Individualisation and Marketing
January 15th, 2019. From chatbots, to designing your own sneakers, or have your travel luggage engraved with your initials, brands are consciously and steadily making steps towards personalisation.
This strategy comes as trend reports and studies point out how millennials and Gen Z favour brands that allow them to feel a greater sense of individuality.
More than choosing from a palette of given options, beyond customising a products’ colour or picking out its material, users are becoming increasingly involved in product development and communication.
Take crowdfunding platforms. Today, these not only help to start fund and test the desirability of a product well in advance, but also allow early adopters to provide feedback on a product or a service. In this way, users become active participants in product development by helping improve it at a very early stage.
Their involvement further extends to brand communication. The tendency for individualisation has rendered the traditional marketing act of defining buying personas to map out the customer journey utterly useless.
Reality is splintered, and inclusivity requires marketers to work harder.
Be it on social media, by writing and giving reviews of products, by instagramming photos or videos wearing or using products or services, users have a wealth of influence today. They are also proud and active brand ambassadors.
For brands, it is important to move beyond ideal marketing buying personas and recognise the plurality of its audiences and the opportunities it offers. AI-generated copy is being used to create emotional components of the marketing messaging tailoring what it says and how it says it to different customers.
Only when a brand is able to spot the micro-influencers within niche audiences, can it tap into, move and influence the people that it is trying to connect with.
Liliana Rodrigues is a global PR & Marketing professional at international design studio Marcel Wanders.* As a passionate communication strategist and influencer, she regularly writes about brands, art and design.
*Text published January 15th, 2019.
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