Memo Cambridge Analytica

To: Amir Alvarez, Customer relations director

From: Henrik Nilsson, Customer relations assistant

Date: November 3, 2016

Subject: Cambridge Analytica

In SVTs current situation, facing rising competition from commercial television companies, I believe the time has come to try Cambridge Analytica (CA).

Broadcasting television content that appeal our viewers is key in our business. However, we cannot perfect this process unless we initially correctly recognize appealing content to our viewers. If SVT can take use of detailed data in terms of the psychological profiles of our customers, we may be in a better position to target a particular audience with television content that is meaningful for them. Over time this can attract more viewers and increasing our competitiveness.

Going into details, CA´s use of the OCEAN scale of personality traits (after collecting data of up to 5000 points per person) would offer SVT the ability to realize what people care about, the drivers of their decision making and an explanation to their behavior. The process of behavioral microtargeting would give us the opportunity to tailor our interaction with customers depending on their psychological profile.

The accuracy of CA´s predictive model and whether it´s possible to nail down people´s psychological profiles based on a set of generally chosen variables has been criticized. After all, psychological profiles are only true to the extent that the model assumptions and explanatory variables chosen are accurate in describing an individual´s personality traits.