Bharat Bambawale: A robot in the marketing department

The next marketing superman could be a string of code

Science fiction writers have long predicted the arrival of human alternates. Ranging from mostly human to the fully mechanical, with every conceivable permutation in between, the face-off between man and machine has fascinated us for centuries. Frankenstein, Robocop, The Terminator excite and frighten us. Isaac Asimov relieved our anxieties about human-harming robots with his Three Laws of Robotics. Truth is we want our human alternates strong and clever but obedient and benign.

The human alternate has found use in repetitive business roles humans don’t want or are likely to make errors in. They manufacture cars, make medicines, plant and harvest crops, deliver parcels, manage banking. Our world is increasingly automated, programmed, robotised — with our admiring and gratified consent. 

What started in manufacturing and services has arrived in marketing. 

The robot in the marketing department isn’t human in appearance. It is an algorithm. It helps find things, display choices, book orders, ask for feedback, analyse interests and intent to suggest alternatives. It serves desire-creating messages to us based on who we are, where we are and what we want to be. It feeds our avarice, oniomania and hedonism, as much as it feeds off these. It is growing globally, including in India, where people-dependent service is notoriously unreliable and automation facilitates scale. 

To global business owners, such as Google, Amazon, Mercedes and Kraft, wouldn’t having robots managing their brands in different parts of the world be attractive? Upgrades and new versions of products would be distributed globally from a single source! 

With techie-created algorithms creating and managing demand, where does that leave the present day marketer? What will become of our wordsmiths, image crafters, deal negotiators and social media manipulators?  

The marketing tribe — seasoned warriors with many notches on their belt, as well as young bravehearts waiting to scoop their first one — will insist their profession is equal parts science and art. The science is about measurable aspects, such as sales, product development and media and about data-led decisions. The art is all about intuition and flair that directs non-numerical aspects such as design and aesthetics. The marketing cocktail isn’t complete, let alone delectable, in the absence of either. There is deftness to marketing, an adaptability to bend and weave to a customer’s rhythm, an instinct to 

pitch emotion when logic is running out or vice versa. In short, there can be no marketing without people. Period. 

But, is that as absolute a truth as we would like to believe?

Historian Yuval Noah Harari in his book, Homo Deus, writes about humanism as a form of religion that worships humankind. It puts mankind and its desires at top priority in the world while basing itself as the dominant being. Looking ahead to the next century, Harari predicts a universe where dataism becomes the paradigm and technology holds a threat over humankind. Harari postulates that man’s relevance could depend on the ability of humankind to give meaning to its life under these new conditions, while prophesying the coming replacement of humankind with a super man, with supernatural abilities like eternal life.

Harari’s superman — as an expanding, improving and intelligent algorithm — is on his way to the marketing department, if not there already. Isn’t it therefore, possible that in the near future, we have an algorithm from Google competing with one from Amazon for the title of Marketer of the Year?

Bharat Bambawale, Brand consultant and founder Bharat Bambawale & Associates