BY TIM CRINO, SENIOR EDITOR, INC.@TIMCRINO

For Inc.

Photo:  CES 2023, held in Las Vegas at the Las Vegas Convention Center. Photo: Getty Images

Keeping up with the competition in 2023 may require offering more personalized products. At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week, personalization was a hot topic among brands ranging from video greeting company Cameo to automaker Stellantis.

Personalization has always been part of the offering at Cameo, which facilitates personalized video greetings from celebrities to fans, but the company recently began leveraging A.I. technology to create personalized greetings from animated characters. With the help of A.I. solutions provider Veritone and partnerships with various media companies, Cameo now sends personalized videos for children from animated characters like Thomas from Thomas the Tank Engine and even Santa Claus. Jess Jennings, an experiential producer with Cameo, said that personalized messages from characters in family-friendly entertainment have allowed the company to tap into an entirely new market.

And a big market it is. A TV show like Cocomelon, which started as a YouTube show before being acquired by Moonbug Entertainment–one of Cameo’s media partners–was the most-streamed American kids show in 2021, according to data from Nielsen. In fact, it was the second-most streamed show of 2021, just behind the police procedural crime drama Criminal Minds. And by personalizing messages from Cocomelon characters, Cameo is building a new group of potential customers for its core service.

Another company trumpeting personalization at CES is Stellantis, formed by the merger of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and PSA Group. Building personalized experiences for car customers helped the company more than double its revenue, according to Mamatha Chamarthi, Stellantis’s head of software business and product management, global, Americas, and Asia. In 2022, Stellantis introduced in-vehicle software that helps customers plan trips, capture photos, and share updates on social media, something Chamarthi calls “traveling as a service.” She gave the example of a customer who used these capabilities after purchasing a Jeep Wrangler for off-road trail rides. Other forms of personalization among automakers at CES include BMW’s concept car that can change colors.

One mistake to avoid is viewing personalization as simply about more direct communication with customers. Kathryn Kai-ling Frederick, chief marketing officer for the Los Angeles Rams, cited an example of a Marriott advertisement that was pushed to her phone a few days before a scheduled trip.