Editorial Articles

Pearse McCabe, Director of Strategy and Planning at Rufus Leonard considers the implications for brands and consumers of new targeting technology

Consumers identify with brands through interaction with them. Personalisation has become a key consideration; consumers want brands to give them what they want, when they want it, and to tell them what they want before they even know they want it.

The internet has made this level of profiling possible. Facebook and LinkedIn, for example, operate on the basis that people want to share personal information with the world. Aggregation sites have popped up detailing everything from your birthday to your mobile phone number and your Amazon wish list in one profile page. A growing proportion of online advertising is now minutely targeted using these growing pools of data. This is one reason why social networking giants like Facebook are being valued at tens of billions of dollars: personalisation, on all levels, is big business.

This is great news for brands, especially when you consider that the average Briton spends nearly one day a month online and nearly a quarter of that on social networking. But many consumers share personal details on the proviso that this information will be treated with care and only used for their benefit. Many are unaware of the extent to which data can be accessed and used for commercial purposes.

Brands using this kind of targeting are treading a fine line in what is still an evolving discipline. The minute customers feel themselves to be victims of spam or that their privacy has been overly violated they will shut the door, lock you out and throw away the key. Once bitten, twice shy.

In general, people like brands that make things easier and enhance users' lives in some way. By using personal information intelligently and targeting the right people with the right offers at the right time, brands can become indispensable: a personal shopper; an online friend; something consumers can't live without. This might seem like a fuzzy line and one that's easy to cross, but there are some basic principles: provide offers that are relevant, timely and of genuine value. Deliver 'random acts of kindness'. And give consumers back their own data to provide them with valuable knowledge and control.