I remember standing in line with my son at Disneyland earlier in the year. We were ordering lunch and there were literally only three choices for what we could order and in a crowd of probably 10,000 to have to choose between A, B, or C it struck me that we were all just numbers to Disneyland, it felt incredibly impersonal.
But if you look around, at lot of places that imply that you have the ability to personalize what you want (like a car or a computer) is really a series of A, B, or C-like choices. It has become very hard in many places to truly personalize something and be unique. It reminds me of Gary Larson’s Far Side cartoon that shows hundreds of penguins, and in the middle one of them is singing “I gotta be me, oh I just gotta be me . . .” Irony noted, I know how he feels.
But today there was an interesting article in The New York Times by Claire Cain Miller “On Web, Workshops to Create One-of-a-Kind Gifts” and in the piece it talks about a variety of web sites that offer a level of personalization and customization at a price point that up until recently was unrealistic. In the book Rethink there are two chapters that discuss the trend of outsourcing all sorts of work to customers and why that’s such a good thing. This particular trend discussed by Miller is slightly different in that it goes all the way to the top of the product design cycle (in some cases) and in many respects bucks the trend of “crowdsourcing” where a crowd of people provide input into product design. This is different because the products in question are for a market segment of one.
“People are overcoming the idea that this is tchotchke, iron-on stuff,” said Jason Kang, vice president for marketing at Zazzle. “It’s really high quality. The folks here have spent a long time fine-tuning the chemistry, the workflow, the machinery, to really enable on-demand printing at a price point that is almost as cheap as mass retail.”
Some of the examples of personalized gifts take advantage of very personal information, such as getting an artistic print of the DNA image of a pet (really). That’s interesting and I am sure there will always be markets for that, and as the quote above points out, that’s more a matter of some costs coming down that make some things cost effective to “print” something. The more powerful trend that struck me in this article was that companies like Blue Nile that sells jewelery online is literally letting customers design their own jewelery – literally outsourcing the product design to the customer. I think we will see this trend continue into lots of other markets as people realize it is possible to truly personalize anything from a low cost skateboard to an expensive piece of jewelery.
The call to action here is for companies to ask themselves what things customers will want to personalize, and start to make them aware that these things are possible right now. The notion of selling to a “segment of one” is incredibly powerful and can transform brands and the way they connect with their customers – without having a huge impact on costs. As this movement builds in momentum, I think we will all really start to see a new level of power and value from the internet.
-Ric
P.S. Merry Christmas to those who celebrate Christmas, and Happy Holidays to those of you who celebrate different events at this time of year.
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