How Exponential Technology Can Change Marketing.

Recently, times have been very exciting for technology geeks like me and tech has taken huge leaps in terms of Artificial Intelligence, Block Chain, Quantum Computing and Machine Learning. But surprisingly, whenever I try to speak to show my enthusiasm around these areas generally I get the “This is irrelevant for me” shrug but really is it irrelevant? Being a Marketeer, it really surprises me how people just decide to ignore what they cannot understand and not try to understand/learn it. Recent leaps in technology remind me of the time when digital boom took over marketing and all the marketing executives for a very long time thought that this is going to be a bubble which will soon burst. But instead, after a few years we all saw everyone grabbing the opportunity and now we have all the firms spending huge budgets on digital marketing because this is where the ROI can be seen.

As an example, being a financial firm, we mostly spend our marketing budgets digitally and the ROI is tangible, so it makes sense to focus our money and efforts on a medium through which we can see some tangible results.

Now coming back to these huge leaps in technology, lets look at some exponential growth areas that have been very impressive and are bound to change the way we think, plan and activate our marketing activities.

Quantum tech giant IBM is working using AI, Machine Learning & Quantum computing with Barclays & IBM to develop the very best stock portfolio, they plan on using quantum computing to look at every stock and then combine the very best to come up with a portfolio that can possibly change the way portfolios are created and operated.

Another firm Rigetti along with a bunch of pharmaceutical firms is working on groundbreaking simulated chemistry using the same technologies to come up with possible atomic positions to design new chemicals and drugs that can reshape the pharmaceutical industry.

These two examples are huge in their own right and it makes sense that huge budgets are being spent on these industries and transportation automation and soon it will all translate down to marketing as machines have already started to provide insights on emotions, thoughts & choices, which is the beginning.

Emotions, thoughts & choices are three biggest factors in terms of marketing results and we can assume that this learning will possibly result in solutions for the future. (Checkout the new nike campaign which was a work of a genius and resulted in a 30+% increase in sales)

Another example is Chess, which was considered a crown of human brain but recently, Google`s AlphaZero beat stockfish8. Stockfish8 had years of human experience embedded in him and was a former world champion.

AlphaZero either won or tied, it didn’t lose.

And all that knowledge was learned in only 4 hours…. Scary, but this is the way tech is going to evolve. Very very quickly.

As we move closer towards the future, which is still a bit far away in terms of automation revolution but when it does happen slowly, the market will settle into a new norm where old jobs will disappear and new one will appear cause we as humans have always evolved. And again, we would need to reinvent ourselves to keep us relevant.

We can see huge changes and gain insights in terms of market intelligence, automation, emotions and much much more, it is very possible that we will be able to generate 50 or even 100 different campaigns with a push of a button. Choose the best one and then implement this by pushing another button.

We can have automated ads, creatives, campaign, copy writing and basically everything that we do in marketing today but instead, using machine learning and AI. We can then process the campaign immediately and roll it out to every possible format and all of that can be done fairly quickly and cheaply as compared to the costs today and it can produce the best results possible.

The key here is, there would still be a need of someone pushing that button and the trick here is to always be learning and always be ahead of what is going on and find your space because if you look, you will find something.

Technology moves so fast sometimes when people realise its time to change, its already too late…

Change sometimes is stressful, but it always results in a better you, so keep up!!