Marketing is the gold in an AI world?

The crash landing

There was a time where the most important thing to a business was to grow at all costs.

It doesn't matter your final destination.

it doesn't matter how much fuel you were burning.

Getting higher and higher was what mattered.

Generating value to the customers?

Not as important.

I mean…

It was important in a sense that it would help you grow more, grow faster, generate loops and referrals.

But no more important than fast growth.

Fast growth was the output that justified, in most cases, if you were on the right track or not.

There were reasons behind that.

Fuel (money) was (way more) easy to get from investors than compared to "extracting" that from customers and bootstrapping your business.

I've been through this journey…

I've fast grown a business to a size that it should never have achieved, it was exciting and hard but it was also unnatural and rushed (looking back, now).

We delivered the aggressive mission we agreed upon with investors.

And even so… we almost paid the ultimate price after that.

We were getting higher and higher.

Millions of users and dollars going through the platform.

But no revenue stream big enough to accommodate the size of business that we created.

And them?

Fuel stopped getting to the engine.

We turn off one of them.

After some months, another engine.

And then… we started to float in space.

From 100.000 km/h to 0 km/h.

The business suffered heavily but is still alive today.

A lot of other businesses around the globe didn't have the same luck.

The world has changed, just like it changed in the 2000s after the .com bubble.

Money is now harder to get.

No more artificial businesses.

And that 's good.

A new game

We saw a bunch of sustainable businesses surface from the wrecks of the .com bubble explosion.

Business that came to last like Google, Apple, Amazon and Microsoft.

The same will happen now (I believe).

But we have a new module for our spaceships available.

A new upgrade that came to stay and to change how we do things just like the internet and the iPhone did in the past…

… Maybe bigger.

Artificial intelligence.

And what does that mean?

It means that in this new era we will have to adapt (again).

It means that the world is different from what it was back in the .com bubble explosion.

We will need to re-learn and re-adapt to this old game of profitability and efficiency.

But also, we will need to learn and adapt to this new game of artificial intelligence.

Me included.

I'm on this journey right now.

My foundations came from the "growth at all cost" era.

We got very good at mixing trends, best practices and new technologies, blending all of that to generate exponential growth.

There will not be a problem to mix artificial intelligence into this right?

Right.

But how will it work?

How it will impact us exactly?

Some rare things will continue rare… others not.

Gold is rare, super rare.

Only approximately 200,000 tons have been mined throughout human history (the whole!).

Just as a base of comparison per year we extract 20 million tons of copper (that's 100x per year) world-wide.

Copper is not rare.

Gold is.

Simple as that.

Why am I bringing this analogy?

Is just for us to simply understand that even if we are in a world “dominated” by AI (considering that the robots don't overthrow or subjugate us…) some things will continue to be rare and needed.

Water will still be needed.

Fertile lands.

Gold.

Marketing.

Just like gold is rare but is a main reliable component used on spacecraft and satellites to build the whole circuits connecting the hardwares.

Marketing will be a rare and reliable connector.

The enabler of real businesses in this new artificial intelligence era.

Why?

Building products will be easier…

So easy that it will become a commodity.

Thanks to AI, how easy is today to create images, videos, websites, digital products?

We can do things without coding that we never dreamed of before.

And it is just the beginning.

Imagine in 2-5 years.

More products being built will mean more competition.

What this means?

With so many new products been pumped into existence powered by AI.

Differentiation and efficient distribution will be more important than ever.

Just like Peter Thiel has advocated for almost a decade.

The main source of failure for business is distribution, not product.

Connecting with people and making your value prop stand out for them will be more important than ever.

Creating and nurturing an engaged audience will be more important than ever.

That's marketing 101.

Do you see where I'm getting?

Marketing is the new gold in the AI world.

Can AI solve the problems I described above?

The more AI, the more products, more competition and less wallets (sadly).

That's a flywheel for you.

Artificial intelligence flywheel…

The only thing that can make your business stand-out is not more artificial intelligence.

As AI rises it will make the market more competitive and will decrease the amount of wallets.

For business to grow they will need to differentiate, to focus on distribution and on the value delivered.

Is the human side of business.

Is about listening.

Is about understanding.

Is about standing out from the crowd.

Is about meaning and value.

Is about problems and needs.

Is about connecting all of these new things in a way that makes sense… for humans.

Is about… marketing.

Let's embrace and explore these changes, this new era.

Marketing is an asset that will always be in demand.

Is an asset that needs to be adaptable…

Customer behaviors change all the time.

New products emerge all the time.

We need to be flexible.

We need to understand the changes.

We need to understand the clients.

That's where the gold is.

and that's our gold as marketers.

That's the value that we can bring to this new AI world.

A value that we have been generating for ages.

A value that will not change.

Our core value.

Human value.

Thank you for your time.

MM.

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