Contentful Does Bake-off: Personalizing the digital experience

Great baking is all about balance, the right mix of ingredients, precise measurements, and a creative touch to bring everything together. The same can be said for digital experiences. Just as a baker wouldn’t rely on a single ingredient to make a cake, businesses can’t rely on a monolithic CMS to craft online interactions that surprise and delight. Instead, they need a flexible, modular approach where the best tools work together harmoniously.

At Contentful, we believe that content should be as adaptable as a baker’s recipe — scalable, customizable, and designed to evolve. To demonstrate the power of personalization and composability hands-on, we invited brands, including Dr. Martens, HSBC, G4S, Harrods, comparethemarket, and more, to Contentful Does Bake-Off, held at a secret location in London in December 2024. There, we didn’t just talk about these topics — it was integral to activities throughout the day.

See the video below for a taste of the day’s events, where I also had the honor of sampling and judging all the cakes our participants had created. There were 12 cakes, representing 12 different approaches to composability. Needless to say, I skipped dinner that night!

Crafting a better digital experience

Much like a successful baking project, a modern digital experience requires:

• A strong foundation: Contentful provides the base, like flour in a cake, giving businesses the flexibility to build and scale.

• The right mix of ingredients: Personalization, AI, and other integrations allow businesses to tailor their content for the perfect customer experience.

• The ability to adjust and refine: Just as a baker tweaks a recipe, businesses must iterate based on customer feedback and analytics.

This agile approach to content creation is why we brought together leading brands to put this philosophy into practice — both in their digital strategies and in the kitchen.

A recipe for digital personalization

In our special bake-off event, each team was given a challenge: create a cake that blended two brand identities in a unique way. This exercise mirrored the reality of digital personalization — bringing different elements together to create something cohesive and compelling.

The experience highlighted key themes:

• Agility is essential: Just as a good baker adjusts on the fly, marketing teams need to pivot quickly. Contentful’s flexibility allows businesses to personalize content without heavy reliance on developers.

• Empathy is the secret ingredient: Understanding customer needs is critical to delivering meaningful, relevant content experiences.

• AI is the icing on top: With AI-driven personalization from Contentful and our newly acquired Ninetailed, brands can deliver the right message at the right moment.

• Understanding your audience makes all the difference: Personalization isn’t just about data; it’s about understanding customers. Just like in baking, knowing your audience’s tastes makes all the difference, (and in this instance the judge didn’t like the vegan cakes!)

• Start small and iterate: Personalization doesn’t have to be an elaborate multi-layered cake from day one. Panelists emphasized the value of beginning with simple test-and-learn strategies to refine personalization efforts over time.

The ingredients for success 

Also on the day, we hosted a cozy fireside chat featuring experts spanning retail and utilities. The discussion served up some useful advice for personalization success.

Rachel Neath from E.ON Next highlighted the transformation in customer engagement: “Using a tool like Contentful means we’re less reliant on developers and can react quickly to market changes,” ensuring timely and relevant marketing messages. 

Rachel shared an example where energy-saving tips were tailored through a questionnaire, leading to more effective, empathetic communication that strengthened customer trust in a competitive industry.

Charlotte Todd from Nails inc. shared her experiences in retail, pointing out the strategic importance of personalization: “We created customer profiles to tailor ads and communications, ensuring the right product was delivered at the right time.” 

Charlotte spoke about how personalization enabled brands like NAILS.INC to pivot during COVID, evolving from generic ads to segmented, data-driven campaigns. Similarly, while working at fashion brand Reiss she personalized online experiences with mirrored VIP in-store interactions, leveraging data to predict customer preferences.

Content that truly takes the cake

Joe Cicman and Chuck Gahun, principal analysts at Forrester, are also fond of the cakes-for-composability analogy. “Perhaps it’s because tech buyers who bake know that the flour alone isn’t the cake. The cake is the cake — it could be as simple as that,” they write. 

“A flour vendor selling the idea of ‘the composable cake’ isn’t necessarily wrong. They can sell the idea that they can be one great ingredient, but doing so obfuscates the fact that they alone don’t sell the ingredients that the baker needs to buy; that’s the baker’s frustration.”

By the end of Contentful Does Bake-off, the cakes weren’t the only things that had risen — the level of collaboration, creativity, and excitement around composable content had too. A memorable digital experience, like great baking, requires the right balance of ingredients, constant refinement, and a willingness to experiment. And just like the best bakes, the results are always better when shared.

Want to experience the magic in person? Register now for our next Contentful Does Bake-Off event, coming soon to a venue near you.

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