Cambridge Analytica spoke with two Scottish National Party representatives on a number of occasions in early 2016. These contacts included the SNP’s initial approach to us, a conference call, a meeting in London, a number of emails and a further phone call. Our discussions were about providing the party with a platform to help manage their data. 

The SNP were keen to work with us, but they said that the timing was not right. We can only assume that comments from a former SNP consultant describing the company as “cowboys” are an attempt to distance himself and the party from further media scrutiny.

Cambridge Analytica is a politically-neutral and data-driven marketing agency that works with brands and on political campaigns. Given our expertise, it should come as no surprise that we have spoken with representatives of every major UK political party.

All three main parties in the last general election used data and targeting strategies. It has been reported that Labour spent over a million pounds on microtargeting voters with ads on Facebook and Snapchat. Listening to voters, and engaging them in the democratic process, is a good thing. 

We’re justifiably proud of our world-class data science team and the safeguards we have in place that ensure that we use data fairly, transparently and securely. We’ve worked for major commercial brands and political campaigns around the world, including a US presidential election campaign.

In the UK we’ve most recently worked with companies in FMCG, financial services, retail and travel sectors. Businesses are realising that data is their lifeblood and that they need to use it properly. 

In Europe, an organisation needs to have the consent of each individual on whom they hold data, and may only hold it for a specific purpose. For this reason our work often focuses on helping clients extract value from their own first party data sets, and carrying out our own research, before exploring to what extent third party data is available and legally permissible for use.

Cambridge Analytica does not hold any data on UK citizens and we do not scrape data from Facebook profiles.