Going in Circles

Yeah, something like this:

The marketer expressed frustration.

• "Leadership wants us to do something different. Leadership wants us to be innovative. And every time we try to innovate Leadership tells us that the plan is set for 'Holiday', that we can't make any changes. Which is always a joke because we can change our Cyber Monday email at 7:30am on Cyber Monday after seeing what our competition is offering. Then we get through 'Holiday' and we can't change Spring/Summer because the assortment is set and we can't mess up inventory levels. Then we can't change 'Holiday' because, well, you know. We just keep going in circles."

Yeah, there's a lot of people out there going in circles. We've all worked for companies that count miles traveled and not distance covered. You could drive 500 miles from Indianapolis to Minoqua, Wisconsin ... or you could circle the 2.5 mile track in Indianapolis 200 times and end up in the same place you started. Either way you drive 500 miles.

I spend considerable time these days thinking about the next five years, especially as it pertains to marketing professionals. Seriously, what the heck is going to happen when the vendor community realizes they don't need employees because AI can execute and optimize campaigns? Search / Social become low-cost automated processes out of necessity, allowing them to temporarily compete with the AI platforms that will replace them. 

Seriously, what happens when a AI-infused Shopify clone arrives, trading prospects between hosted brands, optimizing campaigns, automatically triggering messages to Gliebers Dresses customers because within the e-commerce platform a customer bought from Betty's Boutique? All automated, out of your control. All of this wasteful human interaction ... replaced ... by a server farm being cooled by water from Lake Michigan? We're driving in circles ... while other brands make significant progress.

The past twenty-five years saw battles for customers waged between Alphabet / Meta. Dollars flowed out of our budget into their war chest. Smaller companies embraced community and the Shopify ecosystem.

The next five years will see an AI-inspired replacement of the Shopify ecosystem ... a great big AI-Mall with AI cross-marketing each brand to each other to grow each brand within the AI-Mall. Where the modern marketer falls in this transition is to be determined, but early returns suggest a significant transformation of how we work is on the horizon.