Marketing Lesson #1 from My First Boomtime

AI is booming, and a new era of brand building is coming, but let's remember some lessons from the first "digital" boom

(note: Cross-posted this on LinkedIn. Still trying to figure out how to use Substack and Linkedin together)

I am a bit of a home body these days, and the snowy weather made me think twice about leaving the house. But, sometimes it’s fun to go out and talk to other people!! I did leave and I’m glad I got out. I was reminded of how lucky we are in MSP to have so many good professional communities.

I was in the audience last night at a great Minneapolis event hosted by a growing community (called, simply, The Marketers Community; you should join it) with a focus on AI and how marketers are making it work (or not). It was the second time this panel has gotten together, and I sure hope they do another version, with the same panelists, in about 6 months so we can hear and see how usage is evolving.

Sometimes you know you're in the right place, with the right folks, at the right time. The energy felt familiar, a whoosh of positivity, optimism and imagination. Partly because the team behind the event knows how to make a room happen, partly because of the layout of the venue (Heroic Productions in Bloomington) and partly because it’s a great topic that everyone is interested in. Like the recent Applied AI event, this one sure had the same energy of the early MiMA meetups where we were all trying to figure out the early internet. It didn’t seem like work to be at a “work” event!

There was a ton of discussion about how brand leaders are using AI (mainly generative AI, LLM’s) to improve the efficiency and speed of their work. The focus was on their team’s productivity and building out capabilities via training, experiential learning, dog fooding and managed experimentation programs.

Super smart stuff. Seriously. And, impressive examples.

Also, it sort of feels like boomtimes, but no one wants to say it out loud in the middle of the party.

Lesson #1: It’s Still Always about the Buyer

The event got me thinking, as folks of a certain age do, of the early days. It made me realize a lesson from my first boomtime, the rise of the “digital” era. We learned the hard way, after a lot of focus on tech, that it’s ultimately about the users. It always has been, always will be.

We are gaining better tools. We can make and do amazing things at work now. We can be more productive.

But, Heather Boschke asked the right question: What are you going to do with time you save and then she and Mona Askalani answered it for us. “We have to be better humans.”

We should be figuring out how to use the tools to be at our best as human marketers: Listening to the market, gaining unique insights into the minds of our buyers, our users and unspoken or unmet needs. Being creative, distilling insights, making useful and beautiful things.

Lesson #2: Evolve Your Brand To Matching Changing Consumer Expectations

We’re also building brands, and brands themselves are conceptual things, made in the minds of consumers. They are, in some ways, cultural artifacts and, once again, cultural change is accelerating. So, brands will have to evolve.

Consumers use the same tools, and as they adopt the tools, their expectations about how brands work and what brands do will change, too. But, faster than in the “digital” era.

Digital marketing class of 2000: Remember when we used to say that once consumers use Amazon, Apple or Google, they expect every brand to deliver an experience like that?

Marketing and brand building is (and always was) about persuasion, both explicitly (with our copy, slogans, ads, words, etc) and implicitly, in the way brands act (the customer experience, offerings, tools, information, etc).

Most marketers in the early days of the “digital” era took a long time to realize just how much consumer expectations (and behaviors) were shifting as they adopted the new tech. And, as a result, a lot of the early digital brand building looked and seemed like “tv on the internet”. We used the mental models gained from “mass advertising” era to do the same stuff online.

Marketers were watching behavioral changes (e.g. adoption rates of broadband, time spent online, mobile usage) but missed attitudinal shifts, as consumers expected brands to not only put good products on the shelf, but also be “digital”:

• Responsive, almost in real time

• Simple, easy to understand digital experiences to help consumers answer their questions or curiosity

• “Transparent” or at least sort-transparent

• Useful or at least service oriented

• Connected, like a human, to a community of sorts

The key is that consumers expected brands to be like the tech they were using on their browser, their phones, etc. We had to build a different kind of brand, something that stood apart from “Mass” brands that persuaded based on price, promotion or ads.

That’s why you saw a lot of effort to take a different approach to brand building (i.e. modern brands, or purpose-led brands, or digital first or whatever).

What will consumers expect of brands in the AI era? Who knows! It’s too early.

But, It’s going to be different.

There will be great opportunities of course, but it will get a little trickier for a while.

Which leads us back to lesson #1. Follow the consumer.

What’s cool about the MSP marketing community, though, is that folks are always open to sharing, collaborating, and helping each other learn. Whether it’s Marketers Community, MiMA, Emerging Technologies North or InnovateMN, there are groups of folks that are, like you, trying to figure it out. You just gotta leave your house and get connected!