I, CMO, Human...

In this article for Adobe’s Digital Marketing Blog, I touch on some of the key tenants for marketers, and CMOs in particular, in an age of continued marketing automation. When looking for what the key needs are from marketers, we shouldn’t look for those activities that are repetitive or that might take incredible cognitive capabilities at scale, but rather what makes humans differentiated from machine. A CMO can define a brands personality. Marketers can understand empathy and can apply that human characteristic to a customer context. We can understand the emotional resonance of an image or the fluidity and connection that be created through native language. We can bring humanity and compassion to the customer interaction by putting ourselves in the shoes of the customer and thus better understand what they are trying to achieve and their likely motivations and goals. Yes, we necessarily should outsource some marketing cognition to machines. The machines have phenomenal awareness of behaviors and actions at scales they can only achieve. It’s our job to ensure that the connection the machine makes to the customer creates an emotional spark.