How Marketers and Brand Managers Can Prepare for the Cognitive Era
Written by Pete Sena, August 3rd, 2016
I never realized how much I hate checking my car’s blind spot, until I never had to again.
Something as simple as sensor-aided blind-spot detection has eliminated what was once an everyday part of driving. Changing lanes? Get ready to twist your neck against the headrest and make sure a drivers-ed dropout isn’t cruising next to your quarter panel.
Now there’s a blinking yellow light for that. The next generation of drivers will be bewildered when they hear we actually had to turn our heads. The generation after that will wonder why humans ever drove themselves when machines are so damn good at it.
I may not yet rely on a computer to drive me from Point A to Point B, but I am relying on it to inform what could be a life or death decision. All that stands between me sideswiping into a 3,000-pound vehicle traveling 75 miles per hour is a computer sensor that tells me whether it’s safe to change lanes. For better or worse, I trust the machine.
Sensors are all around us, not just in our cars but in our homes, our phones, our airplanes, our elevators, our workplaces and on our wrists; they are ubiquitous. They protect us, warn us and, in some cases, even inspire us to live better, healthier lives.
But what if our car fails to let us know there is someone in our blind spot? What if we trust too much? What if Tesla’s autopilot feature is found at fault in a fatal May Model S accident on a divided Florida highway?
What ifs aside, one thing is certain — the cognitive era is here and machines will be increasingly trusted to not only collect and analyze data, but help us make our decisions (most of which will be far more complicated than whether a car is in our blind spot or not).
IBM’s CEO Ginni Rometty predicts that in only five years, every crucial business decision will be informed by cognitive systems that understand, learn and augment our decision making.
As marketers, the decisions cognitive computers make for us may not be life or death, but they will have profound effects on how our consumer audience discovers products and makes purchasing decisions. We must learn when to trust the machines (or not) and prepare for the cognitive era.
Originally published at www.digitalsurgeons.com.
