SOFIAH NICHOLE SALIVIO

News Editor

Optimizely has published research showing that 75% of UK consumers find the marketing they receive irrelevant, highlighting a widening gap between consumer expectations and marketers’ ability to meet them.

The survey covered 1,000 UK consumers and 100 UK marketers. It found that many consumers are frustrated by generic, repetitive and poorly targeted messages, while marketers say time constraints, fragmented data and disconnected systems are limiting their work.

Among consumers, 69% said the marketing they receive is often generic or not tailored to them. The same proportion said they often receive duplicate messages or emails from brands, suggesting repetition remains a common problem across channels.

Volume is also an issue. Some 61% of consumers said they feel overwhelmed by the amount of marketing they receive, while 56% said it is becoming harder to find brands that communicate in a useful and engaging way.

The findings suggest poor relevance is starting to affect how people respond to brands. Nearly half of consumers, or 42%, said they disengage when content feels irrelevant, and 35% said they are more likely to unsubscribe from emails and other marketing communications after a poor or irrelevant experience.

Marketer pressures

On the marketing side, the research suggests many teams are under pressure to produce campaigns without the resources they need. Six in 10 marketers said they often have to launch campaigns without enough time or data to optimise them.

More than half, or 54%, said they move from one campaign to the next without enough time to evaluate performance properly. Another 66% said managing multiple tools and platforms creates unnecessary work.

This points to a structural problem for marketing departments trying to meet rising demand for more relevant communications. Consumers want messages that reflect their interests and behaviour, but marketers say the systems behind campaign planning and delivery are often disconnected.

In practice, that can leave brands sending more communications without improving quality. Repetition, weak targeting and poor timing can all reduce a campaign’s value, especially when consumers already feel inundated by promotional material.

AI questions

The research also touches on the role of artificial intelligence in marketing. While AI tools have been widely adopted to help teams produce content more quickly, the findings suggest speed alone has not solved the relevance problem.

One executive at the company linked the issue to how the technology is being used. “Consumers can tell when marketing wasn’t made for them, and our research shows they’re tuning it out because of it,” said Tara Corey, SVP, Marketing at Optimizely.

Corey added: “The irony is that AI was supposed to help fix this, but so far, it’s mostly just helped marketers make more of the same. The real opportunity isn’t more content, it’s better content, and that means using AI to clear away the busywork so marketers can actually focus on strategy and creativity again.”

The data comes as many brands try to balance automation with pressure for better customer engagement. Businesses have increased their use of email, mobile alerts and digital advertising, but consumers appear to be drawing a sharper distinction between communications they find useful and those they dismiss.

For marketers, the results suggest the challenge is no longer simply reach or frequency. The more pressing issue is whether organisations can organise their data, tools and workflows well enough to send messages customers consider relevant.

The findings also show that when that does not happen, the commercial risk is immediate: 35% of consumers said they are more likely to unsubscribe from marketing communications after a poor or irrelevant experience.

Dutch coffee-making giants Jacob Douwe Egberts (JDE) announced last year that its plant off Ruscote Avenue in Banbury, would shut.

The factory is home to an honours board made up of plaques honouring those who worked there for 30 or more years.

The long-service Honours Board, with over 600 names of employees who worked for more than 30 years, is a key part of the factory’s history.

JDE is preserving the legacy of its Banbury factory before its closure, including preserving the original plaques.

Campaigners have been working for over a year to get their own plaques back, or their families plaques back.

Now, the company and Cherwell District Council have confirmed plaques will be displayed for the community.

Councillor Lesley McLean, Leader of Cherwell District Council, stated the council’s support for preserving these “historic items” in recognition of the factory’s contribution to Banbury.

Gordon Boffin, partner of Jo Mobley who has been instrumental in the campaign to return the plaques, said the recipients and their families just want them back.

Jo Mobley is attempting to reunite more than 600 others on the board with theirs, as well as her fathers

Ms Mobley has started the Facebook page ‘help reunite 30 years service plaques from JDE’.

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Workers for JDE coffee plant, which has closed (Image: Contributed)

The Facebook group has more than 230 followers with workers and family members alike trying to retrieve the plaques.

Talking to the BBC, she said: “It started as a very small mission and its ended up very big – it’s snowballed into finding more than 600 names.”

“I would like every person, or as quite a few have passed away, any of their families to be reunited with their plaques,” she said.

The group was working with the Labour MP for Banbury, Sean Woodcock, to retrieve the plaques.

The original plaques from the factory and the Bird’s cockerel gates to the factory are familiar landmarks in Banbury.

The gates will also be displayed to the community following the closure.

The factory, which opened as a General Foods plant in 1964, produced household brands like Bird’s Custard, Kenco, and Tassimo.

JDE Peet’s is also donating over £24,000 to various local organisations, including Banbury Young Homelessness Project, The Sunshine Centre, Banbury Museum, and The Horton General Hospital.

The funds were partially raised by auctioning equipment from the site.

The factory also have an over 18-year long partnership with Katherine House Hospice in Adderbury, which it has donated more than £62,000 to.

The company has pledged to continue providing the hospice with coffee for the next two years.

SOFIAH NICHOLE SALIVIO

News Editor

Forecourt Eye will give more than 2,000 UK forecourts free access to a new crime-reporting platform through a partnership with Facewatch. The move comes as unpaid fuel incidents remain above earlier levels and operators report wider retail crime and abuse against staff.

The new system will be added to existing Forecourt Eye tablets used at filling stations, allowing operators to manage fuel theft, shop theft and police reports on one platform.

Forecourt Eye’s analysis of 550 forecourts found unpaid fuel incidents averaged 189 a day in the five months after 28 February, up from 158 a day in the previous five months. Extrapolated across the UK’s 8,350 forecourts, that suggests daily incidents rose from about 2,400 to 2,872.

The estimated volume of fuel involved rose 24% from 87,800 litres to 108,900 litres a day. Its estimated daily value increased 48% from about GBP £131,000 to GBP £194,000, equivalent to roughly GBP £70.7 million a year if the current rate continues.

The figures point to a rising cost burden for operators as pump prices and incident levels increase at the same time. According to Forecourt Eye, unpaid fuel incidents, including drive-offs and declarations of no means of payment, are running 20% above the level seen before fuel prices rose sharply following the conflict in Iran.

Broader Crime

Operators say the problem now extends beyond the pumps. As forecourts have expanded into convenience retailing, they are also dealing with shop theft, intimidation and violence against frontline workers.

Michelle Henchoz, Managing Director of Forecourt Eye, set out the rationale for the tie-up. “Our customers have told us they increasingly want one place to manage everything from unpaid fuel and ANPR intelligence through to shop theft, violence and police reporting. This partnership delivers exactly that while fitting seamlessly into the way they already work. As offending becomes more organised and more sophisticated, operators need joined-up technology that helps them protect both their forecourt and their convenience store.”

Forecourt Eye already provides a tablet-based system that retailers use to handle incidents and recover payments from motorists who say they cannot pay. It also uses automatic number plate recognition technology to flag vehicles linked to previous offending.

From September, customers will receive an additional app on the same devices, giving them access to Facewatch’s crime-management system. Retailers will not need to install live facial recognition cameras to use the reporting platform.

Shared Intelligence

The partnership also links two separate intelligence pools. Forecourt Eye says it holds a private database of more than 300,000 vehicle registrations associated with fuel theft, while Facewatch maintains a national database of retail offenders.

Nick Fisher, Chief Executive of Facewatch, said: “The distinction between fuel crime and retail crime has largely disappeared. Modern forecourts face the same prolific offenders, violence and abuse experienced across the wider retail sector. By combining Forecourt Eye’s expertise on the forecourt with Facewatch’s crime-management capability, we’re giving operators a single platform to prevent crime, manage investigations and help police tackle repeat and violent offenders.”

Operators that choose to add Facewatch’s live facial recognition system will be able to combine number plate recognition on the forecourt with facial recognition inside the shop, creating coverage from a vehicle’s arrival on site to a customer’s departure from the store.

Facewatch says its wider retail network already spans more than 125 retailers across thousands of stores in the UK. Its system generated more than 500,000 real-time alerts of known offenders in 2025.

The Petrol Retailers Association said the change reflects how crime on forecourts has evolved as sites have become mixed fuel and convenience businesses. Staff are increasingly exposed to anger from customers over prices and to repeat offending that mirrors patterns seen across the wider retail sector.

Gordon Balmer, Executive Director of the Petrol Retailers Association, said: “Today’s forecourts are dealing with far more than fuel theft. Our members are reporting increasing levels of abuse and aggression towards colleagues who are simply doing their jobs and have no influence over the price displayed on the forecourt. Crime on Britain’s forecourts no longer begins and ends at the pump. Whether it is unpaid fuel, shop theft, organised crime or unacceptable abuse of staff, operators need joined-up solutions that recognise how these issues increasingly overlap. Bringing together technologies that help retailers prevent crime, manage incidents and support police investigations is a positive step for the industry.”