People-based adaptive marketing takes a personal approach to marketing, allowing businesses to customize messaging and deliver campaigns at optimal times. People-based adaptive marketers sponsor hackathons these days. Hackathons are events that bring together internal teams—sometimes with start-ups or outside talent to collaborate—and create new applications that are either consumer-facing or internally focused ways of automating intelligence and acting on it.
As Miami’s Marc Roberts of Eleven has noted, “Examples of this include Walmart’s understanding that certain weather conditions lead to more hamburger purchases, and Netflix’s identification of new programs and content through viewing patterns.”
Brands such as Unilever, Ford, and American Express invest heavily in developing programmatic business solutions that codify and scale their approach to adaptive media. Given below are examples of successful people-based adaptive marketing.
1) Domino’s Pizza
People-based adaptive marketing—and public relations—views customers as individuals. It enables engagement that creates deep, meaningful connections. Domino’s adaptive marketing system pivots on selling more food. This is achieved through supporting online ordering through brand touchpoints, e.g. through mobile applications and its Twitter handle and Facebook page. They also did sufficient research, which led them to realize that each country views pizza in a different way. Domino’s adapts their products to various markets. For instance, since quite a few people in India are vegetarians, there are a variety of choices of vegetarian pizzas at Domino’s’ there.
2) Tommy Hilfiger
The spotlight has been on adaptive fashion for some time now. Adaptive fashion is more than a brand having an on-trend collection. Instead, it signals a change in how functional fashion for differently-abled bodies is perceived by the fashion industry at large. In 2016, Tommy Hilfiger partnered with Runway of Dreams, a nonprofit founded by Mindy Scheier, a mother whose child has muscular dystrophy. The partnership created a clothing line more inclusive to children with disabilities. Tommy Hilfiger’s X Zendaya 2019 Capsule collection was one collaboration. It featured 10 styles made specially for differently-abled people, with adaptive modifications like magnetic closures and elastic waists.
3) Apple
Apple does not ignore the importance of the iPhone, but has continued to shift away from dependence on one product line and toward another. Not only are there new product introductions but also revamps of existing products. Apple manufactures tablets, wearables and accessories, and also offers music streaming and Apple Pay. These products and services are all ways for Apple to extend its existing ecosystem and make it attractive to customers.
4) Spotify
Spotify is successful because it adapts. The music streaming service shot to fame in 2008, and now has 172 million premium subscribers worldwide. It doesn’t just recommend music based on the demographic of customers. It has features that allow customers to see similar artists other people listen to, a ‘Discover Weekly’ playlist tailored to the existing music tastes of customers, and ‘song radio’, which gives suggestions similar to a song a customer likes. The platform encourages users to engage with it by suggesting music for moods, special occasions, activities, and more.
However, while adapting, marketers have to stay true to the brand. Customers may like a product because it cannot be adapted. Some luxury products may benefit from adaptive service rather than from adapting the product.
