Personalisation is the current favourite of marketing jargon bingo. Confusingly, the term is used generically for both personalised marketing (for example eCRM) and personalised products, such as Share a Coke. There’s a big difference between the two, though. Personalised marketing delivers increased control to brands, while personalised products rely on brands relinquishing control to their customers.
Relinquishing control isn’t something that brands like to do. Particularly when it comes to their brand identity, an asset that, in the case of Coca-Cola, is estimated to be worth 47% of the company’s total value.
The reward can be well worth the risk. Share a Coke contributed to the brand’s first growth in sales for a decade.
Since the success of that campaign, Nutella, Marmite, and Jaffa Cakes have run personalisation promotions. But what risks did they face in doing so and how did they ensure the rewards outweighed them?
We worked on one of those campaigns. Here’s what we learned:
Risk 1: losing your identity
Brand guidelines are notoriously strict, forbidding any changes to (and separation of) the elements of a visual identity. That’s because few brands are iconic enough to remain instantly recognisable when their appearance is altered. Coca-Cola is
one. Marmite, with its black jar, yellow lid and curved label, is another.
Any brand guardian, whether client or agency side, must have the humility and self-awareness to assess whether their brand has strong enough recognition for personalisation. Crucially, this humility must extend to recognising whether your customers will want a personalised version of your product. Would you want a personalised bottle of bleach?
Risk 2: offending customers
When you give customers the chance to personalise a label, you are exposing your brand to misuse. Given the opportunity, people will absolutely customise your logo in an offensive manner.
Coca-Cola, Marmite, Nutella and Jaffa Cakes will have built comprehensive swear filters to help prevent pictures of their products adorned with naughty words being plastered across the internet. But with the British public’s incredible capacity for offensive language, it’s inevitable that things will sneak through.
Despite installing with the best of intentions, swear filters can also upset people. On one campaign the word “gay” was blocked due to worries that people would use it offensively. Unfortunately, but completely understandably, blocking the word offended those who wanted to use it positively.
These situations are where brands really need to think and act personally. It’s worth considering whether your community managers are sufficiently sensitive and empathetic to respond to customers who are upset. And are they witty or savvy enough to deal with misuses that escape the swear filters? These instances can make or break not just a personalised product campaign, but goodwill towards a brand.
Risk 3: removing the fun
Preventing misuse of your brand is obviously important. But when the point of personalised products is to provide a fun interaction with your brand, you have to tread lightly around censorship.
Stopping customers from doing something you don’t like dilutes the sense of control you’ve given them – and the fun they may be having. Making this prevention feel like a reprimand doesn’t just remove any sense of fun, it creates ill feeling.
The first step is avoiding the standard, cold error messages. Marmite’s recent Valentine’s Day personalisation app did this by replacing the characters that turned an innocuous word into an offensive one with asterisks. In doing so, it turned the swear filter from a spoilsport into a fun factory, with people working out which characters to substitute to beat the filter. That’s not to say this is what every brand should do, but for Marmite the mechanism fitted its irreverent tone of voice perfectly.
The rewards
If your brand is as loved as Coca-Cola or Marmite, customers will jump at the chance to buy personalised versions. Time the campaign with Christmas and you’ve created an almost irresistible stocking gift, guaranteeing huge sales. You just need the humility to recognise your brand’s status, the bravery to loosen the protective reigns and the humour to allow people to have fun.
… that and the foul-mouthed imagination to stay ahead of your equally foul-mouthed customers.
Sam Taylor is an account director at Kerve Creative
This advertisement feature is paid for by the Marketing Agencies Association, which supports the Guardian Media & Tech Network’s Agencies hub.
