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"The Personalization Summit" (the fourth in an ongoing series) was
held November 12-14, 2000, at The Fairmont Hotel, San Francisco, CA
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Dear Clients, Partners, and Oh-So-Personal Friends:

Yes, it's another dose of personalization, gang--a hot marketing topic these days...following on to my first report on this event a week or so ago. (That one lives on here.)

As you may recall, I joined about 1000 other buzz-hungry souls atop Nob Nill in mid-November to hear industry notables lay out their take on what they say is the new mantra of marketing, affecting both old and new economy companies alike.

We learned it's not just a technology for traditional and pure-play retailers, or mail-order companies, anymore. Marketers in other sectors such as financial services, insurance, and travel are all over it now, too--like, well, ugly on a dot-com stock. Many of them were in fact in attendance at this gig.

So, here are some more perspectives and quotes I grabbed for you, o valued readers, in a highly personalized attempt to keep you out in front of the Average Joe.

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Brands Now in High State of
Change, Say Hagel and Singer

by Graeme Thickins
grt@gtamarketing.com

"Brands are in a period of discontinuity. The age of personalization calls for a redefinition," said John Hagel as he began his keynote.

The co-authors of "Net Gain" and "Net Worth," John Hagel and Marc Singer, called their presentation "Personalizing Brands in Reverse Markets: Unbundling and Reaggregating Brand Propositions." Formerly a duo at McKinsey, where Singer continues to head the CRM prac
, Hagel recently joined 12 Entrepreneuring as chief strategy officer.

"If anything, brands are even more important now," Hagel continued. "But some of today's most powerful brands may not survive."

What is a brand? Hagel said it's summed up in three words: personality, presence, and performance. "The powerful brands work in all these dimensions at once," he said. "They came about as a function of limited space and time, but these barriers are being transformed by the Internet.

"It's changing the art of the possible," Hagel said.

The old world was one of limited locations, limited voice, and was producer controlled. The new world of the Internet is about many locations (in fact, limitless), many voices, and is consumer controlled.

"How we choose to use our 24 hours a day becomes the model," said Hagel. "The bottleneck is the consumer's attention. That is the new commodity, with increasing value. It's now 'Talk to my agent'!"

In essence, Hagel pointed out, what consumers really want is one-to-many marketing. "It's the companies that want one-to-one," he said.

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New York 19-21 Dec

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Hitting on a main theme in the title of his presentation, Hagel went on to tell us how "markets are spinning into reverse." What he means by this is simply that the power is shifting from producers to consumers. "Reverse markets are about customers trying to find vendors and extract as much value as they can out of them," Hagel stated.

In a major point of his thesis, Hagel spoke about how the the nature of value in business is changing. "We're going from integrated businesses to new, *unbundled" e-businesses, which are relationship based," he said.

What's the most fundamental question today for senior management? According to Hagel, it's "What business are we in?"

"The auto makers and dealers know unbundling well," he said, pointing out that the five top auto web sites (all relative newcomers) get more web traffic in total than all the major auto companies combined.

There are huge challenges now for producer-controlled brands as this "fundamental evolution" continues, Hagel contended. He named examples of customer-controlled brands, including MyPoints, Amazon.com, Yahoo, and Carpoint. These are brands that have a power base of consumers, he said. This category of brand favors intermediaries, who "know customers best."

How do marketing methods change in this "shift in the nature of brand promise and power"? Hagel gave us a side-by-side comparison of old vs. new methods--the former practicing "intercept, inhibit, and isolate," while the new bywords are "attract, assist (as with product comparisons), and affiliate (as in third-party vendors and services)." Hagel termed the latter practices "Collaboration Marketing"--in which customers actually help each other.

The game now, Hagel declared, is "building a walled garden between the company and the customer--making it difficult to switch."

So how does one build these new brands? Well, it's not easy, as Hagel reminded us about the many new online brands that have underestimated the challenge--naming examples like eToys, E-Loan, Autobytel, and WebVan. "You must balance the brand dimensions of personality, presence and performance--since those traditional things will still be important--with the new dimensions of function, process, and relationship," he said. The latter provide many new opportunities for personalization, according to Hagel, "especially process and relationship."

"Ask yourself, 'Can my brand be mass-customized?'," he said, "Then decide where your business should play--remembering you don't need to do everything yourself. What can your business partners do?"

In closing his talk, Hagel pointed to such new brands as Schwab and e*Trade, which have both employed personalization with much success, "becoming more like financial agents."

Marc Singer, Hagel's co-presenter, spoke about problems he sees with companies addressing the new branding imperative, and prescriptives for personalizing brands for future success.

"We're finding organizational barriers now one of the biggest problems," said Singer, who heads McKinsey's CRM practice.

And, in the age of the Internet, said Singer, "information-based marketing is even harder and more complex." He said it's not a matter of a lack of ideas, but a lack of focus. "There's too much data."

He recommends that companies find simple personalization things to do, to begin to personalize the relationship. "Even basic personalization can yield large impact," Singer said.

"Focus on small personalization wins, with minimal technology, to earn the right to do more....Avoid the 'big bang'--match the technology to your capability," he said.

Personalization is not a feature, Singer said, and not a project. "You must incorporate its objectives into everything."

Certain organizational steps are fundamental to success, Singer and his firm have found. First of all, you should adopt a customer-centric structure, he said. "Create a marketing super team--not a rock star. And appoint 'customer lifecycle' managers."

Singer then made reference to some things he's found the best marketing organizations do. "The winners separate customer acquisition and customer retention activities," he said. "Winners also obsess over customer economics -- focusing on acquisition-cost-per-customer and other important metrics."

Singer recapped his "emerging commandments" for marketers seeking to implement personalization: "Promote buy-in of the personalized brand. Start small--don't wait for perfection. And define marketing as more than a branding challenge."

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Selected Additional Quotes from "The Personalization Summit"

"We need to use these personalization tools to figure out
ways to treat people humanly--to give personal attention...
The tools can automate the routine stuff so the agent
can *smile*."
-Esther Dyson, Chairman, EDventure Holdings

"Privacy is control over data--that's the best definition.
Giving the individual the opportunity to control it....
The industry hasn't been good about saying what they're
doing. They should let consumers look at their own data."
-Esther Dyson, Chairman, EDventure Holdings

"Companies sharing data with any marketing partner
they sign a contract with--that's sleezy."
-Esther Dyson, Chairman, EDventure Holdings

"Profiling has as much value as personalization.
But it's not plug and play. It must be deeply
integrated into a content management platform.
Good profiling enables good personalization. And
good content management is the key to profiling."
-Jeremy Allaire, Chief Technical Officer,
Allaire Corp.

"One-to-one branding is about relationships.
You brand *products* to sell to your least
valuable customers, but you brand *relationships*
for your most valuable customers."
-Martha Rogers, Ph.D., Partner,
Peppers & Rogers Group

+++++++++++++++   Advertisement   ++++++++++++++++

Hot damn! Austin will be rockin' in March--with savvy marketing and
ad execs converging on "B2BBQ: The Marketing & Media Summit
With a Texas Twist," Austin, TX, March 22-24, 2001, at the Hyatt
Regency on Town Lake. Three top keynoters (including Don Schultz
of the Kellogg School), 14 ROI-packed sessions, and a Texas-sized
load of fun -- all during music-festival time in the live music
capital of the world. Some speaking opportunities & sponsorships
still available, too. Check out www.b2bbq.com!!

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"Some customers are worth more. And anyone can
reach your most valuable customers. Therefore,
like it or not, you are a one-to-one marketer."
-Martha Rogers, Ph.D., Partner,
Peppers & Rogers Group

"Twenty-first century marketers are asset managers.
Yes, of intellectual, human, and financial capital.
But, most importantly, of *relationahip* capital."
-Hans Peter Brondmo, Founder, Post Communications,
and Fellow, Netcentives

"We have a future of high-CPM consumers and
low-CPM consumers...They want to get compensated
for their attention, and want to participate in
how they're marketed to...Low-CPM consumers will
have to pay for content with money and attention,
whereas high-CPM consumers will only have to pay
with attention."
-Charles Jones, CEO, Yo.com

"Mobile connectivity changes the landscape for
personalization services. And we're just at the
forefront. The always-on Internet will enable
'impulse services'...Mobile services worth paying
for include payment, notification or alerts,
supply chain coordination, location-aware
services, and transaction agents or bots."
-Ken Molay, Director of Product Marketing,
Blaze Software

"Only 35% of handsets sold now are 'Net-ready.
But, by 2003, some 680 million people globally
will have 'Net-ready mobile phones."
-Brad Husick, VP-Standards & Evangelism,
Vignette Corp.

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For information about future "Personalization Summits,"
and other resources and links about personalization, see
www.personalization.com -- where you can also subscribe
to the "Personalization Newswire" email newsletter.

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the future, just email me, say "yes," and include your contact info.

your faithful, ever-traveling, constantly listening,
always questioning, highly personalized conference slave,
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Graeme Thickins, Founder & Principal Consultant
GT&A Strategic Marketing Inc.
*Twin Cities *LA *SF *Anywhere
Voice: 952/944-1672
Fax: 952/944-1673
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Watch for more of our conference coverage soon, including The Industry
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