FIGARODIGITAL.CO.UK
he creation of more personally tailored content is top of the to-do list for plenty of digital marketers. But as Rob Smith, Managing Director at Blueleaf, told delegates at our Backing
the Future Seminar, superficial personalisation – your name at the top of an email – no longer cuts it. “Personalisation is most effective,” he says, “when it begins at product level.”
REAL RELATIONSHIPS As an example of a company doing this well – and communicating the fact very successfully through a striking video campaign – Smith cites
nrml.com, manufacturers of bespoke, 3D printed headphones. “This is a fantastic company that
offers product personalisation in its purest form,” says Smith. Customers submit a picture of their ears to nrml. com, which uses 3D printing technology to manufacture a pair of tailored headphones. It’s a simple yet ingenious idea which, says Smith, can easily be applied to other product categories. As a further example of the sort of utilitarian technology currently generating interest, Smith points to a tie-up between Up by Jawbone and Nest. Jawbone was one of the first fitness trackers and boasted Gwyneth Paltrow among its early adopters. Nest is an internet-enabled thermostat that gathers data and ‘learns’ about users’ preferred household temperatures at different points in the day. (It was bought by Google earlier this year.) Working together, these services can calculate the temperature at which users like to drop off to sleep at night and create those conditions accordingly.
SEMINAR REPORT:
All very cosy. But what’s important about this in ecommerce terms, explains Smith, is the move towards connected services that allow users to keep track and act on small, daily factors: when food in the fridge is approaching its sell-by date or other provisions are running low.
We were joined at our Backing the Future Seminar earlier this year by experts from Millennial Media, 8 Million Stories, Webcredible, Code Computerlove, e3 and Blueleaf. From 3D printing to interactive storytelling, our speakers scanned the horizon for the issues shaping digital marketing
But Smith also sounds a note of warning when it comes to personalisation: beware the filter bubble. A problem with ecommerce, he explains, is over-personalising the experience. What that means is overlooking the implicit, real-life factors that drive search. There are plenty of reasons why a user might be looking at cat-related products. That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re a committed ailurophile. Serve that user too much targeted cat content and they’ll get sick of it.
“Normally when I decide not to buy a
product,” notes Smith, “it’s because I don’t want that product. You don’t need to chase me round the web with it.” For more on the filter bubble, search for Eli Pariser’s recent TED Talk on the subject.
THE PHYSICAL-DIGITAL INTERFACE The integration of the physical and the digital – and the drive among bricks and mortar retailers to create
striking high street statements – has been gathering momentum
for a while. In 2012 Adidas began testing
high tech window shopping in Nürnberg, Germany. Their ‘NEO’ experience allows
shoppers to interact with the window display and make purchases with their smartphones. It’s an idea that’s now entering the mainstream. “How can high street retailers’
storefronts and display spaces be made ARTICLE JON FORTGANG
issue 22 october 2014
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