The ideal search tool should know me better than I know myself. This tool should read my web surfing patterns, then it should query the Internet for the most appropriate content for me before I look for it myself.
At i20Events' Empowering Brands conference in New York last month, Scott Gatz, Senior Director of Personalization at Yahoo!, seems to agree by saying, "Yahoo! is trying to give consumers what they want, when they want it, where and how they want it and sometimes before they even know they want it and I think that’s really the power of personalization."
He continued, "Consumers are looking for three things:
1) How do you make my life easier?
2) How do you help me to get there quicker?
3) How do I find interesting and new things?
What we are seeing is a move into 'My Media', where I craft my ideal experience."
Scott Eagle, EVP/CMO of Claria, agreed with Scott G.'s comments on the need for content relevancy and personalization. He announced the upcoming launch of Claria’s "Personal Web", a product that will personalize content and advertising across the web.
Claria is currently partnering with a number of top publishers now to offer customers the ability to receive personalized home pages that are updated on the fly based upon the user's web wide surfing patterns. This tool will allow the publishers to customize content and advertising throughout the rest of their sites to heighten user experience and customer loyalty.
While a handful of publishers and software companies are racing to cater to individual customer needs, what are the advertisers doing?
The second part of the evening occurred over dinner and featured three leading brands (Unilever, Sprint/Nextel and Avon) who presented on three ideas that empower customers.
Ed Kim, Manager of Alternative Media & Evolving Technologies for Unilever, took the stage first and presented a highly controversial, yet effective, marketing angle for Axe, a deodorant whose target audience is young males.
Ed said, "Axe wanted to speak to its consumers on an emotional level by making Axe ‘the content’ rather than just ‘the advertiser’."
According to Ed, "Our goal was to give guys the edge in the mating game!" To do this, Axe created an original, reality based Internet show that featured two 20-something year old males (Evan and Garth) who traveled the country video taping their successes and failures at the dating game.
The Evan & Garth website generated 700,000+ clicks and 2 million viewers, an outstanding level of traffic for a young brand. The content of the site is incredibly sexist and painful to watch for most women but if one puts on their marketing hat, it is hard not to admire the originality, aggressiveness and success of this campaign.
For better or worse, get ready for the sequel: The "Lars & Brock" Show.
Mike Cooley, Director of ecommerce for Sprint/Nextel, took the stage next and switched gears from dating to car racing, where Mike discussed the impact of the Nextel/NASCAR relationship in driving wireless phone sales. Nextel has aligned itself with NASCAR to help integrate itself within the lives of its customers by leveraging the unique media attributes of TV, the Internet and Wireless to help their customers access information on NASCAR. Mike indicated that this campaign was highly successful because it enriched people’s lives by providing interactive content that was directly tied to Nextel's strategy.
After hearing presentations on pick up lines and car exhaust, we switched the focus to make up, as Pattiann McAdams, Executive Director of Avon, took the stage. Avon is a 120 year old company that has been highly successfully due to the selling success of thousands of independent sales representatives, otherwise known as the "the Avon Ladies", who sell products to their friends and family.
In the age of digital marketing, one may think that this century old sales and marketing model would die on the vine with the Mom and Pop stores. After all, how important is the personal relationship of an "Avon Lady" in a world that offers the low price points and shopping convenience of Wal-Mart and Target?
Quite the contrary is happening. Avon has combined the existing strength of 600,000 "Avon Lady" sales agents in 141 countries with the global power of the Internet. Avon is giving their sales reps new tools to sell including: their own online stores, turnkey methods to personalize emails for their customers and the ability to deliver products in a fraction of the time that it took just a few years ago. Avon has, in fact, combined an old school, direct marketing business model with the power of the Internet to personalize customer relationships and I think has nailed the model for mass marketing to individuals.
Whether you publish content or sell products and services, the marketing race over the next several years will be based upon a brand’s ability to utilize personalization technologies and ideas to build ongoing, unique relationships with millions of costumers simultaneously. It will no longer be acceptable to simply know your customers; you will need to speak to them on their own terms. The main challenge for most will be based upon maintaining scale while delivering custom solutions.
The question is: Which companies are currently embracing personalization technologies now to seed long term relationships and, which ones will play catch up later?
i20Events is headed to San Francisco on December 1st. Check our website for details.
