{"id":10510,"date":"2025-10-28T15:54:12","date_gmt":"2025-10-28T21:54:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/attentionmedia.io\/?p=10510"},"modified":"2025-10-28T15:54:12","modified_gmt":"2025-10-28T21:54:12","slug":"is-martech-driving-the-blandification-of-marketing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/attentionmedia.io\/?p=10510","title":{"rendered":"Is martech driving the blandification of marketing?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Post-it<\/div>\n

Marketers have more tools than ever to personalize, automate and optimize \u2014 yet those same technologies are making our work look and sound increasingly alike.<\/p>\n

At a recent conference, consultant Steve Fair<\/a> illustrated this perfectly. He\u2019s known for \u201cPost-it Lady\u201d \u2014 a woman staring at a wall of sticky notes in a popular Unsplash image that appears on countless agency websites. Fair showed how many agencies that claim to be different use that same photo.<\/p>\n

His point was simple: even a great image can kill differentiation when everyone uses it. The irony is that the abundance of online image libraries has made agencies look more alike, not less. Martech often has the same effect.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Keeping up with the Joneses<\/h2>\n

Martech introduced countless innovations to help us personalize and optimize campaigns. I\u2019ve been in the industry long enough to remember the excitement of automatically adding a salutation to a letter or fax.<\/p>\n

Today, we\u2019re still personalizing with salutations. But does it really help? It\u2019s table stakes. Skipping a salutation in an email designed to feel personal will hurt performance \u2014 and probably your career prospects. Audience expectations now make personalization a basic requirement, not an optimization tactic. We no longer use salutations to perform better. We use them to avoid falling behind everyone else. <\/p>\n

Martech goes far beyond salutations. We can now include more personalized information in our messages than ever before. But does that actually improve performance \u2014 or just help us stay afloat Adding personalization, like tailoring content to a recipient\u2019s role, has become the basic price of entry. It\u2019s no longer a differentiator \u2014 it\u2019s simply required to avoid delivering average campaigns.<\/p>\n

Dig deeper: How to stop wasting money on personalization<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The myth of AI<\/h2>\n

AI promises a lot, especially when it comes to crafting individualized messages at scale. Large language models (LLMs) can generate convincing, unique copy for every recipient \u2014 so surely that solves differentiation? No, it doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

I get plenty of AI-generated pitches in my inbox, many from people offering lead generation services. About two-thirds open by saying they\u2019re impressed by a recent LinkedIn recommendation \u2014 almost always my most recent one. <\/p>\n

The text is usually somewhat personalized, but it\u2019s not convincing. It doesn\u2019t make me more likely to buy because it\u2019s clear there\u2019s nothing that sets these senders or their services apart from the dozens of other AI-generated pitches I receive.<\/p>\n

But can we really differentiate?<\/h2>\n

Differentiation is becoming harder to achieve. The problem is that martech advancements led to what I call the blandification of marketing. Everyone\u2019s busy deploying the latest features on their shiny new martech tools, which means everyone ends up sounding the same.<\/p>\n

Why have we found ourselves in this situation? Marketers have access to better tools than ever, yet we seem less able to create campaigns that genuinely stand out.\u00a0There are two reasons for this. <\/p>\n