Automation will make marketing worthless
Since the dawn of civilization people have found ways to market their goods to potential buyers. With the industrial revolution and the expansion of the population, the number of potential goods became larger of the number of potential customers. This led. the companies to an intense competition to prove their products or services. were better than those of their competitors and so modern marketing was born. Marketing has evolved at a rapid pace because technology has become more and more embedded in the lives of consumers, from radio, to television, from the internet to smartphones.
Nowadays, we are on the cusp of a tech-based societal transformation that will be at least as big as that of the Industrial Revolution. This isn’t just machine-driven automation for tedious manual labor. We’re talking about man-made creations that can act at a human level — or even beyond. Basically it’s happening what the genius of Marshall McLuhan predicted in the ‘60 talking about the potential effects of the automation: “Men are suddenly nomadic gatherers of knowledge.” Electric energy creates “patterns of decentralization and diversity in the work to be done” including “self-employment and artistic autonomy” paradoxically “individualizing rather than controlling humankind”. It’s a fair description of what’s become much of the post-Internet workplace; “Automation causes a withdrawal of the present work force… learning itself become the principal kind of production” so “paid learning is already becoming both the dominant employment and the source of new wealth in our society.”
The trend is regarding also the marketing with the adoption of software platforms and technologies designed for marketing departments to target more and more prospects, generate better leads, and about their needs. As there will be powerful analytics that understand what we need in every moment of our life, there will be machines (the evolution of 3D printers) that can create something straight away according to the demands and there will be driverless cars and drones who’ll bring items and take away once they are no longer useful putting them into a process of continuous recycling.
People will have strictly what they need and marketing which can be defined as the branch of knowledge that make you buy what you don’t need will disappear because of its pointlessness. This could lead humankind in two ways: the first one is the happy ending, we’ll be free from the stupid consumerism, machines will free the humans by taking care of their basic needs such as eating and dressing and allowing them to dedicate time to learn, teach, feel the world around and inside us; the second one is the bad ending, where human race will destroy themselves by depending too much on technology and creating a monster that will enslaved it.
Germano Marano is General Manager Italy at Powa Technologies, a leading international commerce specialist focusing on technologies to transform and redefine the retail market. During his 15 year career, Germano has successfully managed 2 startups, overachieving constantly the sales targets and supporting their growth in the high competitive territories under his control. Due to his remarkable experience, Germano is a thought leader in the new technologies trends and retail innovations.