Or is the Robot already here? Technology is amazing. There is no doubting that. It can bring us anything we can think of. That my friend is where the problems begin. It is only a matter of time, and we see it happening in some spaces already, where robots and algorithms do all the work so you don’t have to!
Right now, I can speak into a remote control on my Amazon Fire TV and it will pull up exactly what I am looking for. This concept of saying what you want and having it available spills over to all industries. Marketing including. In todays marketing environment, everything is built off of a platform. These platforms hype up their ease of use and efficiency, making everyone a marketer. To this point, these tools and platforms provide a tremendous amount of ease of use and efficiency. The side effect however, is that everyone now thinks they are “marketers” Which would be great, but that is a fantasy. Take this position from Constant Contact “You don’t have to be an expert designer to create emails that look great in the inbox.” The genius though, is that everyone is a marketer. Everyone has something to sell. I try to embrace this theory as much as I can.
These tools allow small businesses the resources they need to compete at the local level while still maintaining a certain level of professionalism that consumers now expect and demand. On the down side of that is, businesses of all sizes (and i know this through first hand experience with Global and Local clients) expect marketing to be fast, free and magically increase their business.
I see a tremendous opportunity from where I sit for agencies of all sizes to not only learn and deploy these tools, but also work with creators and developers to improve upon them. I love technology and all that we can do with it and 100% invested in it, but like everything new and shiny, there are always drawbacks to watch out for and a balance to be kept along the way.
On the horizon is automated creative services. Using keywords and concepts provided by an end user, a marketing message can be crafted and deployed with little human interaction. As much as I love this in theory, it frightens me to death. Case in point: I don’t think we would ever get campaigns like “Snap it to a Slim Jim” or “America Runs on Dunkin” from a Robot.