Here’s a marketing email with a discount code. Also, here’s 27 more ads for Lorna Jane bike shorts. Also, we might show up at your house and ask if you’re still in the market for activewear. Ok, maybe that last one’s less likely to happen (although?). But navigating the internet does feel like someone’s been not just watching your activity online, but reading your innermost thoughts. As customers, we know this level of “personalisation” (big air quotes) feels creepy AF. So why, as brands, do we keep doing it?

- Charlotte Ellis, Editor ♡

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13-year-old me would disagree. However 13-year-old me did not know the singer had been accused of assault… by at least 16 women, mind you. So tell me why this ghastly looking mf is walking Paris Fashion Week? Has the world actually lost its mind? Especially just weeks after an LA judge reopened an assault case filed by his former assistant, and under a new law enabling old sexual assault cases to be heard in court. In the wake of recent events involving a certain president, you’d think we’d all be a little more careful of whom we place on pedestals. Internet, do your thing, please.

In far less serious news that would also appeal to 13-year-old me, the Salvation Army (or The Sallies as we call it in Aotearoa) just launched a thrift store in Roblox? This is either brilliant or deeply cynical - depending on how charitable you're feeling. Basically the game lets players browse virtual thrift stores, hunt for deals, and build outfits from second-hand items, all branded with Salvation Army signage. On one hand, it's a smart way to reach Gen Z and Gen Alpha where they actually are, which is absolutely on Roblox.

On the other hand, it's a non-profit turning thrift culture into gamified content to drive real-world donations and foot traffic, which feels like using kids as unpaid marketing agents, lol. But at this point, what else can we really expect? Everybody’s trying to get a piece of the pie, even moth-ridden second-hand stores. One thing I know the game doesn’t have, however, is that smell.

Lastly, I offer you some entertainment. Ad Age's Ad of the Week is a spoof spot for EnerGym, a gym exclusively for human gym rats to work out, and power AI. And boy, oh boy, it lands. Mostly because it's only barely exaggerated. The ad starts with a fat and old trio: Musk, Altman, Bezos, in an interview style setting, explaining how 80% of humans had lost their jobs. EnerGym, they say, solved the world's need for energy, and humans' need for purpose, by turning us into power sources for the machines that stole our jobs. Haha… uncanny. 

-Sophie Randell, Writer

And by hoes, I mean ALL OF YOUR CUSTOMERS.

Take your business hat off for one moment and zoom out. You know that feeling when a brand emails you about something you only mentioned once in a conversation near your phone? Or when an ad follows you across the internet for weeks after you looked at a product one time? That’s what you’re doing. That's the creepiness-to-value ratio tipping the wrong way.

The Ring camera saga is the more recent/ extreme example. But AI is tracking every click and scroll of yours daily, collecting data for brands you probably didn’t know you were giving them to. And customers are getting increasingly uncomfortable with how much companies know.

As marketers, we loooooove personalisation. The data shows how well it works for acquisition and retention. But what we're not measuring is how often that personalisation crosses the line from helpful to horrifying.

Every interaction with your brand sits somewhere on this spectrum. And most brands have no idea which side they're truly landing on.

When personalisation provides genuine value, recommending something you actually need based on a purchase you made, remembering your preferences to save you time, etc etc, people appreciate it because it’s helpful personalisation.

When personalisation reveals that you're being watched more closely than you realised, like retargeting ads that follow you for months, emails that reference conversations you had offline, recommendations based on behaviour you didn't consent to tracking… that's surveillance. And surveillance makes customers want to leave.

You're tracking click-through rates, conversion rates, engagement metrics. What you're not tracking is the moment someone thinks "how the f*ck does this brand know that about me" and starts looking for the unsubscribe button.

AI and personalisation tools have made it so easy to hyper-target that brands do it without considering whether they should. Just because you can serve someone an ad based on their location data, browsing history, and inferred demographic information doesn't mean that level of targeting feels okay to the person receiving it.

They bought something from you once. And suddenly your entire ecosystem knows about it. Your email platform, your ad network, your SMS marketing, your app notifications.

From their perspective, they gave you one piece of information. From your perspective, you're maximising customer lifetime value. The gap between those two perspectives is where trust goes to die.

Helpful personalisation is transparent about what data you're using and why. Amazon showing you "customers who bought this also bought..." works because the logic is clear and the value is obvious. You understand why you're seeing the recommendation, and it helps you find related products.

Helpful personalisation respects boundaries. Spotify's year-end Wrapped campaign uses your listening data to create something you want to share. It also feels celebratory rather than invasive. Why? Because you actively chose to use Spotify to listen to music… the data collection was expected, the output slaps.

Helpful personalisation gives control back to the user. Netflix lets you manage your viewing history and profile preferences. You can delete things you don't want to affect your recommendations. The personalisation improves your experience, but you're not trapped in an algorithmic box you can't escape.

Ask yourself: Would a customer be surprised or uncomfortable if they knew exactly how you got this information about them? If the answer is yes to either, you're probably too far into surveillance territory.

Build in transparency: Tell people what data you're collecting and how you're using it. Not in a 10,000-word privacy policy nobody reads, but in plain language at the point of collection. "We'll use your email to send you order updates and occasional promotions" is way less creepy than silence followed by unexpected marketing emails.

Give people control: Let them opt out or delete their data. Show them what you know about them. Every layer of control you give back shifts the ratio from surveillance toward partnership.

And maybe most importantly: Just because you can personalise something doesn't mean you should. Sometimes generic is better than creepy. And sometimes broad targeting is more respectful than hyper-specific freaking stalking.

That's the line. One side is helpful recommendations and time-saving preferences. The other side is retargeting ads that follow you around the internet like a bad smell for three months after you looked at a product once.

We're living in the surveillance age whether we like it or not. But customers are getting wise to it. They're questioning how much companies know, deleting apps that feel too invasive, and most importantly, choosing privacy over convenience far more than they used to.

If your personalisation strategy tips too far into creepy, customers will leave.

So learn to ride the line. Ask whether the value you're providing is worth the creepiness factor. Because if it's not, you're not optimising for customer retention. You're optimising for customer flight.

-Sophie Randell, Writer

A recent scene from reality show Baddies Africa is a prime example of this. When Natalie excitedly calls out to Rollie, who's in the midst of some serious drama, she gets shut down hard:

"Baddie!" "No." "What happened?" "B*tch I'm in there getting beat on and I ain't even f*cking in sh*t!"

While it's unclear what controversies Rollie's been roped into, we all know her reaction. It's what happens when you're in a positive, happy headspace, but for reasons beyond your control (or sometimes very much within it), people around you are absolutely NOT feeling it.

It's inspired a TikTok trend where people share moments where their good intentions met the wrong people at the wrong place and time, like when your friend only calls you to vent or your substitute teacher isn't as chill as you hoped.

Take this sound, put the camera on yourself and happily lip-sync with Natalie's lines ("Baddie!" and "What happened?"). Remember that it's YOUR mood getting killed, so be sure to react to Rollie's replies! Then, add on-screen text describing a time your well-meaning vibes maybe should've been saved for a later date.

A few ideas to get you started:

-Devin Pike, Copywriter

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🍝What you should make for dinner tonight: Speedy Satay Chicken

Hey Lisa,

Sure, you could create separate channels for each audience. But I'm guessing you don't have the time and resources to do so! And really, the better option is to find the intersection of those audiences and create content around that. So, what do all those people you want to speak to have in common? That's your angle.

For example, if they're all small business owners, they're all dealing with the same stuff (cash flow, hiring, growth, lack of time). Make content around that shared experience and you naturally speak to all three groups without running three separate strategies. So your first step is finding the common thread or interest that connects all your audiences and going from there.

- Charlotte Ellis, Editor ♡

We get it. Creating content that does numbers is harder than it looks. But doing those big numbers is the fastest way to grow your brand. So if you’re tired of throwing sh*t at the wall and seeing what sticks, you’re in luck. Because making our clients go viral is kinda what we do every single day.