Personalized Marketing Is the Fantasy Every Company Should Realize

It sounds like a joke the world is playing on marketers: Deliver targeted, personalized experiences at scale.

Sure, let’s mass produce individuality. Let’s build a factory that cranks out nothing but unique experiences that can’t be replicated. Totally plausible, right?

That’s the conundrum Adweek’s Europe brand editor Rebecca Stewart posed to a panel at Adweek’s New Consumer event: How do you make individual consumers feel special across a broad spectrum? It isn’t easy, but it works. According to data from McKinsey, investing in personalization can increase sales for retailers by 2% and boost customer satisfaction by as much as 20%.

“The customer is at the core of our brands,” said Christine Alemany, CMO of i2c Inc., which helps banks, financial technology companies and cryptocurrency firms improve their customer experience. “You have to engage, you have to listen [and] you have to adapt quickly as their needs and expectations change.”

Human nature basically reduces consumers to a childlike state: They want what they want when they want it and how they want it. Tiana Conley, vp of global strategy for Mars Wrigley, said that even she’s looking for the right message at the right time. And that form of consumer need has only amplified as linear TV’s power has faded and media has fragmented.

“For far too long, our industry has operated by the Golden Rule, instead of by the Platinum Rule,” Conley said. “We’ve given consumers what we want them to have instead of what they want to have.”

Building a foundation

It also helps to have a brand that already caters to unique, creative individuals. Aïda Moudachirou Rebois, svp and global CMO for MAC Cosmetics, notes that her company has more than 7,000 products available because it’s been cultivating a diverse consumer base for decades. Almost 40 years old, the MAC brand launched its Viva Glam initiative 30 years ago to raise nearly $500 million for communities affected by HIV and AIDS. 

Last year, Viva Glam partnered with the Keith Haring Foundation and honored the legacy of its renowned namesake pop artist, who died of AIDS-related complications just a year after starting the fund. It sold MAC lipstick with Keith Haring’s art on it but also sold out of the NFT of said lipstick created for consumers who didn’t want to buy the product itself.

“We saw that the consumer was completely connected to being charitable in any form that suits them,” Rebois said. “It’s the personalization of the experience of ‘Yes, we want to give back,’ but there’s many ways of giving back.”

Mars Wrigley offered a similar appeal to individual values through a campaign for its new Dove Galaxy bar. New ads highlight three women tied to the chocolate industry and pledge to help 1 million people in chocolate-connected communities by 2030. The campaign launched in China and the U.K. earlier this month and spreads across the world throughout the year to highlight the work of the women in Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana—where 70% of the world’s cocoa is sourced.

“We felt like there was an opportunity to drive deeper meaning and really dig into insights,” Conley said. “As consumers experience more empathy towards others, that their satisfaction deepens, and this is especially true with women.”

Be genuine, not vanilla

I2c Inc., meanwhile, views personalization through the eyes of not only today’s consumer, but those entering the market during the next few years. That means broadening options to include virtual cards, more accessible funds and payments, digital wallets and contactless payments. It also involves personalizing rewards, loan structures, payment installments, communication and reaction to consumer behavior. 

“Being genuine in your interactions with your customers is paramount to everything you do,” Alemany said.

A company may not reach everybody as it attempts to personalize its business and marketing. But that shouldn’t preclude it from trying. MAC’s Rebois traced her company’s history from when it offered 40 shades of Studio Fix foundation powder in the ‘80s to 70 shades today to match more skin tones. She sees the brand’s outreach during the height of the AIDS epidemic and onward as evidence that it stands for something, has empathy, cares and leads with its heart. When you do that, she said, the business success follows.

“Don’t be afraid of making choices that feel risky, because there is no risk,” Rebois said. “At the end of the day, the only risk is to be vanilla and to be boring,”