A Personal Q&A: Four Experts Talk Personalisation in Marketing and Product Development

It’s no secret: personalisation has become one of the foundations of modern advertising and product development… Or has it? The truth is, the technologies for mass-personalising content, products, and services are relatively new – Distillery have only just started tapping into its vast potential. Iona Inglesby, Mark Runacus MBE, Georgie Murphy, and Tim Hughes, who are already harnessing the power of personalisation to create innovative products and effective advertising campaigns, bring some expert tips to the stage at our upcoming event Personalisation at Scale: The Future of Marketing.

To give you a taster of what’s in store at the event, Distillery got personal with its speakers: What’s their favourite thing about their jobs, and where do they draw the line before personalisation gets creepy? To get your fill of insightful (and exclusive!) advice, read on:

Q: How would you explain your job to a 10-year-old?

Iona Inglesby, co-founder at Dot One: I set up a company that finds out some information about your genetics by taking a sample of your spit, then uses this information to create a scarf, blanket, or poster that is unique to you. 

Tim Hughes, chief marketing officer and founder at The Brief Doctor: I help people who make advertisements understand what you like and don’t like, so that they can make them more appealing to you and, as a result, you will want to buy their products. (Though it sounds slightly Machiavellian when you put it like that!)

Georgie Murphy, head of nutrition at Vitl: We help people be healthy. First, we work to understand what nutrients might be missing from people’s diets. Then, we offer recommendations to help them improve it, so that they can fight off things like low energy, lack of sleep, stress, and horrible colds. 

Mark Runacus MBE, co-founder at Wax/On, chair at the Data & Marketing Association, and chair at Outvertising: I get to know people really well – so well, that I learn things about them that even they probably didn’t know – and then I use that to help creative people come up with new ideas. Because when you know something that wasn’t known before, you can do something that hasn’t been done before.

Q: By the way, congratulations Mark, on being awarded an MBE in 2019 for your contributions to the advertising world. How does it feel?

Mark: No one was more surprised than me. You should have seen the frank text messages I got from my mates when it was published - they thought it was a joke. In fact, I did too, so I ignored the e-mails and phone calls from the Cabinet Office until a friend who works there verified that the person calling me did in fact work in the Honours team. When I met Prince William for the investiture, he asked me how I felt. I said it was certainly very humbling and that it made me feel like doing more. He smiled and said ‘Well, that’s exactly why we do this’.”

Q: So Iona, tell us how the idea of Dot One came about.

I was studying at the Royal College of Art when I visited one of the last weaving factories in the UK, in the Isle of Bute. A lot of the textiles being produced there are tartan, and I loved the idea that clans and families there use this material to represent themselves. At that time, I was also doing a short course at Imperial College about genetics. As I learned some of the basics of genetic code, and explored the idea of expressing identity through materials, the two things clicked together: What better way to create truly unique patterns than using genetic data to code them?

Q: Personalised patterns - amazing! That leads into our next question - one for Tim. What’s a big challenge brands are facing with their personalisation efforts today?

Tokenism. If personalisation feels forced or ‘computer-generated’, it has the opposite effect of facilitating deeper connections, because there’s nothing worse than manufactured sincerity. We’ve also seen some issues in the press about the misuse of people’s information and social images, which have increased concerns around privacy and data protection. But I don’t think we should be too cynical – most brands looking at personalisation actually want to connect with their users, rather than just harvest data.

Q: In fact, many say that personalisation is becoming one of the foundations of modern advertising - do you agree? And if so, why do you think that is?

Mark: Not becoming, it always has been. I was trained in direct marketing, so personalisation is a hygiene factor for me – a must-have, something customers expect. We can now do this more cost-effectively and at scale, but of course, as a result, we need to use personalisation respectfully and sustainably.

Tim: Yes, because there’s so much noise and clutter in advertising, the old adage of maximising reach and frequency simply doesn’t equate to effectiveness. Instead, we’re looking for brands that engage us, connect with us, and connect us to our tribes – and personalisation helps with that.

Q: So Georgie, have you come across any brands lately that are using personalisation in a way you like?

I think it’s really interesting to see personalisation come to life in the skincare industry, because it’s an industry laden with products and articles on every topic under the sun, and so deciding what’s best for you can be overwhelming. There’s this brand called Yours which has a consultation system to help people understand what products might be best for them, and then creates those personalised beauty products using non-toxic, environmentally sustainable ingredients. They also explain the science behind all ingredients they use, which is a big plus for me.

Q: Sounds fascinating. Speaking of product development – do you think personalisation is becoming one of its foundations too?

Georgie: Yes, I really believe it is. We live in an age of information overload: recommendations of what we should and shouldn’t do are coming in from all angles and overwhelming consumers. So it’s helpful for brands to take an individual approach. Besides, from a scientific perspective, generic information simply doesn’t suit every individual. This fact is crucial for nutrition, but I think it can be applied to other industries and products too.

Iona: I think that personalisation in product development is something that people have always innately wanted. Now, we have the tools to do it. 

Q: Going back to data privacy, what’s the difference between personalisation done right, and personalisation gone creepy? Where do you draw the line?

Tim: It’s a fine, fine line. Trust needs to be earned, there needs to be consent, and what brands do with personalisation needs to be entertaining to the user – it will be abundantly clear to them if a brand oversteps the mark.

Georgie: Personalisation should be about making products that benefit a customer’s health, wellbeing, or day-to-day life. Having said that, even when it’s being used for my own benefit, personalisation gets creepy when my information is used without my knowledge or against my will. 

Iona: There are many fantastic innovations for making products and experiences more personal. But when using personal data as the source of information to do that, brands have to be really careful.

Mark: We should always ensure that the customer is in the room when we’re planning advertisement campaigns for them. They will tell you if it’s getting creepy. And what I mean is: we instinctively know. We just need to ensure that we’re self-aware and don’t get carried away by the tech just because we can do it.

Q: And finally - what’s your favourite thing about the work you do?

Mark: Watching the seed of an idea become a unique and powerful creative campaign.

Georgie: Having the opportunity to make a significant impact on people’s health and lives by helping them improve their energy levels, digestion, and skin.

Tim: Getting to work with lots of different people from all around the world, and showing them that concepts and procedures that have become complicated and institutionalised are actually simple and fun.

Iona: Combining science with art and learning about genetics, which is still a vastly unknown territory.