Beware the personalisation paradox: Communicate with the human, not the consumer

This essay argues that marketing should not lose sight of the human aspect of the consumer, that hyper-personalised marketing engages the uncanny valley, frightening people and making communications even more impersonal.

Beware the personalisation paradox: Communicate with the human, not the consumer

Chetan Murthy, Head of Strategy, Vizeum UK

How should marketing adapt to the era of personalisation?

This essay was entered into The Admap Prize 2016. For more information visit the Prize page.

Mass marketing, before the digital era, was rather unsympathetic to the individual.

Audiences were lumped together and traded as commodities through blunt broadcast media. Everyone was largely the same, distinguished mainly by age, gender and income. But the digitisation of media changed the way we identify and empathise with the real people, the real...

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