In the 1970’s, the advertising agency BBDO had a set of principles for building, nurturing and managing brands. One principle was “Know your prime prospect.”  A second principle was “Know your prime prospect’s problems.” The concept was this: find out everything you can about who is the core customer for your brand. Know that customer inside out. Know your customer’s opinions, attitudes, interests, personal values. Know your core customer as if this person were your best friend. Then, figure out what troubles this core customer when it comes to your brand. What are the core customer’s problems with the category? With specific brands within the category? With your brand, if this is not a new product? After all, humans are pain avoidance mammals. And, we are great at complaining. We are very specific when it comes to problems, concerns, worries.

The principles of knowing your core customer and your customer’s problems are evergreen. Every marketer must begin with the core customer. Innovation and renovation must begin with the core customer.

Intimate knowledge about your customer has always been and will continue to be de rigeur for successful branding. A brand will not survive if it is aimed at everyone. If everyone is your customer then there is no relevant differentiation. A brand focused on everyone is a brand that a lot of people like but few love. Real brand loyalty is comprised of brand lovers. Deal brand loyalty is comprised of leavers. Real loyalists follow their heart. Deal loyalists follow the deal.

Data help marketers intimately know their core customers. Personalization continues to be a force with which marketers must manage. People value brands that create personalized experiences. Personalized brands promise to meet an individual’s physical, psychological, social and emotional needs. Personalization reinforces respect, status, and positive self-image. Data tell you about behavior: the what it is that we do. The marketer must synthesize the why: why do we behave in this particular manner.  Personalization is possible because of data. But, the data must be interpreted properly. 

When the brand delivers personalization, experience is key. Personalization is experiential. Personalization delivers a branded experience that recognizes and reflects the customer and is exclusively designed to meet an individual’s needs for a particular occasion. 

This is why personalization differs from customization. We tend to use the words interchangeably; this is wrong. Customization focuses on features and functions, the practical aspects of a brand, readying the brand for a transaction. A custom-made Nike shoe is about finding the features you like, colors, stripes, laces, and so on, creating a transactional event. This transactional event is similar to using your measurements and finding fabrics that customize your bespoke silk suit or shirt. Personalization is experiential. Personalization happens when, based on who you are and what you like, an entire branded experience is created. 

Party City is the largest retailer of party goods in North America. In September of 2023, Party City emerged from bankruptcy announcing that its Chapter 11 reorganization had achieved its promised plan of erasing over $1 billion in debt and eliminating underperforming outlets.  The Wall Street Journal indicates that Party City is focusing on becoming an omnichannel operation. And, becoming omnichannel means using personalization. 

The CMO of Party City told The Wall Street Journal, “Our goal is to show up on a one-to-one basis in the channels customers prefer, have conversations that fit the way they celebrate and plant the seed for return visits throughout the year.”

A large part of personalization means generating insights into customers as individuals.  Party City understands that insights going beyond behavior that supports building “customer lifetime value.” And, contrary to what many marketers are currently doing, including big brands like Harley-Davidson, Party City now segments its customers on psychographics. Of course, demographics such as age, gender and purchase behaviors are necessary. But, to deliver at those “moments that matter,” those “Kodak moments,” knowing the customer inside-out knowing the customers value, attitudes, opinions and interests is essential.

Personalization delivers a branded experience marketers design specifically to meet an individual’s needs for a particular occasion. Customers increasingly desire products and services that reflect personal wants and needs. Personalization delivers a respectful recognition of who I am as a person by reflecting aspects of my personality and by satisfying my needs and problems.

Party City is operationalizing personalization. 

Here are some rules;

Focus is fundamental

Mass marketing to masses of consumers with a mass message is a massive mistake.

Mass marketers try to appeal to all people for all occasions with a marketing message that everyone likes a little and nobody likes a lot. Mass marketing misdirects branding. It dilutes the brand…it genericizes and generalizes the brand.

Marketing must be more personalized. 

Merely communicating about new products, new prices, a new app or website will not build personal brand relationships. Customers want branded experiences that reflect the brand’s essence while at the same time reflecting parts of themselves. Increasingly, customers are willing to have the focus be on them as individual users of the brand. 

Brand management is customer-experience management.

Brand management is not mere advertising. Brand management is first and foremost customer-experience management. Experiential marketing is not new news. 

Brand management is about managing the whole experience end-to-end in a brand-coherent manner, from consideration, through shopping, deciding, purchasing, using, evaluating, and reconsideration.

Technology is the enabler helping brands stay in touch with customers at every single experience point, one customer at a time, any time, all the time. Think about ways in which you will manage, evolve, edit, create and curate the branded experience over the course of the entire customer journey.

Move from asking, “What can we predict?” to “Permissible Personalization.”

Avoid predictions based on intrusive, invasive information gathering. 

Permissible Personalization is based on informed knowledge about a person based on past experience and information provided or permitted by the customer. Permissible Personalization builds trust.

As you build trust with a customer, permissibility levels increase. Just remember, the customer defines the limits of personalization.

Use Brand Journalism.

For younger cohorts, user-generated content is a more trustworthy communication than branded or corporate or institutional information. Brand Journalism is the marketing approach that allows the brand to create personalized content while allowing the reader to become “personally” involved.

Brand Journalism involves telling journalism-style stories about a brand: this is not preaching or bombardment with a repetitive, uni-dimensional message. It means communicating authentic and interesting chronicles to which customers can relate and which they can share. A well-told brand story is the best way to get a brand across to today’s multi-media, multi-device consumers. Brand Journalism is today’s way of communicating a personalized branded experience while maintaining the core integrity of the brand promise.