The “personalisation or mass marketing” fallacy

One of the hot debates in the marketing world is whether brands should focus on mass marketing or personalisation.

Many tech and data companies have made claims that ‘traditional’ advertising is dying and the future is data driven personalisation. Those on the creative side of the debate tend to believe that personalisation is overhyped and brands should be focussing on great storytelling.

At additive+ we believe this is a false choice.

We subscribe to the view shared by Richard Shotton in The Choice Factory that “cultural imprinting” is one of the great drivers of effective advertising. Cultural imprinting is the idea that shared meaning of what a brand stands for is important as it changes how we are perceived by others when we consume a product. Cultural imprinting by definition requires mass marketing.

However, for those who argue that the opposite of “cultural imprinting” is “mass personalisation”, this is where we respectfully disagree.

Personalisation is not new. Direct mail, email and SMS are channels that have been personalised for many years and there is no real debate that personalisation has a positive impact on response rates in that context.

But nobody has asked “should we use mass media or direct mail?”. The question marketers have asked is what is the optimal media mix to drive maximum effectiveness? This is based on the well proven argument that there is a multiplier effect from using a combination of media channels.

Until relatively recently, creative personalisation in programmatic media channels hasn’t been possible at scale.  To work effectively it requires creative, media, data and technology to be carefully aligned.  Many of the technologies are nascent, the data disorganised, and the creative too often an afterthought.

At additive+ we believe creative should never be compromised.  We also believe mass marketing and personalisation make perfect bedfellows.

For example, a fashion brand may use mass marketing to grow brand awareness and consideration.  But they can then promote different products and offers to existing customers based on their purchase history and predicted lifetime value.

At additive+ we believe that mass marketing generates demand and personalisation helps to fulfil demand.  We believe that brands should be asking what is the optimal blend of personalisation and mass marketing to drive maximum effectiveness? And we are here to help brands deliver against that.