What Brands Get Wrong About Personalization
At MIT SMR India’s Strategy Shift Forum, behavioral scientist Patrick Fagan will explain why brands often fail at personalization—and how they can fix it by applying principles of behavioral science to the design of AI systems, not just their output
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MIT Sloan Management Review India will host the Strategy Shift Forum, a gathering of MIT professors, global AI experts, and business leaders in New Delhi on August 19 to equip Indian leaders with critical insights into navigating the next wave of AI transformation. For more details, speaker announcements, and to request an invitation, visit here
For Patrick Fagan, understanding human behavior is not about decoding complexity but about asking a simpler, often overlooked question: “Why should anyone care?”
“Too many people focus on making journeys easier but forget the more important question of why would anyone want to take this journey in the first place?” says Fagan, a Sunday Times bestselling author and the former lead psychologist at Cambridge Analytica. “Behavior change has two sides—ease and motivation—and brands often forget the latter.”
This core insight underpins Fagan’s upcoming masterclass at the Strategy Shift Forum on 19 August: Reading Minds, Crafting Moments: Using Psychology and AI for Personalized Experience.
The session will delve into how behavioral science and AI together can unlock more personal, meaningful brand experiences.
Fagan’s examples make the point with clarity, and humor. “I once worked on a restaurant app, and it had zero pictures of the food! If you don’t tap into the what’s-in-it-for-me (WIIFM) factor, no amount of frictionless design will save you.”
But his mission isn’t just to help brands build smarter customer journeys. It’s also about changing how AI systems themselves are designed—not just used.
“Behavioural science can guide how AI systems are built by embedding psychological principles at the core,” he says. This means designing algorithms that “pre-empt user biases, frame choices better, reduce cognitive overload, and build trust.”
Don’t bolt on nudges later, he warns. “We can create AI that’s ethical, intuitive, and human-centered by design.”
Yet with great targeting power comes a risk—that brands will cross the line from helpful to manipulative. So how can they rebuild trust if customers feel emotionally over-targeted?
“Rule No.1: Don’t be creepy,” Fagan says. “There was a study that had people rate occupations by creepiness and the creepiest job was a clown. People fear unpredictability—like a clown that you think is throwing water but it’s actually confetti. Don’t do that.”
Transparency is non-negotiable. “Be very clear and transparent. Ambiguity kills trust. Even if you’re nudging users, tell them. Transparency doesn’t reduce effectiveness and it can actually increase it.”
Fagan calls out the superficiality in most so-called personalized experiences. “Mostly, they’re not doing it at all! And when they are, it’s shallow—‘people who liked this also liked that.’”
The real shift, he says, lies in psychological personalisation: “Tailoring experiences to personality traits like introversion or risk tolerance.”
His tool of choice?
Data psychology. “I help clients do this through what I call data psychology analyzing behavioural data to uncover the human beneath it and thus speak their language.”
The future, Fagan believes, lies in systems that aren’t just statistically accurate but emotionally resonant.
“We’re moving from cold, statistical models to systems that can understand people like a therapist, not just a spreadsheet. A shift from numbers to words thanks to LLMs.”
That shift, he adds, “from quant to qual will redefine what personalization means in a big way.”
Attendees at Fagan’s Strategy Shift Forum session can expect to put these ideas into action—redesigning customer journeys in real time by combining behavioral cues with AI-generated insights.
