Nothing Personal: Why Mass Brand Personalization Is Fool’s Gold

In the 20th century, the holy grail of marketing was to build a great brand. A Coca-Cola or Nike. But we’ve largely abandoned that goal in this century.

Brands are converging visually. Efficiency is now prioritized over effectiveness. Everything must be data driven. And we’ve lost our patience for the long game.

I’m not saying one caused the other, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence this all started not long after Minority Report arrived, since marketing’s new holy grail is what it showed us, mass personalization.

A future of tailored interactions and experiences.

It’s definitely the future, since it’s everything that marketing has been working towards lately. 86% of B2B marketers are turning to personalized 1:1 marketing.

Which sounds really good on the surface, but….

Mass Personalized Marketing Isn’t What People Really Want

This is heresy, I know. But hear me out.

It’s not that I think mass personalization doesn’t appeal to people, in theory.

We all want things tailored towards our inclinations. And if mass personalization could be achieved solely through personal attention and otherwise human effort, I think it could be great.

But that’s not what’s going to happen.

What’ll actually happen will be dystopian. All of it. Since mass personalization can only be achieved through AI and mass surveillance.

And people will hate it. Not everyone, but enough.

57% of social media users in France and Germany say they don't want their data being used for any kind of ad targeting, with that number going to over 80% for political ads.

AI has impressive capabilities, and it will only get better, but there are three big reasons to doubt it will ever reach a point where most people are comfortable with it as a brand intermediary.

1. That AI Sheen

Every update of ChatGPT brings plenty of oohs and aahs.

But the content it generates, whether visual or text, can't quite shake that fugazi feeling.

Certain things give it away.

Not always, but often enough.

Even when AI makes no outright mistakes or stereotypical tics, all too often, it's output still has that “AI sheen.”

Like the sheen of a moissanite compared to a real diamond.

Granted, writers and creative types are more sensitive to this than the average person.

Also granted, AI will get better.

But so will our collective sixth sense regarding what is and isn’t AI.

As AI-credited job losses mount, the anti-AI movement will step up education of the public regarding how AI works and what gives it away.

And familiarity will breed contempt for and hypersensitivity to AI (among those inclined).

Some people spend quite a bit of time with ChatGPT and its ilk in their personal and professional lives.

But the evidence is lacking that people are interested in AI interactions with brands, even in scenarios where it might be more convenient.

Think about chatbots.

The numbers vary a bit depending on who you ask, but one source indicates that while 45% of people prefer to communicate with businesses through chat, only 0.5% prefer chatting with an AI over a human—a lower number than even I expected.

I've had good customer service experiences with AI chatbots, and lousy ones chatting with humans.

AI often responds faster and more accurately than a human would, and it doesn't get impatient or lose its train of thought if you do something else for a minute during a chat.

But all other things being equal, people still seem to prefer people.

2. The Data Won’t Support Personalization

AI will only get better. But even if AGI should happen, its personalization capabilities will still only be as good as the data it has on you.

And unlike many other areas of technology, the access, analysis, and synthesis of customer data aren't progressing in what I would call a reliable or predictable fashion.

Ads are blocked. Laws get passed. Gaps are still gaping.

I’m a power user of LinkedIn. I’ve written over 60 blog articles under my name there and thousands of posts.

Between that and what Microsoft presumably knows about me (I’ve had a Hotmail account for almost this entire century), LinkedIn should be showing me much more relevant ads than it does.

And things don't seem better most other places in the marketing ecosystem.

Most cold emails I see seem clueless or remedial.

And we’re all getting coupons for things we just bought.

Not that there aren't organizations doing it well (what I see on Facebook is impressively relevant given how little time I spend there).

But bad tailoring is more annoying than no tailoring at all. And I don't really see a path to our tailoring getting good anytime soon.

With AI eating the Internet (and increasingly the data used to train our martech), I don't know where good data for good personalization will come from.

Even if a technological miracle happens and our ability to use and integrate customer data with AI improves to where we can create accurate personalized experiences, this capability won’t necessarily perform as intended.

3. People Hate Surveillance

Recently I wrote an article about how people want to feel seen. And I stand by that.

But people don’t want to feel seen all the time. And we can be quite particular about who sees us.

When I was five years old, my grandparents had a painting of Napoleon hanging in their guest bedroom. And it fucking terrified me.

Those undead eyes just followed me around the room. I truly hated it.

This is what AI-powered personalized marketing will feel like if it ever really does happen.

Think about how much you already hate having retargeted ads follow you around the web.

Now imagine that feeling moving in from the margins of websites and taking center-stage.

When I shop, I prefer to remain anonymous, until I’m ready not to be. When I enter a store, I don’t want to be approached, acknowledged, or looked at.

I want the shopkeeper to totally ignore me, until I’m ready to talk, and that’s when my host is an affable human just trying to help.

On a website, if I feel the eyes of a soulless pseudo-entity following me around, don’t ask me how I’ll react. It won’t be pretty.

People want to feel seen when they prefer to feel seen, by a human.

Surveillance is the term we use for when a machine looks at us. And we don’t like it.

At this point one might respond, “But we’re all being surveilled.”

That’s true, but we can usually tune it out because our environment rarely reacts to our presence.

Now one might counter, “Wouldn’t a marketing AI simply determine that you don’t like pressure and ease off?”

It could in theory, but it won’t. Its masters won’t allow it.

Modern marketers are under a lot of pressure, making them impatient.

We have no time for seduction or foreplay. We just want to bend prospects over and have at them. We can’t help ourselves.

Put marketers in charge of an AI, and it’ll be all used-car sales all the time.

We ruin everything.

There’s Another Big Problem I Haven’t Mentioned Yet

Mass personalization represents an extension of an already problematic trend.

Marketing’s obsession with being data-driven is already deconstructing the brands we serve.

Brands are chasing whatever low-hanging fruit comes onto their radar, undermining who they are in the process.

It’s why Lamborghini now offers an SUV. It's why McDonald’s went through a Starbucks phase (and now feels like an airport).

Mass personalization will make brands more data-driven than they’ve ever been, but the data will take brands in many directions at once. Stretching them into shapeless, meaningless abstractions.

A brand everyone perceives differently stands for nothing.

Brands work by affinity. By attraction. By making people want to do business with you (or even just be around you).

With the strongest lifestyle brands, it's something like joining a tribe (if you wish it to be).

But when a brand lacks distinctive qualities to develop an affinity for, the relationship becomes purely transactional.

Either you're buying convenience (McDonald's) or luxury (the average expensive car brand), with very little personality or distinctiveness involved in either.

And what's more, people know personalization is a growth-hack. A shortcut. An attempt to manipulate, which makes your brand look cheesy.

And unlike what's been happening at McDonald’s, which they’re aware of and in control of, mass personalization will happen automatically.

And it's sure to lead brands into all sorts of unpleasant surprises.

Let’s fast forward a few years.

Imagine a customer walking into a store and being greeted by a hologram.

What if the AI powering that hologram accesses their social media activity and discovers they're frequent consumers of white supremacist content, and then starts conversing with them in that language, out in the open, where other customers can see and hear it?

Better lawyer up.

I don’t mean to come across as an AI hater. It’s a tool.

But using it for mass personalization will subject your brand to its whims.

In other words, it’ll make your brand its tool.

Why Are We Doing This?

Mass personalization seems so inevitable, I think many of us have forgotten why we're doing it.

Is the goal a better customer experience that creates greater affinity for your brand?

Maybe that's what some of us are telling ourselves. But the truth is, it's never been that.

The real goal is to make it harder for customers to tune us out.

To make our slop and spam and pop-ups harder to ignore.

To harass people into doing our wishes through psychological pressure, triggering, and intrusion.

Can such tactics make the customer journey more efficient?

In certain circumstances, maybe.

But will annoying people inspire repeat purchases or make them love your brand?

Nope.

Making your brand an agent of dystopia will not make people love it, like it, or prefer it.

Marketing needs to flush out its collective headgear.

And stop chasing personalization glitter.

It'll only lead to shit in an AI wrapper

For marketers, AI is largely a scaling tool.

If the assumptions marketers start with are shit, the only growth we'll see will be in the number of flies buzzing around us.

About B2B Brands

B2B presents a somewhat different personalization equation, because brand affinity is less of a thing, relationships are inherently transactional, and the marketing process works differently (among other things).

Unlike with most B2C brands, where marketing is mostly persuasion, B2B has a strong educational component as well.

There's a lot of information to wade through, often too much.

Personalization efforts oriented around making relevant information easy to find and minimizing irrelevant information can indeed be useful. As can presentation of this information in a format the prospect prefers.

Does a prospect prefer to listen to thought leadership or read it?

Does a prospect prefer technical or non-technical product information?

Personalization like this could indeed be useful and could potentially improve perceptions of your brand.

When you demonstrate an understanding of prospects in your marketing, they'll be more likely to believe this understanding extends to your product.

But such personalization would need to be entirely voluntary, both at the start of a prospect's interactions with your brand and during them.

When a prospect first shows up on your website and starts nosing around in your product section, a pop-up window might offer them a personalized information journey meant to save time.

But not all will choose to take this journey (and don't be a pest about it if they refuse).

Some people don't want the guided tour.

And for those that do, if at some point the prospect feels there may be relevant information they're not seeing, make it easy for them to "get off the ride."

But as I mentioned earlier, the usefulness of this will only be as good as the data you have on your prospects.

And there's plenty of nuance in the real world.

For instance, I'm not a technical person, but I like having access to technical specs.

I won't always know what all those specs mean, but I like knowing how different or special your product is compared to others.

But either way, it's important to remember that what I'm describing here is not personalization of the brand, but personalization of how it presents information.

Personalization of the brand itself would be when your chatbot chooses a certain tone of voice or conversational style based on what it knows about me. Or if it offers me a selection of the same to choose from.

That's a different thing.

And before you respond with "Can't information personalization be positioned as part of the brand?"

The answer is, "Sure it can, for a while."

But eventually we'll reach a point where everyone's personalization capabilities will be comparable.

So either you'll need strong tailoring in other areas (like the solutions you offer) or your brand will need to stretch in a new direction (rendering it even more shapeless).

And don’t use personalization of irrelevant or otherwise crappy content as a shortcut to get your metrics up from zero to slightly more than zero.

Quality content that’s relevant would achieve a lot more.

B2B content should make prospects feel seen and understood, not pandered to.