"Is Personalization Cracking the Foundations of Society?

WhatTheyThink.com - "Is Personalization Cracking the Foundations of Society?:

One might get that impression from an article in Advertising Age. While many points the author attempts to make are needlessly alarmist or wrong, it reminded me of the book from 2000 titled Bowling Alone. The book's website is still active. The author, Robert Putnam of Harvard, as the site states, ?draws on evidence including nearly 500,000 interviews over the last quarter century to show that we sign fewer petitions, belong to fewer organizations that meet, know our neighbors less, meet with friends less frequently, and even socialize with our families less often.? The point to me is that geography is no longer a factor in determining with whom we socialize. Time is less of an issue as people adjust work schedules and leisure time to meet their needs. Using tools like Skype and instant messaging, we can meet with friends and acquaintances who share deep interests, and not be limited by where we live. We may bowl alone, but we may also compare scores with people around the world.

At the core of this for personalization is data: narrow market segmentation cannot be executed without it. But as the Advertising Age article states, any individual should be able to ?watch a dog-food commercial even if she doesn't currently have a dog.? This goes to a bigger marketing point: what good is branding if you only target people who use your products at only this very moment? You can't build brand equity without a consistent program that increases familiarity among people who may become your customers tomorrow. Personalized marketing is based on historical patterns, not future ones, and is likely to miss significant future opportunity."

While personalization technologies do offer significant benefits, it is important that communicators and marketers realize that they need a blend of approaches in their media mix. This even applies to trade shows. I know that there are companies who are seriously considering skipping shows, and replacing that budget line item with customer events, even if they have to fly customers great distances and put them up in hotels. This is understandable in light of the high costs of shows, in both dollars and time. Yet, trade events serve a larger branding purpose that is underestimated in situations where quarter-to-quarter becomes paramount. Any business that cannot engage in long-term brand development because the next quarter is looming is reducing its capacity for long-term growth. The all-too-often-heard comment, ?unless we have sales now there won't be a company five years from now? may seem insightful, but it is defeatist. All that is really being said is that there is a preference to live from quarter to quarter, and that brand building and marketing are useless. If that were the case, sales reps would not have to explain what their companies stand for and how they differ from competitors. Few people realize that a sales call is the ultimate in personalization and that you can't make a credible sales call without good market-wide branding behind it. This marketing stuff actually works."

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Mondays with Dr. Joe Web, 5Feb2007