The Elements of Change:
A Look at the Past, Present, and Future

The Customizer is Always Right
by Tim Nekritz

Customization may have surfaced again in the business press as a buzz trend, but it's nothing new. The first time a caveman painted on the wall of his grotto or laid out a rug of his fallen prey, customization began.

Yet the industrial age brought with it the dull sameness of mass production. From Henry Ford's assembly line to the rise of mass consumerism after World War II

to the languid layout of Levittown, the emphasis skewed toward homogeneity. Sure, the wealthiest citizenry could always afford tailors, but off-the-rack purchasing from glistening department stores became the norm. When fast-food joints put down roots across the landscape, controlled consistency trumped customization among hungry consumers.

And yet the revolution toward customization, curiously, gained traction with a fast-food ad.

Consider it a strange byproduct of the radical 1970s, a famed Burger King spot showing cheery BK employees telling consumers, in song, their options: "Hold the pickle/Hold the lettuce/Special orders don't upset us," concluding with the tagline heard 'round the world: "Have it your way."

Could you also go to McDonald's and hold the pickle and lettuce on your burger? Sure. But Burger King brilliantly positioned an imaginary differentiation by telling consumers they were in charge of what went on their burgers.

But customization reached iconic status in the early 1990s when influential management guru Tom Peters declared it one of the cornerstones of "the new economy" (not to be confused with "the new economy" that emerged a few years later with the Internet boom). In 1992's "Liberation Management," Peters saw a scenario where

The prosumer participates in the design of his vehicle at a work station at a dealership. ... Many of the features of the car can be custom-designed depending how much the customer wants to pay. ... Within limits, the prosumer can create the shape of the body panels, design their own trim and "imagineer" sound systems to their own tastes. ... The lead time to delivery: Three days.

Having painted this ultimate customization experience, Peters adds: "When will all this be ready? Perhaps by the turn of the century, perhaps earlier. It's no fantasy." And, despite being unable to foresee the rise of the Internet, Peters wasn't far off. When I was buying a car in 2001, a certain amount of customization was indeed available via the Web (which I used just enough to discover the color I wanted was discontinued). Today, purveyors of cars and computers alike assure would be-customers they can create their dream machine by phone or Internet. They may not be able to customize the shape of the body panels -- yet -- but we have taken purposeful steps forward into what Peters foresaw as an age of "mass customization."

Perhaps marketers were thinking about the curious, seeming tautology of "mass customization" while consuming one too many Surge colas in the early 1990s as they clamored to win over a new, media-invented demographic in the so-called Generation X. The advertising trick of the hour, The Baffler's Thomas Frank observes, was to try to convince young consumers that they were unique and they were rebellious ... by purchasing something millions of other people had. But when mainstream, square fast-food companies were trying to out-rebel each other -- Burger King telling us "Sometimes you gotta break the rules" while Arby's counters "This is different. Different is good." -- it all reaches a level of absurdity that would even embarrass a herd of lemmings.

With the advert of the more tangible Internet revolution (creating, if you're keeping score, the second "new economy" of the 1990s alone), customization had a new high-tech ally. Through cookies and capturing of search terms, the ghost in the machine believes it can scare up goods and services we may want. Amazon is one of the foremost practitioners of trying to parse purchases and searches, but in the process they sometimes create what I've termed the World of Bizarro Customization.

My trip into the World of Bizarro Customization came via a commercial, appropriately enough. It was the stylish Levi's spot called "French Dictionary" that introduced me to the catchy, dreamy song "Playground Love" by Air. I couldn't get it out of my head and eventually, via Amazon, bought a copy of the album from whence it came, Air's soundtrack for Sofia Coppola's "Virgin Suicides."

You know what? With the exception of that track, I don't really like the album. But this opinion doesn't factor into the Amazon equation. Every time there is a new Air album, Amazon sends me an email about it. I also receive emails saying "We've noticed that people who buy albums by Air also enjoy [insert name of foofy French lite techno band]." What about people who hated Air albums ... what albums do they enjoy?

(It's worth noting that I have bought Levi's jeans since, but no one from that company has sent me emails saying, "We've noticed that people who buy our jeans also like ribbed 100% cotton T-shirts.")

Yet today's ideas of customization can seem fetishized, if not downright ironic. Take a drive on any number of roads in idyllic southeastern Pennsylvania and you'll see fields converted into dream houses, cookie-cutter McMansions people who work in New York City buy to make their own personal castles (yet spend so many hours away from because of the commute through New Jersey). Instead of staying in the most exciting, improvised, customized city in the U.S. -- where so many blocks and buildings have histories and architecture more unique than any chain store --former Big Applites run off to suburbs where their customized slice of the American Dream™ is defined by which color of paint they buy from Home Depot, the furnishings they purchase from Target, the drapes they score on sale at Wal-Mart.

In this way, just like with Amazon, customization is determined by a mix-and-match more than by authenticity. I'm sure JC Penney can sell a better quilt than the one my late Aunt Fran gave me for Christmas when I was a child, but they can't make one more special to me. She asked me for the colors I'd prefer and she made it with love. Ditto the painting my late grandmother created for me one Christmas. Whatever technical merits a cold critic could calculate, nothing you drag off a shelf at Pier One can compare.

Maybe the best customization is that which we do ourselves -- like using iTunes to create and burn a customized CD to listen to in the car or cheer up a friend. Or, moreover, just taking the time to write a letter where we tell a loved one something we divulge to no one else. Ultimately, a computer can look at our purchases and demographics and crunch all the 1s and 0s it wants ... but the only way to really know a person is by one-on-one interactions.

After all, who wouldn't prefer a hand-written letter to a mass email any day?

Tim Nekritz is a college communications specialist and advertising professor who seeks to provide customized experiences to his students.

Comments