Targeting, targeting

Stiamo entrando nell'era dell'on demand e della personalizzazione dei palinsesti.

Ognuno potrà scegliere i programmi che preferisce ed approfondire gli argomenti a cui è maggiormente interessato.

Le imprese potranno in futuro comunicare in modo sempre più preciso con offerte sempre più rilevanti per le audience identificate.

Il rischio c'è ed è quello di trascurare target potenziali che non sono stati considerati.

Ci vorrebbe un maggior equilibrio tra targetizzazione e serendipità, per questo sono nuovamente d'accordo con Adliterate.

But serendipity of this sort is disappearing precisely because of the technologies and targeting that we believe is making our lives easier and more fulfilling. This is particularly marked by the culture of ‘on demand’, whether the immediate gratification of our entertainment desires is served by PVR’s, i-players, listen again services, search engines, recommendation engines to and I guess even specialist TV channels and radio stations.

Heaven forbid that we might actually experience something these days that we didn’t already know that we liked!

I think that the key challenge in entertainment in the near future will not be the delivery of enough of a content long tail to make on demand services work for people (critical for the burgeoning on demand TV services), nor the navigation systems that will help unite people with the stuff they already know that they like. But tools that reintroduce serendipity into our entertainment lives, tools that help us discover the stuff we never knew we were interested in.

Incidentally, I believe it is increasingly the role that the generalist offerings of the BBC in the UK are beginning to play, not least TV channels like BBC4 which might easily be repositioned as the serendipity channel.

And there may be a parallel in targeting or rather the lack of it. Modern marketing believes that the more that you can relevantly target communications the better, for advertiser and audience alike. Now let’s leave aside the crass assumptions that most targeting is based on and that simply serve to increase irritation at the breathtaking arrogance and intrusiveness of so called personalised communication, and simply dwell on what we used to call wastage.

In advertising we have always had a sneaky suspicion that a bit of wastage was a good thing, just incase we had got our targeting wrong. Well might I suggest that we re-define this not as wastage but as the part of the budget left for serendipity. That’s the bit of money that brands should spend taking to people that neither the brand nor they themselves know are in the market for the product or service yet.

So whether your interest is in finding new customers or finding new music. Leave some time and technology to dedicate to the endangered delight of serendipity.

Per raggiungere il punto che non conosci, devi prendere la strada che non conosci
San Giovanni della Croce - La sfida della complessità a cura di Gianluca Bocchi e Mauro Ceruti - Feltrinelli