Orion Brown started Black Travel Box to serve Black female travelers who find hotel lotions and shampoos inadequate. Randel Bennett co-founded the insurance startup Sigo Seguros for underserved Spanish-speaking drivers. Bill Shufelt and John Walker founded Athletic Brewing Company so athletes and nondrinkers in social situations could drink tasty nonalcoholic beer.
What do these three successful businesses have in common? In each case, the entrepreneurs built their businesses on personalized digital advertising platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. They didn’t have the budgets for TV advertising campaigns to compete with bigger businesses. And all served markets that had previously been ignored.
A privacy bill that’s being eyed by Congress could unintentionally make it harder for similar ventures to take off in the future. We are professors of marketing who are experts in academic research on effects of public policy on marketing. We are concerned that the bipartisan bill – the American Privacy Rights Act – could undermine small entrepreneurs like these who rely on targeted digital advertising.
