The future of marketing isn't Big Data & AI, it's not yet another social media network or some magic technology. The future of marketing is about problem solving, critical thinking, creativity, a sense of ethics and all those irreproducible things that makes us unique and human.
Watch the full presentation on YouTube: https://youtu.be/RhN3kv_-Llw
6. Members of the audience take pictures as President Barack Obama participates in a town hall meeting moderated
by CEO Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook headquarters in Palo Alto, Calif. April 20, 2011.
Credit: White House Photo by Lawrence Jackson
11. Alexander Nix, CEO of Cambridge Analytica, presents the OCEAN model during a conference called “The Power of
Big Data and Psychographics” and wows the audience with the algorithmic capabilities of his firm – September
2016, pre-scandal…
12.
13. Openness
• Do they enjoy new experiences?
Conscientiousness
• Do they prefer plans and order?
Extraversion
• Do they like spending time with others?
Agreeableness
• Do they put people's needs before theirs?
Neuroticism
• Do they tend to worry a lot?
O
C
E
A
N
14. Openness
• Do they enjoy new experiences?
Conscientiousness
• Do they prefer plans and order?
Extraversion
• Do they like spending time with others?
Agreeableness
• Do they put people's needs before theirs?
Neuroticism
• Do they tend to worry a lot?
O
C
E
A
N
15. Openness
• Do they enjoy new experiences?
Conscientiousness
• Do they prefer plans and order?
Extraversion
• Do they like spending time with others?
Agreeableness
• Do they put people's needs before theirs?
Neuroticism
• Do they tend to worry a lot?
O
C
E
A
N
16. •
•
•
•
Photo by Deval Parikh on Unsplash
Product
Price
Place
Promotion
Engagement
Experience
Exclusivity
Emotion
17. •
•
•
•
Photo by Deval Parikh on Unsplash
Deciding factor to
choose a brand:
Price…………. 64%
Trust………….. 53%
27. Problem solving
•Analytical thinking and
innovation
•Complex problem-solving
•Critical thinking and analysis
•Creativity, originality and
initiative
•Reasoning, problem-solving
and ideation
Self-management
•Active learning and learning
strategies
•Resilience, stress tolerance
and flexibility
Working with
people
•Leadership and social
influence
Technology use &
development
•Technology use, monitoring
and control
•Technology design and
programming
Self-management
• Active learning and learning
strategies
• Resilience, stress tolerance and
flexibility
• Ethics
28. Problem solving
•Analytical thinking and
innovation
•Complex problem-solving
•Critical thinking and analysis
•Creativity, originality and
initiative
•Reasoning, problem-solving
and ideation
Self-management
•Active learning and learning
strategies
•Resilience, stress tolerance
and flexibility
Working with
people
•Leadership and social
influence
Technology use &
development
•Technology use, monitoring
and control
•Technology design and
programming
Problem solving
• Critical thinking and analysis
• Analytical thinking and innovation
• Complex problem-solving
• Creativity, originality and initiative
• Reasoning and ideation
29. Problem solving
•Analytical thinking and
innovation
•Complex problem-solving
•Critical thinking and analysis
•Creativity, originality and
initiative
•Reasoning, problem-solving
and ideation
Self-management
•Active learning and learning
strategies
•Resilience, stress tolerance
and flexibility
Working with
people
•Leadership and social
influence
Technology use &
development
•Technology use, monitoring
and control
•Technology design and
programming
Technology use &
development
• Technology use, monitoring
and control
• Technology design and
programming
30. Problem solving
•Analytical thinking and
innovation
•Complex problem-solving
•Critical thinking and analysis
•Creativity, originality and
initiative
•Reasoning, problem-solving
and ideation
Self-management
•Active learning and learning
strategies
•Resilience, stress tolerance
and flexibility
Working with
people
•Leadership and social
influence
Technology use &
development
•Technology use, monitoring
and control
•Technology design and
programming
Working with people
• Leadership and social influence
• Communication skills
33. • THE SOCIAL DILEMMA
• THE GREAT HACK
• MINDF*CK
• THE GUARDIAN: THE CAMBRIDGE ANALYTICS FILES
• HAVAS MEANINGFUL BRANDS
• EDELMAN TRUST BAROMETER 2020. SPECIAL REPORT: BRAND TRUST IN 2020
• WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM: TOP 10 JOB SKILLS OF TOMORROW
Notas do Editor
When the MBA Games committee asked me to talk about the future of marketing I was thrilled, honoured, and excited.
Then I wondered: what exactly am I going to talk about?
I will do as I always do: share my thoughts, be a little bit controversial, and hopefully convey my passion for marketing and analytics.
I won’t tell you the future of marketing is mobile – so called ”experts” have been saying it for 20 years!
I won’t tell you the future of marketing is Instagram, TikTok, WhatsApp or any of the 90+ other social network out there.
---
There is a lot I could share, but it would sound like a lecture and it would be boring.
Honestly, I think marketing hasn’t fundamentally changed.
But from another angle, it is so different from the theory we see in some university classes.
---
Let's dig in!
Let's begin with a definition, so we are all on the same page.
How do YOU define marketing?
Do you think marketing is still about offering the best products or services for your customers while cashing in on a reasonable profit?
Really?
“Marketing is the science and art of exploring, creating, and delivering value to satisfy the needs of a target market at a profit”
This is how marketing was defined almost 50 years ago by Kotler. And it is often what we are led to believe.
Do you agree with this definition?
Typically, I would ask the audience to raise their hands if they agree.
Instead, let’s use the quick polling feature and see how it goes. Don’t worry, it’s not an exam and there is no right or wrong answer!
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Sources:
https://kotlermarketing.com/phil_questions.shtml#answer3
Image: https://speaking.com/speakers/philip-kotler/
Here’s a little bit of controversy for you.
I think marketing has always been about trust and influence, but thanks to Big Data, machine learning and social media, marketing as become a game of manipulation and deceit with the power of destabilizing democracies.
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Source: https://stephane-hamel.medium.com/of-my-encounter-with-christopher-wylie-8feb51d13354
Image : Google Image Search
Facebook is the best example to make my point and I will use it throughout the presentation.
I love Facebook.
I use Facebook… probably too much…
And somehow I hate it.
What about you? Let's do another quick poll!
---
Source:
Image: Photo by Joshua Hoehne on Unsplash
This picture was taken when Barack Obama participated in a town hall meeting moderated by Zuckerberg.
If we were to analyze the meaning of this picture, we could say it represents the omnipresence of Facebook - always there in the background.
Its influence over politics and our lives.
The adulation of its users.
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Image: Members of the audience take pictures as President Barack Obama participates in a town hall meeting moderated by CEO Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook headquarters in Palo Alto, Calif. April 20, 2011. (Official White House Photo by Lawrence Jackson)
Have you seen The Social Dilemma?
It's a docufiction available on Netflix.
They make very harsh comments about Facebook and others social networks.
It wasn't a surprise for me.
But for ordinary people not living in a digital bubble, it was a shock.
It makes a good point of demonstrating how good intentions gradually have unexpected negative side effects.
It also highlights how profitability without ethics leads to disaster.
There are many good lessons to remember from it, but two of them are particularly important for our discussion
More info:
https://www.thesocialdilemma.com/
Image: Google Image Search
First, "What something is designed for isn’t what it is always used for."
And second, "Our mind is vulnerable"
The Social Dilemma was made because of something that happened about 4 years ago.
Christopher Wylie worked at a firm called Cambridge Analytica – you might have heard about the story – or at least part of it.
It turns out Cambridge Analytica was able to influence the democratic process of the US election… and Brexit…
We know what happened… The rest is history!
Let me share my own experience regarding Cambridge Analytica and Wylie.
As a “data nerd”, when I first heard about the capabilities of this firm, I was amazed at the “magic”.
But it turned out Cambridge Analytica was the first, shocking demonstration of what happens when data is abused at scale.
In 2016, before the scandal and when millions of dollars were poured into political marketing campaigns, everyone in my network was talking about this super cool firm.
The nerd in me drooled at the idea of playing with 87M rich psychographics profiles… building data models and achieving amazing targeting, click-throughs, and conversions…
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More info:
Watch the presentation on YouTube: https://youtu.be/n8Dd5aVXLCc
Sources:
https://aphadolie.com/2018/03/27/la-methode-de-cambridge-analytica-pour-manipuler-nos-cerveaux/
https://www.businessinsider.com/data-hacks-breaches-biggest-of-2018-2018-12#7-cambridge-analytica-87-million-15
https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/analyzing-medium-posts-to-understand-impact-of-cambridge-analytica-scandal-5841f46703d6
https://www.adweek.com/digital/a-researchers-quiz-app-deceptively-harvested-data-for-political-research-facebook-alleges/
https://www.news.com.au/technology/online/social/if-trump-gets-reelected-this-will-probably-have-a-lot-to-do-with-it/news-story/b85dedb7a346bb438883cf83fc53e60f
Image: https://aphadolie.com/2018/03/27/la-methode-de-cambridge-analytica-pour-manipuler-nos-cerveaux/
Here’s how it worked:
On Facebook, 320,000 people used the “My Digital Life” app/game to complete a personality test - you know, like those little stupid games you happily click on to know which Game of Thrones character you are, or what's your Viking name or whatever...
Being connected to Facebook, the app also collected likes and personal information... [click] as well as their friends’ data [click], amounting to over 50m people’s raw Facebook data
[click] The personality quiz results were paired with their Facebook data – such as likes – and combined with other sources such as voter records to create a superior set of records (initially 2m people), with hundreds of data points per person. This fueled the OCEAN algorithm, [click] and those individuals were targeted with highly personalised advertising.
This description is close to what marketer’s do on a daily basis using data and technology to run their marketing campaigns. Most often, the algorithm and magic is delegated to an ad network partner - like Facebook, Google, or any others.
I hear you... you might ask "what's the scandal?"
What got them isn’t the fact they collected all this data – the technology allowed it, it was clever, it was sneaky – the name Cambridge Analytica isn’t coincidental, it brought the Cambridge University trust even if it had nothing to do with it. It worked.
It’s not even the fact they used the data – to the contrary, they had very smart data scientists.
It’s not because they applied the the OCEAN model to fine tune and precisely influence the Trump election.
So, then, what was the real problem?
The real issue, in my opinion, is ordinary people found out about it!
[click]
In a way, it’s all good until consumers realize they don’t have control – it’s all good until people realize they fell to propaganda.
As marketers, you will depend on technology and data.
Of course, I don’t expect any of you to wake up in the morning and think “Let’s go do some evil!”.
It’s not the way it works…
You will have choices to make and decisions to take.
------
Sources:
https://aphadolie.com/2018/03/27/la-methode-de-cambridge-analytica-pour-manipuler-nos-cerveaux/
https://www.businessinsider.com/data-hacks-breaches-biggest-of-2018-2018-12#7-cambridge-analytica-87-million-15
https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/analyzing-medium-posts-to-understand-impact-of-cambridge-analytica-scandal-5841f46703d6
https://www.adweek.com/digital/a-researchers-quiz-app-deceptively-harvested-data-for-political-research-facebook-alleges/
https://www.news.com.au/technology/online/social/if-trump-gets-reelected-this-will-probably-have-a-lot-to-do-with-it/news-story/b85dedb7a346bb438883cf83fc53e60f
Image: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/17/facebook-cambridge-analytica-kogan-data-algorithm
Image: https://thenounproject.com/
I mentioned the OCEAN model a couple of times.
It’s also called the Big Five personality traits.
... and I won't dare to try to pronounce the name of each of those dimensions... my English isn't that good!
Let's just say it stems from the field of psychology and build upon initial research conducted over a century ago.
The model really reached its current status in the 1980s.
We could debate about the real predictive power of the model, but studies have demonstrated its applicability in political science.
And that’s exactly what Cambridge Analytica leveraged.
Let’s look at two examples.
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Source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits
If someone scored high on two specific dimensions, [click] they knew presenting them with an ad about their own safety would work.
They knew because they targeted specific ads and measured the response rate - the ad clicks - and fed the results back into the algorithm, which kept improving itself.
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Source: https://towardsdatascience.com/effect-of-cambridge-analyticas-facebook-ads-on-the-2016-us-presidential-election-dacb5462155d
Conversely, someone scoring very low on openness but high on the A dimension would answer [click] to an ad focused on family and hunting.
In both cases, those ads played on deep emotional triggers and were focused on the 2nd amendment, the right to bear arms, something very close to the Republican party and a Trump selling point.
What is this telling us?
Source: https://towardsdatascience.com/effect-of-cambridge-analyticas-facebook-ads-on-the-2016-us-presidential-election-dacb5462155d
As it’s always been the case, you will want to understand as much as possible about your customers, their decision process and experience journeys.
You will want to influence them at every touch point and build a trusting relationship so that customers do what you want them to do.
Typically, you want them to adopt your brand and, hopefully, even advocate for it.
Or you want them to vote for you...
Cambridge Analytica demonstrated the value proposition which were based on the so called four P’s of marketing – [click] Product, Price, Place and Promotion, shifted toward the new 4 E’s [click]: Engagement, Experience, Exclusivity and Emotion.
Despite all the science at your disposal, all the technology, there will always be room for creativity and bold ideas. Marketing will continue to balance between art and science.
I already mentioned two important words in marketing: “trust” and “influence”. Trust is foundational and the pressure to have transparent business practices will increase. Companies won’t be able to claim they have values; they will have to really live them.
It’s time for another quick poll, this time about “trust” and Facebook.
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Source:
https://brand24.com/blog/the-future-of-marketing/
https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/marketing-and-sales/our-insights/the-future-of-marketing
https://www.edelman.com/research/brand-trust-2020
Image: https://unsplash.com/photos/0cDnAZjCP1o
A survey conducted by Edelman – the big advertising agency - indicates “trust” is the 2nd most important factor when purchasing a new brand.
Price is still the 1st factor but the gap is closing.
What happens when you loose trust?
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Source:
https://brand24.com/blog/the-future-of-marketing/
https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/marketing-and-sales/our-insights/the-future-of-marketing
https://www.edelman.com/research/brand-trust-2020
Image: https://unsplash.com/photos/0cDnAZjCP1o
A survey of 350,000 people conducted by Havas – another big agency - revealed people wouldn’t care if 77% of brands disappeared.
So what makes a brand?
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Source: https://www.meaningful-brands.com/en
It’s easy to know what a business is doing.
[click] It’s fairly easy to know how a company fulfill its tasks or what processes it follows.
[click] But it’s much harder to find out « why » a business is doing what it does.
I’m not talking about those bs and meaningless mission statements.
Asking « why » or « what for » is a powerful weapon for identifying weak points in an action plan.
It’s also an amazing way to be more customer centric.
Think in terms of whether something you do gets the company closer to or farther from the goal it want to reach.
Put yourself in the shoes of your customers and find out "why" they do what they do.
You’ll learn what motivates them, why they’re interested, and their values and beliefs.
The “why” arises from the most primitive part of our brain, where we have our natural instincts.
This is exactly what Cambridge Analytica and the OCEAN model tapped into.
In the end, the algorithm created psychological profiles of 230 million Americans… That’s about 2/3 of the US population.
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Source:
https://exploringyourmind.com/simon-sineks-golden-circle/
https://brand24.com/blog/the-future-of-marketing/
https://simonsinek.com/product/share-the-golden-circle-presenter-slides-and-notes/
https://simonsinek.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/The-Golden-Circle.pdf
https://www.toolshero.com/leadership/golden-circle-simon-sinek/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMOlfsR7SMQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wb8KpHqU5tg
Understanding “why” people do what they do is an essential role of any marketer.
My encounter with Christopher Wylie was a turning point in my career.
I interviewed him in front of 1,5000 marketers at the Marketing Festival in Prague, two years ago.
I dug up all I could about the story – watched hours and hours of testimonials, read everything I could.
I met the guy. Eccentric. Suffers from an attention deficit. Gay. Bullied. School drop-out. Later completed a PhD related to fashion trends in London and a master in political management in Washington. The guy is clearly brilliant.
I met him face to face. Alone. For 45 minutes in a small back-stage room.
I can guarantee you there are other Chris and Cambridge Analytica out there.
I coached agencies where the culture was a hot bed of unscrupulous marketing.
I was offered to work on projects where data would be used to abuse.
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More info:
The Great Hack https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4736550/
Mindf*ck: https://amzn.to/3s2XGKG
Source:
https://heavy.com/news/2018/03/christopher-wylie-whistleblower-facebook-cambridge-analytica/
He told me he was afraid of the consequences of what he had created and and regrated it… he spoke like Dr. Frankenstein who lost control of his monster!
It’s great he’s blown the whistle on this, but he blew the whistle on his own evil actions.
[click]
The interview went so fast I couldn’t ask him what really bogged me after my research.
Did he really blow the whistle because he had some sudden remorse, or was it because an investigative journalist from The Guardian hassled him for a year and was about to go public anyway?
[click]
Check the documentary “The Great Hack” or read Wylie’s own account in his book, “Mindfuck”.
I think those should be mandatory for anyone in marketing.
I’ll grant you it’s amplified and sensational – but it’s representative of today’s digital marketing.
I could go on an on to tell you about this story.
How Cambridge Analytica came to life as a subsidiary of a company specialized in election disruption – with experience in Nigeria which turned to murder.
How they worked with the US Defence Department and used the language of warfare to explain their marketing practice.
Where the money was coming from – far-right Breitbart and links to Trump, but also the work they did for a strange Russian company called Lukoil – a known façade in the espionage world.
I already showed you how ad targeting worked with the OCEAN model.
Let’s look at another kind of example.
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More info:
The Great Hack https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4736550/
Mindf*ck: https://amzn.to/3s2XGKG
Source:
https://heavy.com/news/2018/03/christopher-wylie-whistleblower-facebook-cambridge-analytica/
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/17/cambridge-academic-trawling-facebook-had-links-to-russian-university
Who likes the Nike brand? Or maybe you are more inclined toward Adidas, or you simply don’t care.
[click]
Who doesn’t like chocolate?
What’s the relation between the brands KitKat and Nike?
I have no clue, but Cambridge Analytica, while financed by the US Defense Department to conduct a research for the CIA, found those who liked both of those brands at a tendency to be more anti-Israel.
That’s what the data said – and this is one of the dangers of Big Data and machine learning.
This kind of conclusion fuels the greatest fallacy of marketing: assuming correlation means causation.
One of the things Wylie told me is “If you want to change politics you first have to change culture”…
… and brands are a reflection of culture.
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Source:
https://washingtonmonthly.com/2018/03/19/politics-is-downstream-from-culture/
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2018/03/26/dawn-psychographic-outcome-based-warfare/
Remember the 4 E’s a talked about: Engagement, Experience, Exclusivity and Emotion.
According to Havas, a brand can be defined by 13 attributes grouped under Functional, Personal and Collective benefits.
Does it deliver the expected product or service?
Does it improve people’s lives?
Does it positively improve society?
As a marketer, those are the levers you can use to influence your audience and the 4 E’s.
Still with me?
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Source:
https://www.meaningful-brands.com/en/our-study
Ultimately, it’s about choices.
The choices your customers will make.
But also the choices you will make and the actions you will take throughout your career.
Let’s do one last quick poll, this time, I’m curious to know what you think will have the greatest impact on your career and the future of marketing.
The future of marketing is not about technology, Big Data, machine learning and artificial intelligence.
It’s not about social media or a magical app.
The future might not be what some big marketing agencies or solution vendors are luring you to embrace.
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Source
Photo by Dan Asaki on Unsplash
Honestly. The future is about YOU!
It’s about your skills and the choices you’ll make.
Every year, The World Economic Forum looks at the Future of Work and identifies the skills of the future.
We can break them down into:
Self-management
Problem solving
Technology use & development
And Working with people
Let’s look at each of them in more details.
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Source:
https://www.lesaffaires.com/blogues/olivier-schmouker/quels-talents-vous-faudra-t-il-cultiver-en-2021/621680
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/10/top-10-work-skills-of-tomorrow-how-long-it-takes-to-learn-them/
Self-management is pretty interesting, it suggests
Active learning and learning strategies – so if you thought you were done once you’ve got your diploma, think agai… I’ve been learning for the past 37 years and I will never stop
Resillience, stress tolerance and flexibility – well… can I just say « pandemic »!
I would also add my own grain of salt here: your sense of ethics will play a huge role in how you shape your future. When you do something, the easiest ethical test is to ask yourself « What would my mother think of it? » or later on, « What would my daughter or son think of it? »
Next comes the bulk of what you’ll do on a daily basis:
Critical thinking and analysis
Analytcal thinkig and innovation
Complex problem solving
Those skills exercises the left-side of your brain, the logical side of things. But there’s also plenty of room for the right-side, the more artistic and creative side of things, with:
Creativity, originality and initiative
Reasoning and ideation
And lastly, we have technology, which is broken down into:
Technology use, monitoring and control
Technology design and programming
As a marketer, it doesn’t necessarily means you’ll need to understand how to actually code – but programming skills come into play when you want to do marketing automation and want to logically sequence a series of reactions following specigfic user actions. If you want to go into data science, then, of course, you’ll need those skills.
Under « Working with people » they suggest « leadership and social influence »
But I would also add « Communication skills »
Your analytical thinking or problem solving skills won't get you very far unless you can comunicate the outcome of your findings.
In conclusion, I think what matters the most, regardless of the program you’re in or the specific classes you attend, are the problem solving, critical thinking, communication skills and the other I mentioned.
Like me, maybe in 40 years from now, you will look back and realize the passion for your work will open unexpected doors and get you anywhere you want.
Thank you!
Visit my website and follow me on LinkedIn and Medium!