Increasingly, major corporations are leaning on personalized products to gain and retain customers. To be sure, marketing that targets individual consumers is certainly not new. The wealthy have long spent large sums on one-of-a-kind tailored products. But today, these kinds of custom products are becoming increasingly accessible. Now, everyone with a Spotify account can access a weekly custom-made playlist, and anyone willing to fill out a questionnaire can access a personalized skincare routine.
This phenomenon has been accompanied by the rise of one particular buzzword that seems to have launched itself out of the sixteenth century and into the contemporary marketing landscape: “bespoke.” First appearing in the 1580s, bespoke originally meant to “speak for” or “arrange beforehand.” The word took on a new meaning during the Industrial Revolution when ready-made goods started to hit shelves, making luxuries that were once exclusively at the disposal of the wealthy available to larger markets at lower costs. In those early days of mass production, bespoke products served to denote wealth and status. This version of “bespoke” is still memorialized by dictionaries, which describe it as an adjective typically used to refer to “tailored suits.” The expansion of the sale of custom products to the masses has democratized what was once an elite area of luxury consumption.
Capitalistic consumption has long operated on the promise that an individual can realize their identity—as well as the social class that they presently, or aspirationally, identify with—through purchasing products. Unlike fixed-class systems, consumer capitalism promises a degree of social mobility. If you are what you buy, then money and product decisions could be your key to a higher social group. With the right purchase, you too could be recognized as a member of the class of your choosing, inheriting its status and lifestyle.
This logic borrows heavily from the spirit of Calvinist individualism. Post-reformation Puritans, a.k.a. the colonists who settled in seventeenth century New England, lived by the Calvinist doctrine that one could only be saved “by faith alone.” In other words, a believer’s salvation depended entirely on their own personal relationship with God. Of course, this was a major break from Catholic structures that insisted upon the need for priests to serve as intermediaries between the congregation and the divine will. Elements of this Calvinist sentiment persist today, be it in the association of American culture as something rugged, independent, and self-reliant, or in the modern approach to the consumer community, within which an individual can gain membership by their purchasing decisions alone. However, while Calvinist doctrine insisted upon individual means, it offered one membership in a community rooted in the salvation of one’s soul; the consumer community, by contrast, while insisting upon the same individual means, offers a membership that is significantly more fleeting.
Unlike the bonds once formed in community spaces like churches, the links formed by the purchase of bespoke products are as fickle and disposable as the products themselves. While consumption allows one the possibility to become a member of a given peer group, it far from guarantees it. Products are always being replaced by another, meaning that no one’s status in a consumer community is assured. In seeking to join communities of consumption, the consumer receives only a false sense of satisfaction—one that, by design, constantly keeps her looking for the next promise of connection.
This phenomenon is exacerbated further when one considers America’s youngest generation. According to associate professor Jay I. Sinha at Temple University, Gen Z is “a new consumer in the US market and is very different from past generations.” The Gen Z social self is increasingly realized digitally; corporations, in turn, are outsourcing more and more of their marketing campaigns to social media creators or micro-influencers. Product recommendations from a trusted influencer can be incredibly effective in capturing younger consumers.
Just as consumers’ aspirations to buy their way into community membership trace their origin to the Calvinist tradition of America’s earliest colonists, so too does the micro-influencer draw upon a seemingly unlikely historical predecessor: the ancient rhetorician. Historian and philosopher Walter Ong writes that “all human culture was of course initially rhetorical in the sense that before the introduction of writing all culture was oral.” Unlike persuasive writing, which relies on a sharp command of logic to advance an effective argument, strong oratory depended upon a speaker’s ability to effectively appeal to their audience—an appeal better made by speaking to irrational sympathies than to precise argument.
Like the rhetoricians of old, modern marketers must also be experts in persuasion, adaptability, and audience engagement. In addition to shaping truths and managing audience perceptions, marketers now must also control attention in an environment more competitive than ever. The key to this is the simulation of a personal relationship between corporation and consumer.
Many Gen Z consumers are aware that the self micro-influencers present is curated, edited, and sculpted to maintain a brand image. Even then, Sinha notes, younger consumers feel that micro-influencers communicate with them on “a very personal level.” In their videos, micro-influencers often use personal possessive pronouns (e.g., “my,” “our”) to demonstrate a personal relationship with the product they’re being paid to promote. This also reinforces the idea that a consumer can enter the micro-influencer’s community by purchasing, then forming their own relationship with, the recommended product. By contacting consumers through micro-influencers, brands offer an aspirational community leader and extend an invitation into the product community.
Now, let’s address what really makes this mass-scale bespokification possible: artificial intelligence (AI). Incorporating AI into product development and mass marketing allows firms to scale their efforts to create custom products for immense numbers of consumers. AI transforms data collected on personal preferences and purchasing habits into a digital persona—a simulated self—which can then easily be converted into a customized product. While this democratization of custom products may seem like a step toward a more equitable consumption system, it comes at the cost of that which gave bespoke products their appeal in the first place: communities of consumption.
Custom approaches to marketing and product development prevent a consumer from even having the option to join a community of consumption. Instead, the bespoke consumer purchases her own custom product which, in the attempt for connection, only isolates her further. Instead of a community of others to belong to, or even just to aspire to, the bespoke consumer can hope only to be recognized by algorithms that will read, reconstitute, and market her existing preferences back at her.
In response to the twentieth century rise of mass media like film and television, cultural theorists lamented the loss of the unique in what they assessed as a swelling sea of sameness. French philosopher Jean Baudrillard feared that technology would reduce society to endless mimicry, such that we would lose all sense of reality. In the same vein, German philosopher Walter Benjamin feared that the reproduction of art on a mass scale would remove the very quality that made it alluring, substituting “mass existence for a unique existence.” Today, we face a quandary that is both the opposite, yet the same: mass uniqueness, or perhaps endless mimicry of the self.
As reflected in AI-leveraged mass marketing, the consumer is able to access a world all their own. Imagined to an extreme, an individual could access a bespoke universe of products created by them, for them—perhaps only interacting digitally with other individuals that also have similar purchasing habits. This extreme represents a total alienation from meaningful connection outside of the self or beyond consumption. In a bespoke universe, there could be no meaningful exchange with other humans, their preferences, their ideas.
While we may resent the data gathering that marketing firms conduct, and while better consumer protections are certainly needed, resistance is, largely, futile. The billion dollar AI cash bubble might be overinflated and on track to burst soon, but for now, it’s only growing. Perhaps, in realizing and rejecting our state of alienation, consumer populations have the opportunity to seek alternative communities that are not based on owning the right product or believing in the right god. What if, instead of using AI as an advanced shopping assistant that corners us further into the modern echochamber or a highly calibrated mirror of our own tastes, we seek meaningful data exchange? As human lives become increasingly entangled with technology, let us not forget that this also opens avenues to increase contact with humans, too.
Image: Eugène Atget, Men’s Fashions, gelatin silver print, 1923-4, printed 1956 (National Gallery of Art, DC).