Are you getting personal? Then keep your distance!

Yet again, the internet presents legislators and regulators with problems that were never foreseen in pre-digital times. Barristers have discovered Google.

 

They used to face the jury box knowing little of value about its occupants. The jurors had been vetted, certainly; but they remained as impersonal as any target group defined only as C2/Ds, 25-34. Today, apparently, whether acting for the defendant or the prosecution, wily barristers Google their jurors. One by one, they delve into their jurors’ interests, their backgrounds, their occupations, their families, their memberships of groups and clubs. And then, armed with this instructive and highly personal information, they carefully tailor their addresses to appeal to their individual jurors’ known opinions, prejudices and predilections.

 

Legal authorities are not sure what to do about this. It’s easy enough to instruct barristers to desist – but that’s about as effective as instructing gay bishops to remain chaste.

 

However, that’s someone else’s worry. Mine is that marketing people, on hearing of this development, will become even more enthusiastic about having a one-on-one relationship with each of their millions of consumers. Already, Forrester Research reports that, in 2013, something called personalisation is the top priority for 55 per cent of retailers.

 

Since the birth of the internet, the marketing world has been led to believe that the bad old days of one-way communication, of mass communication, will soon be as quaintly oldfashioned as the bioscope: to be replaced by the ability to have a unique and relevant relationship, often characterised as a ‘conversation’, with each and every customer.

 

Well, I’m sorry to rain on anyone’s parade: but that won’t happen; trying to make it happen may do more harm than good; and furthermore, it doesn’t need to happen.

 

The wily barristers have an audience of just 12 people. And it’s entirely possible that they’ll learn enough about one or two of them to make their appeal a little more persuasive. But they won’t, of course, be able overtly to reveal their possession of this knowledge; they can use it only as background. And in this they’re extremely fortunate.

 

With brand relationships, as with personal relationships, it’s possible to try too hard to make all the running. Remember that pushy person at school who really, really wanted to be your best friend? I bet you never were. Attempts to cosy up close can all too easily be seen as ingratiation; and ingratiation, in pleasing paradox, can very easily alienate.

 

It’s presumptuous of a brand to pretend to know a human being, and most human beings will resent that presumption, not least because the brand will inevitably get it subtly wrong.

 

Though I was christened John Jeremy, I’ve never been known as John; but data banks don’t know that. So when I get a warm, personalised message addressed to Dear John, not only do I know it’s from a total stranger but from an incompetent stranger at that. I feel like thrusting my face in the stranger’s face and snarling: “Are you getting personal?”

 

The thing that enthusiasts for extreme personalisation forget is that a true brand-to-person relationship is not unlike a true friendship: it cannot be one-sided. Each side gives as well as receives. And people, all people, whether they realise it or not, are constantly on the lookout for what is relevant to them: what fits, what feels right? They apply this test to other people and they apply it to brands. ‘Who is this brand and do I like her?’ is the question that can turn a blind date into a long and affectionate relationship.

 

So the canny brand builder doesn’t try to make all the running. The canny brand builder uses knowledge, yes, and vast quantities of empathy; but leaves a great deal of room for each member of the audience to respond to brand clues; to fill in the gaps; to contribute as much to that relationship as the brand itself.

 

This approach has two overwhelming advantages. First, because the individual has been an active participant, rather than a passive recipient, the relationship will be sturdy and strong.

 

And second, because that relationship has been in part forged by the individual, it can only be intensely personal: it can’t be anything else. If a million different people are aware of the same product, and are encouraged and prompted to be friends with that product, a million subtly different brands will take form in a million different minds.

 

It’s seriously wrong-headed of marketing people to believe that, given enough information about each and every member of their longed-for customer base, and enough different channels and platforms through which to reach them, they can singlehandedly ensure that they can have a personal conversation with each of them.

 

That belief probably springs from an age-old misconception about mass communication; which has never, in truth, existed. Mass transmission exists, all right; but mass reception never. And thank the lord for that.

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This article was taken from Market Leader, the March 2013 issue. Read more Market Leader.