RIP - your professional life

Later this year, I will deliver a eulogy regarding the tragic death of human-led creative marketing.

It has been a long, often cruel, and agonising demise.

It’s sad, especially when you consider how marketing was once upon a time vibrant, creative, youthful, and above all, daringly human, like a particular part of Manhattan - 52nd Street.

Decades ago, 52nd Street looked very different. It bustled with creativity. It was a magnet for legendary singers like Billy Holiday, Louis Prima, Art Tatum, Fats Waller, Billie Holiday, Harry Gibson, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, and many more.?

Their music swung open doors to vast rolling landscapes, far from the cheerless world of narrow, polluted alleys, where people chased dimes and ran from landlords demanding skyrocketing rents.

One emerging talent was Tony Bennett. He regularly mixed with intimate audiences of no more than 100, beguiled by sassy singers who topped bills at cosy clubs.

Bennett became one of history’s greatest crooners. Songs like, I Left My Heart in San Francisco were global anthems. Lyrics had greater significance than titles suggested. In the case of San Francisco, karaoke singers worldwide implicitly understood that the lyrics were not just about a location but an emotion, a yearning to return to a kinder place.

There was depth. He spotted what people wanted: an escape, if only for the length of a tune, to a better world.

He carefully selected his repertoire. Songs could be bought as affordable records or enjoyed at sellout shows, promoted via radio and on TV performances such as the popular Perry Como show.

He had the product, the distribution and the chutzapa.

Over the years, Bennett’s faced contenders, from Rock and Roll to the Beatles, Punk, and hip-hop… yet he remained true to his American Song Book roots.

Finally, trends caught up. However, it was not the last verse of his song. He eventually re-emerged as quintessentially timelessly cool.

Why?

He believed in the quality of the product; people demanded more than generally processed muzak.

So, what has this to do with the death of marketing?

Often, marketers are led by the latest trends alone. What’s cool? What do Gen-Alpha or Millennials want? Above all, what does the data say?

They endlessly chase scorched paper dragons.

Bennett adopted a different approach. Rather than market to where data pointed, he persuaded new audiences to follow him – by rediscovering what it meant to be authentically cool.

His product was authentic, brilliantly produced and elegantly delivered. He was the real thing. Bennett remained ‘Mr. Cool’ into his mid-70s when he was performing around 200 gigs a year.

Data has always informed a brand’s next move. Whether for giants like Unilever, deciding which soap powder to discount, or agencies measuring a campaign’s most compelling creative approach of offer.

However, in all cases, technology is meant to support creative work which may occasionally be guided by gut instinct that flies in the face of any accountant’s assessments.

Tech should never usurp human creativity. YOUR talented, gifted imagination.

Once that happens, life becomes exceptionally dull. As with many industries, marketing gets buried in processes, algorithms, and data alone.

Facts show. Emotions reveal

People become automatons. Their most significant incentive is to get through another day.

Petrified of losing their underpaid and undervalued jobs, people from all industries slavishly press buttons and mindlessly follow the management dictate of algorithms and paperwork submitted on schedule.

Rather than being supported by tech, they become chained to it.

Efficiencies matter.

If something can be cut – pluck it out of its socket – quick!

Think ‘now’ – not ‘if’…

Go blind – for in so doing, you shall see higher management’s light as directed by the great paperwork processor in the sky.

Crucially, at the end of a term, quarter or year, a computer taciturnly reports that people (consumers/students/prospects) are mainly willing to plod on. Providing satisfaction scores are maintained, there is probably no need to invest in improving the intrinsic quality of a core offering. (Until an enterprising competitor shows otherwise).

Self-expectations must (regrettably and stoically) remain manageable and suppressed.

We are, after all, in a recession - moments away from being two degrees over and on the breadcrumbs line.

A dime is a dime. Every escalating rent bill must be paid. Big-hearted, unidentified CEOs of public entities must have their bonuses so that everyone else can gratefully have the means to cover basic expenses.

Keep plodding on in the path of least resistance.

This is what ultimately happened at 52nd Street in Manhattan. Today, it is an anonymous maze of Lego blocks containing thousands of office workers vacantly staring at dashboards that prod them to press buttons.?At the end of the working day, workers descend into subways spray painted with hashtags #surelylifematters?

Returning home, as in the office, they are fixed to screens, convincing themselves they are free.

In truth, new technology has incredible potential to offer marketers – prompt engineering, for instance, is amazingly effective - and highly sought after - ?but only when a marketer is professionally trained to employ and enhance their innate creative skills, including critical thinking – rather than capitulate to bots.

Technology is a tool to help growth, not curb it

The casket of traditional human marketing continues to slowly yet relentlessly lower into its final resting place, ironically dug by marketers who put process before strategy.

However, for some with the courage to step away from false comfort zones, the future may still be brilliantly cool and exceptionally rewarding, fiscally, professionally and personally.

Jonathan Gabay

https://youtu.be/j2K27d5gRsY?si=XFc0OFj3hgiZMBeG