Hyper-personalisation and ‘game changing’ consigned to Marketing’s Room 101

With so many buzzwords and hot new trends floating around the marketing world, sometimes a reality check is needed to decide what really matters.

At last week’s Festival of Marketing (2 October), we convened a stellar panel to debate nine different marketing concepts, trends and behaviours to consign to Marketing’s Room 101.

Total Fitness chief commercial officer Kerry Curtis was joined on stage by fellow panellists Sonia Sudhakar, chief engagement officer at Macmillan Cancer Support, and Michelle Spillane, managing director of Paddy Power Online.

After an audience vote, hyper-personalisation and the term ‘game changing’ were locked away into Room 101, but here’s how we got there.

Round one

The first round was kicked off by Sudhakar, who nominated segmentation. “I’m a big fan of deep customer insight; what I’m not a fan of is segmentation that takes two years to build, costs hundreds of thousands [of pounds], but you then can’t target against it,” she stated.

“Yes, get your customer insight. Yes, build personas. Yes, get manageable chunks that you can work against, but don’t spend years and years on a segmentation that costs a fortune and you can’t then replicate in [Kantar Media’s] TGI.”

Leaning into the algorithms frees marketers up to really get under the skin of the different segments, she argued.

Spillane agreed. “I have been that soldier who’s spent a couple of years building a segmentation model and spent millions only for it to not be fully functional,” she said. “You make those mistakes and you learn from them.”

The Paddy Power boss acknowledged every business has customer metrics, which are overlayed with behavioural and attitudinal segmentation. It is important to get to grips with the complexities, but also resist the temptation to “tie yourself up in absolute knots” and go down a segmentation rabbit hole, she added.

I don’t think being a customer-centric organisation is a bad thing or the wrong thing. I just don’t think that term is fixing the gap in the business.

Michelle Spillane, Paddy Power

Spillane’s first Room 101 nomination was the trend of calling adverts films. Acknowledging she has been that person in the past, Spillane now looks at things differently.

“I don’t mind that our work is quite filmic and quite beautiful. But… what our creatives and our agencies do is an exceptional craft in getting people to think, act, feel, do something in 30 seconds,” she explained.

“I feel at times people use the word ‘film’, because they’ve gone on that journey with all the work and they don’t feel calling it an ad is big enough for what this body of work is going to do. So they lean into using the word film. Actually, I think it [an ad] is big enough.”

In agreement, Curtis recalled times in her career where the marketing team had a “great tummy tickle” from describing the advertising in grand terms, only to realise all the budget had been spent on production and there was nothing left to spend on media.

Her first nomination for Room 101 was the term ‘customer centricity’. Curtis argued that many businesses which label themselves as customer-centric are actually full of internal biases or rely on assumptions.

“To be really customer centric, you have to be pretty bold and ask questions,” Curtis added. “It means a lot of operational and cultural changes. I’m not necessarily sure everyone thinks that sometimes.”

Spillane described how many businesses use the term customer-centric centric as a “forcing function” when they’ve noticed not everyone is truly up to speed on the product or proposition.

“I don’t think it fixes the underlying problem. I don’t think being a customer-centric organisation is a bad thing or the wrong thing. I just don’t think that term is fixing the gap in the business,” she argued.

Round two

Customers and their contradictions emerged as the second nomination from Total Fitness’s Curtis, who called out the fact people often say they want a personal trainer and dedicated fitness, but then don’t show up for the session. “It’s really difficult and there is no easy answer,” she said

Following a major investigation into customer behaviour a year ago, Total Fitness decided to invest in emotional intelligence training for staff.

Spillane agreed the funnel is messy and non-linear, and customer behaviour isn’t neat, which only puts extra pressure on marketers.

“We are investment strategists for our business. We invest lots of the business’s money to grow that business. You’re always looking at CPAs [cost of acquisition] and the value of the ROI that you’re delivering,” she noted.

The contradictions customers throw up is one of the “biggest issues” for marketers, added Sudhakar.

“If you want to be customer centric, you need to listen to customers. So you listen to them and then they don’t do what you want,” she said.

Game changer equals over-hyped internally. ‘It’s a game changing initiative or game changing product.’ Who is it game changing for?

Kerry Curtis, Total Fitness

The Macmillan marketing chief is spending time learning from product methodology and design processes like the ‘double diamond’, which prioritise going live with an idea and then iterating. This way, marketers don’t spend ages building a “perfect” product only to find out customers don’t want it.

“Emotional intelligence rather than service design is really smart, because what it means is we have to be more responsive and able to pivot, and be more agile to change things as customers change their requirements,” Sudhakar added.

Her second nomination for Room 101 was the 60-second ad, which she argued no one is watching apart from competitors, ad agency people and your marketing team. That said, Sudhakar believes 60-second ads can be an asset if you work it hard and create lots of content off the back of it.

“I’ve never found it an efficient way to use media, much as it’s a lovely thing to look at. Actually, if you get a 20-second ad that works hard, you’ve nailed it.”

Curtis agreed, noting her team has sacrificed longer-form creative in favour of 30-second versions and results haven’t been impacted. There are also the savings from a production, agency and model perspective.

The argument is nuanced for Spillane, who is a big believer in the 60-second ad. That said, she argued brands no longer need to rely on TV for exposure. Some of Paddy Power’s “most effective creative” is 60-second spots on YouTube and TikTok.

For Spillane, it comes down to the quality of the creative and contextual relevance.

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Spillane would, however, champion throwing hyper-personalisation into Room 101. Acknowledging it is smart to target customers with the right message, at the right time and via the right channel, she said marketers need to tread this path carefully.

“We’ve got to be conscious of that ever-narrowing funnel and not shooting ourselves in the foot as marketers, because the power of suggestion is what we’re here for. We create trends. It’s that lovely old adage that consumers don’t really know what they want until you give it to them,” said Spillane.

“You can’t invent the future by going down a very narrow funnel. It has a place. I’m delighted that we all work and exist in a time where technology is so great and we can harness it to do great things to drive our brands, our businesses, our consumer experiences on, but it doesn’t replace some of the big macro work that we’ve got to do to forge the future.”

She recalled a recent Spotify event discussing the difference between hyper-predictability and resolving painful customer journeys, which Spillane noted often gets confused.

According to Spotify, there should be some friction in the customer journey to stop consumers getting sucked into doom scrolling. Based on consumer research, which found users don’t feel good losing two hours scrolling on the platform with nothing to show for it, Spotify devised an internal pillar called ‘No Regrets’.

For the streaming giant, this means blending the ability to customise with the chance to discover new music, books and podcasts.

“That investment of time, that’s what they call having a bit of friction. Everything’s not done for you. Some things you’d better get stuck in and do for yourself, but actually customers come away from that with really high levels of satisfaction. They feel a sense of reward,” said Spillane.

Round Three

Kicking off the final round of nominations, Sudhakar picked the word woke – a choice she acknowledged required explanation.

“What I worry about is that people are agonising over whether they are woke-washing, whether it will feel too woke. In a world that is so divisive and so horrible at the moment, if you’re a brand that has space to deliver a message with purpose, to back something that’s right to back, you should just do it with confidence and not worry about any of that,” she argued.

There are reasons people are nervous and brands need to be thoughtful, Spillane acknowledged, citing 2023’s Bud Light boycott, which “decimated” the beer brand’s share price, she said.

Appreciating nuance is needed, she explained Paddy Power looks to surface the customer’s point of view with a dash of mischief and “sparkle” thrown in.

“The thing is to really be overt that you’re well-intended, that this is coming from a good space. It’s not easy, because you do have to balance not existing in that sea of sameness. We’re all looking for a distinction,” Spillane acknowledged.

If you’re a brand that has space to deliver a message with purpose, to back something that’s right to back, you should just do it with confidence.

Sonia Sudhakar, Macmillan Cancer Support

The Paddy Power MD’s final Room 101 nomination was the saying ‘Let’s test that’. Explaining she obviously believes in testing and listening to customers, Spillane has noted a creep over time in favour of conducting analysis for every aspect of a campaign.

“I grew up in a time when all those resources weren’t available to you, and while I’m very grateful that we have all that capability now, the thing many of us developed over time was that business instinct, that judgement, that rounded decision making and consideration,” she said.

She is concerned that by relying too heavily on testing, marketers are eroding their value to the business as anyone can crunch numbers on a spreadsheet.

“We are the one team that can come in and give a balanced, rounded view, and if we also descend into that [pattern of testing everything], don’t we lose that?” said Spillane.

“I’d love us to continue to hone that business, marketing, customer instinct in a healthy way alongside the data.”

Sudhakar agreed an overreliance on data is encouraging some people to “stop thinking” and rely on the numbers alone. It’s also about working out where your resources are best placed, she argued. So rather than an agency putting effort into two pieces of creative, what about backing one piece of creative, honing that work, testing and refining it?

Curtis agreed, citing the saying that while data can win you an argument, it can’t always make the right decision.

“It’s guts and if we don’t rely on that anymore, and use Chat GPT for everything, we’re going to really get in trouble here. We’ve got to move with our gut,” she stated.

The final nomination from the Total Fitness commercial boss was the term “game changer”, which Curtis argued is an oversimplification that misses the detail and doesn’t do anyone justice.

“Game changer equals over-hyped internally,” she stated. “‘It’s a game-changing initiative or game-changing product.’ Who is it game-changing for? It’s mostly for the company. Deciding to make something more efficient. It might be a headcount reduction. That is really irritating. For me, game-changing is something that is really meeting needs.”