Digital Technology in Advertising: Facial Recognition

1. The overarching benefit to marketers attributed to facial recognition is that the technology puts the marketers in an excellent position to gauge the consumers' emotional response to their products, hence the likelihood of making purchases. Through this technology, the marketers can conduct real-time surveys of the aggregate response by customers to their products and establish an accurate and genuine understanding of the customers' experience with the marketed products (MarketWatch). This feedback enables marketers to make relevant changes that suit their customers in a quest to reinforcing the customers' brand trust, loyalty and brand acceptance.

2. Facial recognition technology is prone to abuse by customers who may register dishonest emotional responses to manipulate changes by marketers to their benefit. While relying on facial technology to gauge customers' emotional responses, the marketers are likely to be gamed by consumers' who would register false emotional responses with malicious intentions to induce the marketers to make adjustments to certain aspects about the product such manipulating increase in discounts.

3. Through the facial recognition technology, consumers would be able to enjoy customized brands that befit their personal preferences. Since the technology enables consumers to convey non-verbal responses about their genuine emotional state regarding a product, the marketers would in response customize their brands to suit the consumers' interests.

4. The overarching demerit of the technology regarding consumers is the privacy concern and abuse of the technology by the marketers. Despite conveyance of non-verbal reactions to marketed products, consumers raise concerns about infringement of their privacy as their identity is constantly under track; in addition to the fear that marketers may make a dishonest adjustment to products just to increase the consumers' likelihood to purchase.

5. The first ethical issue for consideration is the storage of personal identity data. Regarding storage, developers of the technology assure that the local cell phone storage retains most detailed facial recognition data which is only accessible to the marketing company with the consent of the consumer. Secondly, it is important to consider the knowledge and consent of the consumer before facial recognition data may be taken from them. This necessitates the marketers to first seek consent of consumers for access to such data. Another ethical issue to consider is the level of infringement to privacy as the technology is well configured to access location of the consumer, their emotions and even predict their next moves. Finally, another ethical issue to consider is the level of control by consumers over corporations regarding what happens with their facial recognition data; this ensures that the companies do not abuse access to such private data.

6. In addition to surveys in marketing, cell phone security may apply facial recognition technology where the legitimate user's face is used to unlock the phone. Further, the technology may be implemented by agencies to make their reality products. Finally, the recreational field can use the technology for recreational purposes such as transformations of selfies into emoticons (Sloane).

7. In my opinion, facial recognition technology is a step in the right direction as it is a positive step in digital communication by virtue of emotional recognition (Owens). Conveyance of non-verbal expressions over digital communication has over a long time been a communication barrier in digital communications. The advent of facial recognition technology has therefore minimized this barrier to the extent that equates digital communication to actual communication.

Works Cited

MarketWatch. "Opinion: How Facial Recognition Technology is Slowly Turning People into Human Bar Codes." 13 April 2017. Document. 7 December 2017.

Owens, Grant. "About Face: How the iPhone X Could Change Brand Marketing." AdAge. Crain Communications , 9 November 2017. Document.

Sloane, Garette. "Can You See Me Now: Apple iPhone's Facial Recognition Excites Brands." AdAge. Crain Communications , 12 September 2017. Document.