Russell Davies writes about the personalised advertising promised by social networking that “the people who can be arsed to do a little bit of research […] plunge into a kind of direct marketing uncanny valley where the more desperately they try to personalise their message the more I’m reminded that they’re not really my friend”.
The idea that perfect marketing is just information is certainly a compelling one, especially in an industry such as mine, where impulse buyers are as close to being non-existent as makes no difference. We need to target people who are highly likely to be interested in business education, and we need to give them enough information to make an informed decision about that. The idea that the information itself is enough is appealing; it tells us that we can all have a product that can sell itself.
However, there still needs to be something about the information that will make you want to keep reading. When Russell speaks about the more ‘personal’ information they utilise the more it freaks me out, I’m reminded of the “personalised” children’s books in which your child’s name and interests are shoehorned into a usually boring, poorly written story – they’re always dissapointing, compared to the childhood satisfaction finding an (even minor) character with your name in a book you are enjoying.
Information is not good marketing when it is ‘pure’ information; it’s good marketing when it’s surprising, or the way it’s presented is unexpected – when it makes you want more of it.