What Marita can teach marketers about personalized marketing

In a recent tweet Les Binet shared an ad from the retailer M&S targeted at him and stating, “Leslie, your perfect bra awaits.” As Binet notes, more efficient digital communication like this is replacing wasteful TV ads. The fact that the ad is completely irrelevant to him seems to have got lost somewhere in the ad tech stack.

While Binet’s case might be one of the more egregious examples of mistargeted marketing, I am sure you can think of your own. In my case, every time I look up a new recipe online, I am targeted by display ads for a very nice line of women’s dresses. I am sure I would look stunning in one of them, but, sorry, I am not going to buy one any time soon.

If you want more proof that Binet and I are not isolated cases, check out this article by Dr. Augustine Fou, where he pops the myth of hypertargeting effectiveness, and cites one case where spray and pray advertising was better at targeting a specific gender (50% accuracy) than a digitally targeted one. If we cannot even get the sex of the target audience right, how do we ever expect to create personalized advertising?

While we can debate the role of creativity in advertising, I do not think that anyone would argue that no matter how efficient, an irrelevant ad is never going to be effective. Many marketers today seem to think that it is possible to deliver an ad that is perfectly tailored to the person receiving it, thus maximizing the likelihood of purchase. However, given the vagaries of human behavior, the scope and quality of data available, and our current ability to infer anything accurately from that data, I am extremely doubtful whether we will ever get to the point of real personalization. Even if we can get a person’s age, sex and needs right, will an algorithm ever be able to make an ad feel deeply personal? By which I mean individual, special and intimate.

Perhaps it helps make my case if I share what I regard as a well personalized ad. I am currently locked down in the UK with my parents and just down the road from their house is a pub called The Woolpack. The other evening, I noticed that there was a flier shoved into the letter box. It was the Woolpack menu shown in the picture above, and, as you can see, there was a handwritten message on it,

“Mrs Hollis, Happy to deliver to you if you would like! Lots of love, Marita XX”

My mother, who at nearly 90 has a memory like a steel trap when it comes to people, says she has never met Marita; they might have spoken on the phone. But the message feels personal, right? It proves that you do not need to know someone to make an ad feel personally relevant. Marita knows that during lockdown my parents might welcome a meal from the pub for a change, but they are unlikely to come and pick it up for themselves (the pub delivered meals to them during the last lockdown). So, Marita offers to deliver to them again. Like any good marketer, she is removing friction from the purchase decision. And she does it in a way that feels personal; a communication from one human being to another. The message is thoughtful, in a way that so much digital marketing is not, and, while it might remind my mother of the option of buying meals from the pub, also made her feel good.

Sadly, there may be another way in which the M&S ad falls short by Marita’s standards. As Binet notes in a subsequent tweet,

“They really should know better. I’ve been a regular online customer for many years. Those cheap grey suits I always wear? All M&S.”

Perhaps Marita has a spreadsheet that reminds her that my Mum and Dad were customers during the last lockdown? If so, maybe she has a little note by their name and address stating,

“Older couple. Nothing spicy. Like Sunday roasts.”

If so, Marita is doing a far better job than a major brand that is no doubt wasting millions on misdirected ads and customer emails.

In his Forbes article, Fou references a post on the Adalytics blog which looks at how many ads are served to an individual, and how many of the ones targeted at them the author found to be relevant. Of the 397 unique ads seen in a month (many with a ridiculously high frequency), the author found 32 to be relevant, representing only 1 in 4 of the ad impressions seen. However, in making the classification, the author tried to be open minded and include items that they might need in future. I am certain that many advertisers would count that as a wasted impression (even though they should not) and I suspect that the author found few of these relevant ads felt in any way personal.

The other day, someone asked me why I kept on working and did not retire to ski, hike and build dry stone walls. My answer is that I still hope in some small way that I might be able to stop brands wasting so much money on ill-considered and wasteful marketing practices. And, no matter what its promise, targeted digital advertising has somehow lost the plot, and, to my mind, become one of the most ill-considered and wasteful exercises a marketer can spend money on. But what do you think? Please share your thoughts.

P.S. The Woolpack’s Sunday roast was pretty good. Thanks Marita!