The Digital Transformation Playbook: Rethink Your Business for the Digital Age

Customize Strategy
The customize strategy for business is to make your offering adaptable 
to your customers’ needs. Customization is increasingly possible due 
to the spread of e-commerce; automation in inventory and shipping; 

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digitization of media products; advances in 2D and 3D printing technolo-
gies; and the accessibility of big data on consumers’ preferences, location, 
and behaviors. As customers seek more choice and more personalized 
experiences, businesses need to find ways to meet their demands with-
out overwhelming them with choice or unnerving them with excessively 
personal messaging.
A customize strategy may take a variety of approaches, including rec-
ommendation engines as well as personalized interfaces, products and ser-
vices, and messages and content.
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 Recommendation engines: To help viewers find what to watch from its 
large catalog of streaming television and movie titles, Netflix uses a 
combination of behavioral data (What kinds of shows has this user 
watched on prior Wednesday nights at 10:00 p.m.?) and a system of 
micro-tags that human staff apply to all of its content. The result is 
a constantly changing, personalized set of playlists served up every 
time the user logs in. The micro-genres (more than 76,000 by one esti-
mate) range from “Mother-Son Movies from the 1970s” to “Cerebral 
Suspenseful Dramas Starring Raymond Burr.”
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The impact of these 
recommendations can be measured by how infrequently customers 
bother to use the search bar to find a show to watch. Their success is 
striking: 75 percent of customers’ viewing hours are spurred by Netflix’s 
personalized recommendations.
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 Personalized interfaces: Lancôme’s magic mirror on its Facebook page 
allows customers to select one of their Facebook photos and then try 
out various beauty products, virtually applying them to the photos to 
see how they look on the customers’ own features, complexion, and 
hair. Increasingly, customers are expecting more personalized inter-
faces, whether online, in retail spaces, or moving between them.
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 Personalized products and services: Coke sales were declining among 
young adults in Australia when Coca-Cola introduced its personalized 
Share a Coke cans there. The company chose the 150 most popular 
names for young adults in Australia and printed those names on the 
cans in place of the brand’s own name—but in the same recognizable 
script. Customers with less common names could print personalized 
cans of Coke at kiosks in major shopping centers or share a person-
alized virtual can on Facebook. The customized cans were so popular 
that young adult consumption grew 7 percent in the Australian market, 
and Coca-Cola extended the campaign to eighty countries worldwide.
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With 3D printing being applied to prosthetic limbs, automobile chassis, 
and running shoes, the opportunities for customized products are rapidly 
expanding.
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 Personalized messages and content: One of the easiest ways to custom-
ize an offering for customers is through media and messaging. As pub-
lishers transition from print to digital, they are able to deliver only the 
most appropriate content for each customer. They can invite readers 
to indicate their interests (thumbs up or down), directly observe what 
customers spend time on, and then promote future articles likely to 
be of highest relevance. Customized messages improve marketing as 
well. Microsoft increased the conversion rates of one e-mail marketing 
campaign by 70 percent by targeting the specific offer based on the 
recipient’s location, age, gender, and online activity.
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The keys to a customize strategy are identifying the areas where your 
customers’ needs and behaviors diverge and finding the right tools to either 
personalize on their behalf or empower them to personalize their own 
experiences.