Something that I have been interested in for a while is personalisation in marketing, i.e the ability to target your marketing message on a 1:1 basis. This is something that I have written about in the past and shown some great examples of what could be achieved. Today Google took that to a whole new level.

AdWords, the Google programme that allows you to put your advert on Google search results, is ten years old today and Google wanted to find a way to say thank-you and so they have sent everyone who has used the service a link to a video. But it is not any old video it is a video that has been personalised with the domain name of the customer, 2ls.com in our case and it is pretty impressive.

I was impressed when people were doing this on printed material but to do it all within a video is just amazing. You can see the full video at the following link…

http://2ls.co/x

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I have spoken about the increasing levels of personalisation in life on a number of occasions before (here and here) and today I found another neat opportunity to make your credit card your own. Mint are offering the card holders the chance to upload any picture they want and have that on their card. So this could be your favourite family shot, the cat, or in my case, the cool picture below. Downside? It cost £10 each time you want to change the picture so it could be one more cost to keep in mind if you divorce.

UPDATE:

It seems the T&Cs won’t allow the picture I want as it contains trademarked logos so will have to be some piece of original work. Helen has chosen the following. I think Mat has got the better deal!

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I spoke about personalisation earlier in the year and then remembered that I also had these examples done for me at AppSwing when we were considering a mail-out. They were all done by Lorien Unique a local company specialising in this sort of work. They are all eye catching and show off the capability of modern digital printing techniques really well. In a couple of them the personalisation is obvious but cleverly done. The other two are more subtle but perhaps work better – particularly the flight departures board.

Click on any image for the bigger picture.    

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It looks like that 2008 is going to be the year that personalisation really takes off. The picture on the left is the cover of a magazine sent to me by a software reseller and the cover has my name printed on to the front as one of the lead stories. It is very eye catching and has a real “wow” factor the first time you see it. I have seen examples of this sort of thing over the past year when companies have approached me to use the services in a targeted ad campaign but this is the first time that I think I have been targeted by a campaign myself. Advances in digital printing technology are going to make this sort of thing more and more economical for businesses of all sizes and so is soon going to become common place. Of course once that happens it will quickly lose its impact and its appeal and become, I predict, intrusive. So, I guess, you should try and enjoy it while you can.

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