First it was “Orange Juice, not just for breakfast anymore,” and now it is, “The Year in Review, not just for consumer tech giants anymore.”
A Colorado electricity provider, a nonprofit drilling water wells in rural Africa, and the Australian federal government — each of them has picked up the concept of a Year in Review to build a stronger connection with their most important audiences.
The personalized year in review has expanded beyond its origins. What started as a clever engagement mechanic for consumer tech platforms (Spotify, Apple, fitness trackers) has become a powerful tactic for all sorts of organizations. The playbook is straightforward: take the data you’re already collecting, reflect it back to each person in a way that’s specific to them, and builds stronger engagement.
The data is already there. No organization on this list built a new data collection system to make this happen. The shift was in how they chose to use it, turning records of activity and transactions into a story about the individual in those records. And they are framed to tell the recipient “here’s what you accomplished” rather than “here’s what we did.”
