacy.

Quotes

“From the first day, I showed up on campus I realized that journalism school was not for me, but what do you do? You’re there, you’re enrolled so what do you do? So I stuck with the program and added economics cause I was getting more interested in business.”

“There’s a storytelling in Journalism that’s also reflected in Marketing. When you think about messaging, when you think about persuasion there’s a lot of what’s going to be meaningful to the listener you’re pitching and how can you be creative in that regard.”

“With B2B you have the opportunity to craft differentiation and to position yourself, and to put facts in case studies and evidence behind what you’re saying.”

“You’ve got this hyper-targeting and tracking that started with the cookie and then you’ve got this data protection rise from these alarming incidents and that’s leading to changing consumer attitudes (...) and GDPR which is still regarded as the most comprehensive privacy and security regime in the world.”

“I didn’t use to get two hoots about privacy until I experienced my own privacy being shared when my wife was diagnosed with cancer and I started doing all kinds of research on the internet to figure out what were the treatments and little did I know that while I was visiting those websites I was being tracked (..) that completely changed my mind about how abusive data privacy can be.”

“There’s this thing called the GPC (Global Privacy Control) that the California attorney general's office is requiring all businesses to honor (...) Yet, 90% plus of U.S. businesses do not honor that, and Sephora was one of them.”

“It gets to national security implications. There was an organization called RuTarget which was a subsidiary of Russia’s Sberbank (...) For 4 months during the Ukraine invasion, RuTarget was receiving data from Google and from other advertisers unknowingly. This led to understanding the risks of surveillance from foreign governments.”

______________________________

Get in contact with Dan:

Linkedin- http://linkedin.com/in/frechtling

Twitter- http://lshrt.xyz/4ox5v

Boltive- social links:

Website - https://www.boltive.com/

Linkedin- https://www.linkedin.com/company/boltive/

______________________________

Mentions:

Tiananmen Square protests and massacre (1989)- student-led demonstrations suppressed by the Chinese government through military intervention;

Gatorade- an American brand of sports-themed beverage and food products, built around its signature line of sports drinks;

Website | Twitter | Youtube | Facebook | Instagram

General Mills- an American multinational manufacturer and marketer of branded processed consumer foods;

Website | Twitter | Youtube | Facebook | Instagram | Linkedin

Cheerios- a brand of cereal manufactured by General Mills;

Website | Twitter | Youtube | Facebook | Instagram| Tik Tok

Starbucks- an American multinational chain of coffeehouses and roastery reserves;

Website | Twitter | Youtube | Facebook | Instagram | Spotify| Pinterest

Geoffrey Moore-an American organizational theorist, management consultant, and author, best known for his work Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers. In his book he offers a template for a positioning statement;

Website | Twitter | Youtube | Linkedin

HTTP cookies- pieces of data from a website that is stored within a web browser and that the website can retrieve at a later time;

Edward Snowden- former computer intelligence consultant who leaked highly classified information from the National Security Agency (NSA);

__________________________

Follow Jake:

Website- https://www.jakedunlap.com/

Instagram- https://www.instagram.com/jake_dunlap_/

Linkedin- https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakedunlap

Twitter- https://twitter.com/jaketdunlap