The Case Against Personalized Marketing
What is personalized marketing?
It’s one-to-one marketing. Instead of sending the same message to everyone, you deliver individualized content to each customer or prospect.
How exactly do you do that?
Well, you have to track people online. (Cynics would call it spying.) You add data capture software to your website and start recording clicks, time on site, abandoned shopping carts, purchases, etc.
Maybe you can get visitors to sign up for something and capture their email address.
Once you have that info, you can send them product recommendations based on their browsing and purchase history.
Sounds good, right?– so what’s the catch?
Well, for one thing, you need time and resources (a marketing team and money).
Which lets out most small businesses.
But say you are a big brand– does it make sense to pursue personalized marketing?
Many say yes. This HubSpot post lists 24 “data-backed” reasons to personalize your marketing.
But I’m not a believer. Here’s the case against it.
Bob Hoffman, aka, The Ad Contrarian, says the most obvious objective of marketing should be to create fame. That while fame does not guarantee success, famous brands– the Apples, Nikes, Cokes, McDonald’s, Budweisers, et al.– have an huge advantage over brands that aren’t famous.
He writes:
“Experts” tell us that highly personalized, precision targeted, one-to-one advertising is far more capable of performing successfully because it reaches “the right person, at the right place, at the right time.”
This may be true if you have the least ambitious marketing goal — to generate a click. However, if you have the highest marketing goal — to build a successful brand — I have seen no evidence that this is true.
Mass-media advertising is demonstrably more effective at brand building than precision targeted, highly individualized advertising…
To a substantial degree, mass media is public advertising and online advertising is private advertising. It’s hard to become famous in private.
Now you might be thinking: what about brands like Proctor & Gamble and Unilever? Haven’t they committed to mass personalization?
They have. In fact, Keith Weed, former marketing chief at Unilever, once said, “Unilever has an ambition to have a billion one-to-one relationships.”
But here’s the thing: their micro-targeting only works because they’re already famous. No one would pay any attention to personalized messages from an unknown brand.
Jeremy Bullmore, former chairman of what is now the Wunderman Thompson creative agency, makes a similar point.
First he concedes that:
The drive for personalization makes total sense. To know when an individual may be in the market for a mortgage, a new car or a holiday villa, is precious knowledge.
It allows you to dangle the offer enticingly in front of that person at the moment of greatest potential interest; and, very importantly, that person will probably be grateful to you for having done so.
But then he adds:
But… most advertising isn’t like that. Most advertising is on behalf of staple brands, repeat purchase goods and services, and it’s not expected to trigger an immediate (sale)…
It sets out to remind its audience of the brand’s existence… to maintain its general desirability…
This function is usually described as brand-building… It preserves a brand’s worth, and therefore its profitability.
In other words, most advertising is geared toward fame. Making the brand memorable, keeping it top-of-mind.
JP Castlin, CEO at Rouser, a “boringly efficient” strategic consultancy firm, also favors casting a wide net, not a narrow one.
He writes that marketers should be targeting customers’ “big similarities,” not their “little differences.”
Micro-targeting (personalization) limits potential buyers, which also limits potential penetration and potential growth.
He cites an interesting case:
The meat substitute Quorn originally targeted vegetarians, which represented 7% of UK households. Eventually, it changed its strategy to instead appeal to healthy consumers, which represented 70% of UK households.
It remains arguably the most growth-enabling move the brand has ever made.
Castlin also notes that:
In a given time frame, some people who have bought a lot from the category will buy less, some people who have bought little from the category will buy more, some people will stop buying from the category altogether, and some will begin.
By breaking down the category into who bought from it in the past, we easily forget who might buy it in the future.
People change. Preferences change. Needs change.
That’s a powerful case for mass marketing, for “fame”– which for most of us (sole proprietors and small businesses) just means trying to make a name for ourselves.
Why? So we’ll be a brand people think of when they need a certain product or service.
Mr. Bullmore says that “as a race, we’re deeply suspicious of being spied upon… (and) using partial knowledge (gleaned from tracking customers) is as likely to alienate as it is to appeal…”
And he makes this interesting point:
As with friends, we feel most comfortable with brands when we feel that in some sense we have discovered them for ourselves.
The disciples of personalization forget that the human brain is on constant, unconscious alert for things, ideas, people with whom it might like to connect.
We don’t, on the whole, like pushy people (or brands), so…
The skillful brand custodian imbues a brand with characteristics and character that are most likely to attract the attention of its clearly defined target audience– and then invites that audience to make that final, all-important connection themselves.
He concludes that “only mass media confer the status, the fame and the allure that make brands individually desirable to millions of wonderfully disparate individuals.”
Which segues nicely into one final (and subtle) point:
Many people buy products to help them project a certain image: the car I drive, the designer labels I wear, the wine I drink, all tell the world who I am. What Kevin Simler calls cultural imprinting.
A mass media product ad establishes a cultural meaning, which then determines how I’m perceived by others. It’s something that’s only possible if lots of other people have seen the same ad.
Personalized ads can’t create cultural meaning, since they’re only aimed at individuals.
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About Mark: I’m an illustrator specializing in humor, editorial, branding, social media, and content marketing. My images are different, like your brand needs to be.
You can view my portfolio, and connect with me on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
Questions? Send me an email.
