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Almost Friday, folks.
Picture the Starbucks drive-thru menu board. Now picture it changing because it knows it's you.
That's what Starbucks is exploring. On its earnings call on October 29, CEO Brian Niccol said the company will explore "experiences that recognize participating customers as they arrive, present personalized digital menus, and make payment more effortless," The Verge reports. From 2027 it'll also test AI in the background at the drive-thru to help baristas take orders more accurately.
It isn't alone. Taco Bell is experimenting with menu boards that change "on a car-by-car basis," and McDonald's is piloting a chatbot that identifies repeat customers and lets them order their usual, The Verge notes.
The marketing story underneath is in Marketing Week. Starbucks' finance chief, Catherine Smith, told investors the team has worked on "trying to take some of the seasonality out of our business." Niccol talks about "scalable platforms" like protein, matcha and refreshers, working alongside limited-time drinks. Comparable sales rose 7.2% in the quarter.
Put the two together. The pumpkin spice brand wants fewer big seasonal moments and a menu that's partly built for each car.
I like it, with one large caveat. "Recognize participating customers as they arrive" reads very differently to a privacy regulator than to a marketer. Niccol said "participating," which matters, and he called it "early." The test is whether people feel served or watched.
If you're in B2B and think this has nothing to do with you, look at your website. It's the same idea: a returning visitor, a known account, a page that could change for them. Most of us still show everyone the same homepage.
Before anyone pitches you personalized anything, write down three things: what you'll use to recognize the customer, how they agreed to it, and what they'd say if they read the rule.
Would your best customer be pleased or creeped out to learn what your site already knows about them?
ALSO TODAY
The FTC has ordered Walmart, Target and others to explain whether they use personal data, including AI analysis, to charge different people different prices, Retail Dive reports.
Google opened a preview that lets developers put apps inside AI Mode and Gemini, with rules against descriptions written to trick the model into picking them, SEJ reports.
Semrush will stop tracking Microsoft Copilot in its enterprise AI visibility product on November 9, blaming Copilot's new access rules, PPC Land reports.
Today’s sponsor:
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Meeting those shoppers is easier than you might think. Begin with the seasonal outcome you hope to drive: awareness, online sales, leads, store visits, or another measurable goal. From there, define your audience, upload your creative, set the budget and campaign dates, and establish measurement before launching. You can even create a shoppable ad unit that lets streamers buy with a click of their remote.
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TALK ON THE MARKET
Neil Patel, founder of NP Digital, on AI content:
It's his own team's study, and his agency sells the cure. The point carries over to personalization anyway. A thousand menu variants nobody wanted is still a thousand variants.
NUMBERS MATTER
14 of 29. AI assistants and agent platforms that document a way to stop your data being sold or shared for advertising, in an academic audit by researchers from Wesleyan, UC San Diego, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon and Villanova, per PPC Land. They counted 788 privacy settings across 30 products.
It's a preprint, not yet peer-reviewed. Before an AI system starts recognizing your customers, find out which half your vendor is in.
TRY THIS TODAY
Find the one personalization rule your customers would actually thank you for.
Using the attached segment list and last quarter's email results, propose three personalization rules we could switch on next month, with the data each needs and how the customer agreed to it.
Rank them by expected lift, and flag any rule a customer might find creepy if they read it.Paste in: your segment list, last quarter's campaign report and a note on the consent you collect. You get back: three ranked rules, the data each one needs and a creepiness flag. The full Email Personalization Strategy prompt covers behavioral, demographic and dynamic content in depth.
CMO CORNER
Rest is part of the job. Exhaustion isn't a badge.
Taking the seasonality out of a business sounds efficient. For the people running it, it can mean there's no off-season left.
The old calendar had a rhythm: launch, peak, breathe. Always-on platforms and personalized menus run every day, and the team behind them runs every day too, unless someone designs rest back in.
That someone is you. When you move a team from campaigns to always-on, plan the quiet weeks as carefully as the launches. Rotate who's on call for the live systems. Put a no-meetings week on the calendar after the holiday push, and defend it when a senior stakeholder asks for one more asset.
Then watch your own example. If you answer messages at 11pm, your team learns that's the job. Tired teams are the ones who ship the personalization mistake that ends up in the press.
TOOL UPGRADE
Three tools for knowing who's arriving before you change what they see:
Ellavator AI — best for enterprise B2B teams running account-based programs that want accounts prioritized and content adapted by buying signal, at enterprise prices. Try Ellavator AI here →
Apollo — best for B2B teams that want contact data enriched automatically, so outreach can be personal without hours of manual research. Try Apollo here →
CloudTalk — best for teams that want every customer call transcribed and analyzed, so you hear what returning customers actually ask for. Try CloudTalk here →
→ We have 300+ curated, filtered, and categorized AI tools in our directory. Browse to find the best ones that help your marketing team.
LEARN THIS
The AI Risk Management Framework for Marketing is our lightweight governance playbook for using AI without hurting the brand, across brand, data and privacy, and operational and compliance risk. Use it before personalization goes live, because that's where customer data meets customer-facing copy.
First step this week: score your AI workflows on customer impact, data sensitivity, brand exposure and regulatory complexity. Then set how much output you'll sample. It suggests 5 to 10% for medium-risk work and 20 to 30% for high.
→ We publish workshops, courses, guides, manuals, and more on AI marketing for free. Browse our learning resources for free.
BRAND SLOP
Maxon, the company behind Cinema 4D, posted a teaser on X for what looks like another AI tool. It didn't say what the tool does, so its own users filled in the blanks, Creative Bloq reports.
"A slop generator, cool," wrote one. "You guys are gulping the whole AI stuff without its users in mind," wrote another. A long-time customer signed off with tired loyalty: "love and pay C4D for 14 years now."
Maxon has been here before. Creative Bloq says its AI plans already drew criticism, including over Digital Twin, a tool for placing 3D product models into AI-generated marketing scenes.
A teaser with no detail invites your customers to picture the worst version. If you're announcing AI to people whose craft it touches, have you told them what it's for?
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