A Time of Magic

Not so long ago personalised gifts (in the sense of gifts with one’s name on them) were very much the preserve of the upmarket shops. It just cost too much to personalise everyday things.

That’s changes a lot in the last decade or two though with automated personalisation being very much the order of the day. So much so that there are even specialist categories like personalized gifts for teenage girls which you simply would never have even thought of even 10 years ago.

Is it a bit too much though? Do you really want, say, a book with your name on it? Such books were certainly all the rage for kids a few years ago but are nowhere to be seen these days. They seemed like a great idea but they needed to ask so many questions to enable them to be created that people just made up the answers which made for a silly text obviously.

Moreover, there are problems when you come to offload some things. It’s fine to have a personalised t-shirt, but what if you want to sell that computer with your name engraved in big letters all over it?

Marketing hype can add a LOT to the price of any product if it’s done right.

Probably the best example of that at the moment is the iPad. The much more capable Android machines are coming in at little more than half the price for no reason other than the marketing spend of Apple to explain that difference. Is it really worth another £200 for that iPad logo?

Similar price differences can crop even with the likes of acne cream. There’s a surprising number of teenagers who’ll pay massively over the odds for a particular logo, regardless of whether the product is better or not.

Unfortunately, that means pulling out some very dodgy looking rain boots and assorted naff clothing for many people.

It doesn’t need to be that way as there are lots of fashionable alternatives available these days if people would only look for them. I suspect that it’s the looking for them that’s the problem really: people don’t really want to think of rainy weather so they don’t bother specifically shopping for clothing to cope with it.