Re-Invented Marketing: 5 Shifts.
The Future Does Not Fit in the Containers of the Past.Edition 241.
As one grows more seasoned one dislikes complexity, confusion and constipation.
Time is of essence. Speed is key. Simplicity reduces the need to dither, dally and delay.
So here is one chart to explain all the key changes that have occurred and will occur in marketing.
Clearly the challenges and opportunities facing companies are complex. Here is framework, the ABCDE of Re-invented Marketing, that attempts to simplify without dumbing down the key issues that we all have to face.
The Five Shifts: Audience, Brand, Content, Data and Enterprise.
Audience: Who we are marketing to, how we reach them, and their mindset has shifted greatly over the past decade.
a) From Consumers to People with God Like Power: The biggest mistake companies make is they view things through the lens of their Brands and see us as Consumers.
Very few people define themselves by the brand they consume.
Even an incredible company like Procter and Gamble with dozens of billion-dollar brands cannot understand people if they looked only through the lens of their Brands (they are too sophisticated to do that) because at the core all their Brands are about dirt removal. Dirt removal from your teeth, clothes, dishes, butt, kids butt etc. Do you define yourself by dirt removal?
Or consider brands that fixate on wanting to have “relationship” with you. Very few people want to have a relationship with a brand. They want their headache to go away rather than enter a relationship with Tylenol.
It is key to think about people and not consumers.
b) From passive to interactive: A decade and a half ago we thought of people we marketed to as an audience since they were primarily passive receivers. Today they create, share, and interact and some of them are so impactful that we call them Influencers and Creators and there is an entire ecosystem of Influencer and Marketing.
In many cases they begin a “campaign” and marketers respond to what has been created!
AI is now introducing a new interface to supplement and sometimes replace search and streams which are the two current interfaces. Conversations. Not just chat but constant back and forth.
c) From Segmentation to Re-aggregation: As media becomes almost completely digital, we need to understand that people come to digital media one at a time. There is no mass media that we segment by finding channels or magazines with high proportion of the people we are marketing too. The power of Google, Facebook and increasingly connected television is the ability of self-service tools to buy and scale individual interactions one at a time. We no longer are going from a cow of a mass audience to a steak of a segmented audience. Rather we are re-aggregating single pieces of mince into a hamburger.
d) From Reaching People to Reaching People’s “Chiefs of Stuff”: As marketers begin to use persona’s to better understand people and utilize agentic ai to connect with the people they should realize that the people they wish to sell and persuade to will also have agents to find, filter and negotiate on their behalf. These “Chief’s of Stuff’ will be instructed and will seek but they may not feel so how will that change marketing?
Brands: Brands continue to be important but the way they are built is changing greatly. Today, Experiences, Purpose, Employee Joy and Trust matter the most in building Brands. These changes explain the long-term secular decline of advertising and communication but the renaissance and rise of marketing.
a) From Communication to Experiences: Jeff Bezos of Amazon said some companies spend 30 percent of resources on building a better product or experience and 70 percent telling people about it. Others spend 70 percent of their effort on product and service and 30 percent on telling people about it. Jeff said Amazon was the latter company.
In an era of empowered people connected to each other the focus should be on the experience. The brand is the experience and experiences are the brand. We will be moving from omni-media to experience stacks where businesses combine physical, digital and immersive experiences to connect and resonate with people.
b) From Great Words to Purposeful Behavior: Purpose matters more than ever especially in today’s time of social, financial and health challenges. Purpose is not some words left to wander on a lonely corporate website but the way a company or brand behaves.
c) Employees as Brand Advocates and Key to Purpose and Experience: If a company does not invest and treat its employees well it will be very challenged on both the experience front (angry, tired, and worried employees do not deliver great products or experiences) but also any purpose statement rings hollow if you cannot look after your own people.
We will soon understand that even more important than net promoter scores of customers are the net joy scores of employees.
d) Trust: A brand is a trust mark and in today’s low trust age, brand’s will distinguish themselves through trust. In an AI age where no video, photo or fact can be trusted a great and trusted brand will be a good house keeping seal.
Content: Content has always been a key to marketing. The four big differences are that there is much more of it, it is far faster, there are many new ways of making it and we need to get to the point quickly with answers.
a) Think Poetry and not just Plumbing: Today in a world of granular targeting and algorithmic trading we can get the right interaction to the right person at the right time. But what are we paying as much attention to the interaction as getting it there? We must think of the poetry and not just the plumbing. AI will finally allow the messaging and interactions to be personalized at scale.
b) Think response not just creation: Many campaigns are started by people. Memes or perspectives of about your brand can ricochet all over the world and we need to ensure that in today’s world of weaponized platforms you have a world class risk intelligence partner and a rapid action team to identify and manage detractors and other instigators. As importantly influencers often have far larger audiences and are more trusted than many media companies. What we call mainstream media is actually niche and what we call niche is mainstream. AI is the slingshot that will turbo-charge this shift to the the Podcasters, Substackers, and Tiktokers, further reducing the benefits of scale.
c) People choose with their hearts and use numbers to justify what they do: Content that moves people is content that moves product.
d) The Answer Economy vs the Information Economy: One of the reasons search engine marketing worked was because increasingly search did not. Too many websites and much content marketing is where we look for answers but we get links or click bait headlines or diarrhea filled pages of junk we have to wade through. That era might be ending in the Answer Age which AI is bring about.
Data: Data is key to future of marketing. It is like electricity. It illuminates. Without strong data a company cannot compete. It is necessary. But it is not sufficient. Because just like few companies differentiate themselves by how they use electricity, very few companies will find a competitive edge in data. It will be a key ingredient and not the be all or end all of strategy. And very few companies will be able to live on their own data. The four areas to focus on data are quality, real time, meaning and connectedness
a) Quality versus Quantity: If 90 percent on data has been created in the last two years most companies “data lakes” are filled with muck/mud/ slime and lots of dead fish.
b) Real Time Access and not just Ownership: First party relationships with people who buy from you are key. Using only platforms as the roadways to reach them will lead to high tolls or blockades. But first party data alone is not enough and how to access and partner with other firms both to build a better understanding and bridge to people but also to design better and more comprehensive products and solutions.
c) Meaning versus Math: Data is not information, knowledge, or wisdom. Algorithms are bias embedded in code. How do you integrate, interpolate, interrogate data, and involved diverse mindsets, interconnect to larger trends and add imagination to make meaning from math?
d) Connectedness: A case can be made that the reason Apple has fallen behind in AI is because it was so fixated on privacy that it knee-capped itself while giving rise to Meta’s AI capabilities which came about because of a loss of Apple signals. Apple by roping people out roped itself in. Without connection to a broader eco-system data is nothing. Connected data allows one to better know the people one is serving but also is also key to connecting them seamlessly through experiences will be. Connection is critical.
Enterprise: If a company is to deliver experiences in a world of people with God like power, while steering itself with a purpose and looking after its stakeholders particularly its employees but also making sure it delivers tangible results today, it will have to sculpt itself into a new form by building new muscles. The future does not fit in the containers of the past.
a) The Paranoid Die. The Schizophrenic Thrive: Andy Grove the late CEO of Intel said only the paranoid survive. In today’s age where we need to connect and work together this leads to polarized and insular thinking which explains why Intel has become a shell of itself and is a shadow in the world of Taiwan Semi-Conductor, Nvidia, AMD and ARM.
Rather than Paranoia the right mindset is Schizophrenia. Companies should run two models. One focused on delivering today and the other on building a new tomorrow where some of the best talents are given all the assets of the companies and none of the liabilities and asked to do whatever it takes to move into the future including eating and harming today’s cash cows.
b) Culture is the result of what fear free, diverse people do when no one is watching: To navigate change companies need fear free cultures of diverse people and mindsets led by leaders who continuously learn, incentivize and train for change and worship no sacred cows.
c) Trust is speed: If a company wants to be high velocity it must be one built on trust. A company where intent is clear, decision making transparent and leaders are accountable is one where speed, innovation happens and “cover your ass deck writing” and meetings to prepare for meetings are minimized.
d) Rethinking: It is not just marketing that will change but marketers will need to also change. AI for instance will not only make marketing more effective and efficient but it will create both existential risk and opportunity. If the NY Times had used digital just to make their printing presses run more efficiently and their truck routes more effective they would not be as successful as they are. They realized that the new world meant no need for printing presses or trucks or page one meetings or a daily newspaper. Smart marketers realize that making their current marketing approaches more efficient and effective is the least important of the real challenges and opportunities of the new era. It is time to upgrade one’s operating system and shift mindsets and rethink the organization, category, competitive sets and much more.
March 28, 2025
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