Personalization--Part 1.5 - Fantastic Example

Read Part 1 here.
Read Part 2 here.
Alisa Leadbetter is Crossmedia Manager for vdBJ/Communicatie Groep, a custom publisher in Holland. She is also an astute observer of the Internet scene there. She furnished the customization example I used in the discussion of personalization on the front end—in customer communications. She was kind enough to follow up with a link to the video that was the basis of the campaign and some commentary. You don’t have to speak Dutch to love the video!

View the video here to see how it's done.

She also provided a link to an article in a Dutch newspaper, and you do have to speak Dutch to read it. Fortunately, she added some commentary:

According to a Dutch newspaper this was the first of its kind in the world. The date on the article is February 2007. The guy in the movie is the leader of the SP, the Socialist party. He was one of the first people in Holland with a blog, they make great use of new media. His blog is mostly ghost written these days, but in the beginning he did most of it himself. They have had a few viral campaigns since this one (and of course they used the e-mail addresses they got in this first campaign for the subsequent campaigns). this was the first of its kind in the world. The date on the article is February 2007. The guy in the movie is the leader of the SP, the Socialist party. He was one of the first people in Holland with a blog, they make great use of new media. His blog is mostly ghost written these days, but in the beginning he did most of it himself. They have had a few viral campaigns since this one (and of course they used the e-mail addresses they got in this first campaign for the subsequent campaigns).

I reserve my right to consider relevant content, selected on the basis of customer knowledge, as the best kind of personalization. However, as far as personalized communications go, this is as good as it gets. People like to see their name in print and the creators of this program have done it in such a way that it’s almost guaranteed to go viral.

Are you old enough to remember the personalized Porsche campaign—probably in the late 80s/early 90s? It was a poster (paper; those were direct mail days) with a front view of a Porsche with the customer’s name on the license plate. I tried for a long time to get a copy of it. It went only to Porsche owners and none of them were about to give it up. I suspect some may still be hanging in dens or offices.

As I’ve already pointed out, database marketers learned to use personalization a couple of decades ago and there were the occasional, really creative uses like Porsche. However, in those days the best you could hope for was to reach your own mailing list and maybe a brief article in DM News or AdAge. Today, creative use of personalization goes viral. Consider the wonderful use of a video, a personalized message, and a viral campaign in the Dutch political example. That’s the power of the Internet!
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