Did you ever have pen friends as a child? I did, and for a long time. I would receive lengthy hand written letters from some of my friends from Poland, Ireland, France, Denmark, Switzerland, Japan, and Uganda….and it was such a joy to open my ‘real’ mailbox and hold the ‘real’ letters. They carried scents from far away lands and seemed painstakingly stamped, sealed and signed off. Sometimes the envelope flaps were caricatured by smileys or something funny. It was personalization at it’s best and I bet it still is. I bought fine stationary and letter pads to exchange our knowledge about our countries, cultures and trivia. We even shared recipes! And I am not ashamed to admit that I still have those letters. They are lovingly preserved, with my childhood knickknacks, pictures, posters and other memorabilia.
But then there is pragmatism. The paperless revolution is pertinent amidst environmental degradation. I didn’t mind switching to the instantaneous communication mode either. The emails were uber cool, and this one key feature knocked off and compensated for all the sensory material it did not carry.
After having read, replied and composed thousands of email messages through years, (a milestone I know I would never have been able to achieve if I were hand writing them!) I am beginning to miss hand written letters again. Maybe once in a while I want a hand written letter. I long for personalized hand written messages as I am saturated with the coldness of short texting, mass emails, forwards and the “send to all” phenomenon.
Let me share an experience. I have a friend – let’s call him Mike – who took the emailing to a whole new level of enthusiasm. Mike got hooked on to sending group emails (to friends) all the time. All his emails to me would start with “Hi folks / Hello people”. Once I replied back and asked him about how he is doing and why the group emails. To which he wrote, that it was “time effective” to do so. It worked for him in the short term but many of his friends, including me felt like we were bundled together in a classroom and the communication seemed impersonal. Why? Here’s what I think: Most positive relationships have a healthy or balanced attention ratio. Attention in general could mean communication or responding to direct or indirect attention requirements. It could be your friend, husband, wife, mother, father, in laws, siblings, team mates, co workers or even your manager.
Let’s assume Attention = number of seconds and 1 second = $ dollar. We strive for reciprocity by balancing this ratio and more often than not when there is an imbalance it would also be marked by some level of resentment or debt perception. We do not explicitly talk about keeping such a score. (I am leaving out the influence of social conditioning, self esteem and cultural implications). I spent about 300 seconds in opening and reading my friend’s email. Although Mike also took approximately 300 seconds to type his email; each of the 20 recipients were receiving only 15 seconds of his total attention span (300 seconds/20 recipients).
Converting the metrics, think about me spending $300 on my friend with a expectation of similar if not exact reciprocity. When I realize I have been mass emailed continuously, I feel cheated. Why? I am getting $15 in return. This is a meager 5% of $300.
Now let’s assume that my friend realizes this, and calls me up. This ratio is now balanced in my eyes until the next transaction. Now let’s assume my friend sends me flowers with an apology. This would probably be an excess of $1000 since he has also spend real money along with attention $ on me. The scales tilt further and I feel credited. Even if in reality he made his secretary do it for him and he had used some free coupons to use at flowers.com.
What does attention got to do with personalization? When you perceive that a significant amount of energy was put into creating something unique for you and that reflects you, that something is personalized. Needless to say, attention to the subject’s behavior, goals, aspirations, habits and personality precedes this.
Personalization and the perception of personalization are extremely powerful in building strong bonds, credibility and value in any relationship. We have understood the importance of personalization but are going crazy faking it in multitudes assuming we will not be found out. In marketing, advertising, customer relationship and even with friends and family. Customers are inundated with it. We are inundated with it. Aren’t we? But we may not be complaining.
To me, true personalization is the act of discreetly extracting and using the subject’s information that is most valued by him/ her emotionally, psychologically / spiritually and aims at gratifying one or more of such needs. I am looking for that unique tool in the Web 2.0 space that allows me do just this. Going beyond quick personal status updates like in Twitter, which a great tool in itself. Or Facebook, which has 80% of its users that login everyday for atleast 20 minutes. There is excessive importance assigned to ‘micro-actions’ and ‘curiosity’ about them. I feel that considering there are millions of users at these websites, I only see these benefiting marketers more than users who are hooked up to attention explosion.
Don’t we all unconsciously look for real world equivalents in the virtual world? In the same light, I am wondering just how satisfying it is to use Social Media tools. Are we awaiting a whole new revolution that will resurrect the traditional and fuse it with the futuristic? Like being able to send sensory information in new age output devices? Or will we gravitate towards traditional channels of communication? Either way, our modes of communication may change but our need to communicate will always persist.
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