There will always be a human in the loop, unless we are urged to forget it….

There’s a recurring narrative in discussions about artificial intelligence that evokes a shiver of inevitability: “AI won’t take your job, but someone who knows how to use AI will.”

It’s not so much a warning about automation as it is a reminder of agency—who wields it, and how.

Strip away the silicon, the algorithms, and the data centers, and you find that behind every automated decision, every “neutral” technological leap, is a profoundly human hand, directing its course, choosing its applications, and defining its consequences.

Yet we’re remarkably eager to forget this.

Technology has a seductive quality—it promises objectivity, precision, and an escape from the messiness of human subjectivity. AI, in particular, embodies the perfection of deterministic thinking. It abstracts away the biases, emotions, and inefficiencies of human decision-making—or so we like to believe.

In our rush to delegate responsibility to machines, we create the illusion of neutrality. But the reality is far messier. The loop—the system of decisions and consequences—remains entirely within the human domain.

And that’s where the real danger lies: not in the machines themselves, but in our willingness to forget the humans who made them, who wield them, and who shape the outcomes.

The Hidden Human in Other Loops

This isn’t unique to AI. Throughout history, the most powerful institutions have often operated under the guise of impartiality. Religion, politics, and technology—all have been framed as forces unto themselves, as though their impacts were intrinsic and not directed by people. Consider these reimaginings:

• Religion won’t take your spirituality, but someone who knows how to use religion will.
  Doctrine, like code, can be written with precision but interpreted with human bias. What begins as a quest for meaning and transcendence becomes a tool of control when wielded with cunning.

• Politics won’t take your agency or adulterate your patriotism, but someone who knows how to use politics will.
  Systems of governance are designed to serve, but history shows they are most often used to manipulate, centralize power, and obscure accountability. The structure may remain, but the intent is always human.

• Technology won’t take your humanity, but someone who knows how to use technology will.
  Whether it’s the assembly line or the algorithm, every invention amplifies human potential—for creation or destruction, for equality or exploitation.

In each of these, the common thread is the human in the loop. The tools themselves are not neutral; their creation, deployment, and ultimate use reflect the motives, ethics, and worldview of the people behind them.

The Danger of Forgetting Ourselves

When we consciously remove or conveniently forget that humanity exists in every loop, we surrender not just our control but our reflection. In doing so, we often justify great harm under the guise of progress or efficiency. Consider the implications:

• When we tell ourselves that AI decisions are “objective,” we obscure the biases baked into their training data and perpetuate systemic inequities.

• When we frame political dysfunction as the fault of “the system,” we excuse the actions of those perpetuating it.

• When we view religion as a static, unchanging truth, we fail to hold its interpreters accountable for weaponizing belief.

This forgetting is not always accidental. Often, it’s the point. To obscure human agency in the loop is to absolve responsibility and justify power. The greatest trick of modern systems—technological, political, or otherwise—is convincing us they operate independently of the humans driving them. But this is a dangerous abdication of our role as both creators and participants.

Remembering the Loop

So what’s the antidote? Reflection. Accountability. An insistence on keeping the human visible in every loop we create or inhabit. This isn’t just about recognizing that AI was designed by humans, trained on human data, and used for human purposes. It’s about understanding that every tool we wield reflects who we are, what we value, and what we aspire to.

The question is not whether AI (or religion, or politics) will take something from us. The question is how we choose to engage with the humans who wield them. Will we empower those who seek fairness, justice, and empathy? Or will we allow these loops to be dominated by those who exploit them for control, division, or profit?

The loop has always been human. To forget this is to forget ourselves. But to remember it—deeply, consistently, and with purpose—might just be the way we make it through, together.

In an era where technology is supposed to connect us, it seems we’re becoming experts at avoiding the very thing that makes us human: honest, hard conversations.

The rise of AI, particularly tools like ChatGPT, has handed us a powerful crutch. But instead of using it to stride confidently toward growth, many of us are leaning on it to limp past discomfort. This isn’t simply a trend—it’s a problem we won’t know we have until it’s too late.

Lemme break a few things down….

The New CYA: Camouflage Your Abilities

AI has become the ultimate “fake it ’til you make it” enabler. The tools are so accessible and convincing that many of us are outsourcing not just tasks but actual expertise.

I recently heard about a marketing hire who was “GPTing” everything. From emails to campaign strategy, their approach to the job was essentially prompt-and-go. The results were predictably mediocre. Only when the company hired someone with actual marketing chops, who asked a few simple questions, did the façade crumble into redundancy.

This incident isn’t an outlier, it’s a cautionary tale. Aside from the best-in-class power users of AI, the gen pop will gladly do as little as possible when interfacing with any technology. For the gen-pop, AI is amplifying the risk of scaled incompetence, where people coast on tech until the cracks become too big to ignore.

The problem isn’t the tech itself; it’s how we’re using it to avoid the messy, necessary work of learning, questioning, and—brace yourself—admitting what we don’t know.

Prompting in Private: The Silent Killer of Collaboration

AI is marketed to be akin to wizardry. The illusion feels so complete that we start believing we’ve got the answers all by ourselves.

Why ask a coworker for help when ChatGPT is ready 24/7? Why risk looking clueless in a meeting when you can privately Google your way to competence?

For me, it’s the aspect of privatized prompting in AI which fosters and internalizes a false sense of expertise.

AI isn’t a specialized consultant; it’s a predictive generalist that’s only as good as your input. If you don’t know marketing strategy, constraints, anything about the desired audience, regulatory or financial considerations for specialized industries, no prompt in the world will generate a campaign that wows your clients.

But when you prompt in private, you bypass the opportunity for feedback, collaboration, and—critically—growth. You’re left in what is essentially a personalized predictive panopticon: a closed loop of half-baked ideas you personally cooked up that feel safe because they’re unchallenged.

Hard Conversations: The Cost of Avoidance

At the heart of this issue is our collective avoidance of hard conversations. Whether it’s asking for feedback, admitting you don’t know something, or challenging a flawed idea, these moments require vulnerability. And vulnerability is in short supply when you can just click “Generate Response” and move on.

The AI-driven workplace isn’t just failing to spark curiosity, it actively suppresses it, not because the tech isn’t powerful, but because we’re afraid to look dumb. With all the world’s knowledge seemingly at our fingertips, there’s no excuse for public-facing ignorance—at least that’s what we tell ourselves.

But here’s a stone cold fact: you’ve got to be dumb to get smart. Growth demands humility, curiosity, and the courage to admit what you don’t know, not just in private, but in public and professional settings.

Box-Checking Employees Can’t Think Outside The Box?

The problem extends beyond individuals to organizations. If your hiring process values checkbox qualifications over genuine curiosity and expertise, don’t be shocked when you end up with a box-check employee. AI might help these hires “show up,” but it doesn’t teach them to “know up.”

Knowing up means using AI not as a substitute for knowledge but as a springboard for deeper understanding. It requires a mindset shift—from “How can I look competent?” to “How can I actually become competent?” And that shift starts with hard, self-reflective conversations—both with yourself and with your team.

From Prompt to Purpose: Rethinking Our Relationship with AI

AI is a tool, not a tutor. Its value lies not in doing the work for us but in helping us do the work better. That means:

1. Admitting What You Don’t Know
   Before you start prompting, ask yourself: Do I actually understand the problem I’m trying to solve? If not, seek guidance from people—not just machines.
   

2. Turning Private Prompts into Public Conversations
   Share your AI-generated outputs with colleagues. Invite feedback. Use the technology as a starting point, not the final word.
   

3. Prioritizing Growth Over Appearance
   Stop using AI to camouflage your abilities. Instead, use it to illuminate gaps in your knowledge and address them.
   

4. Hiring for Curiosity, Not Just Credentials
   Look for people who are eager to learn, not just those who can check the right boxes. AI can’t replace a growth mindset.

AI isn’t the enemy of progress. It’s the mirror reflecting our flaws. If we’re too afraid to admit ignorance, too proud to ask for help, and too reliant on tech to do the heavy lifting, we’re not just failing to connect with others—we’re failing ourselves.

Let’s stop using AI as a shield and start using it as a catalyst. Because the real magic of this “wizard tech” isn’t that it can do everything. It’s that it can inspire us to do better—if we’re willing to have the hard conversations that matter.

“How do you decide when to replace your car?”

In the early 80s, computer scientist Stuart Dreyfus was at RAND working with the US government and big businesses on formal models of optimal decision-making. During those days of the infancy of operations research and digital computers, the average person at a cocktail party had not heard that machines could think, learn, and create. In social situations where Stuart had to explain his work, he favored an example of the decisions behind buying a new car.

Stuart told people they could use a computer to estimate the costs of operating an aging car and the cost of buying a new one; throw in other factors like reliable performance, deprecation, and the pleasure derived from ownership; weigh all those factors appropriately; and let the computer determine the most desirable sequence of decisions to replace.

One night, he was asked if his explanation was how HE comes to make the decision to replace a car.

“Of course not,” Stuart replied without hesitation. “That was only an example of how to use the formal procedure. Buying a new car is much too important to be left to a mathematical model. I mull it over for awhile, and buy a new car when it feels right.”

The next morning Stuart began to reflect. How could he tell generals, businessmen, and policy-makers that they should use a decision-making technique that he himself wouldn’t use in his own personal life?

Hunches and intuitions, and even systematic illusions, are the very core of expert-decision making, so whether one seeks to use a digital computer to model heuristic rules behind actual problem solving, or whether one tries to find optimal algorithms, the result fails to capture the insight and ability of the expert decision maker.

While operations research had successes in modeling operational problems in the military and industry, that is no reason to believe that the same mathematical modeling techniques can tell experienced generals what military strategies are optimal, or business executives whether to diversify their companies.

Problems involving deep understanding built up on the basis of vast experience will not yield – as do simple, well-defined problems that exist in isolation from much of human experience – to formal mathematical or computer analysis.

—- from “Mind Over Machine” by Hubert & Stuart Dreyfus

“The failure to see direct experience as the irreducible wellspring of knowledge is precisely the Blind Spot”

This might be the first book to be burned by scientists and lovers of empiricism, famous for not burning books, because of how heretical it’s claims, uh, claim to be. Count me in this shocked group. 

With years advocating for scientific methods, working as an educator in the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, and believing in the power of objective/critical thinking handed down from Plato and Socrates, I felt like a naughty dilettante as I read through the author’s explanation that empirical science has both expanded, and drastically curtailed, human flourishing.

How can that be?

Well – it’s a simple irrefutable truth – there is no objective view from nowhere. 

It’s tempting to think that science gives us a God’s-eye view of reality, an observational window into the innermost workings of the universe itself, but thinking there is such a view absent of subjective, direct experience is not only misleading, it’s impossible.

The book claims that the “blind spot” of scientism has resulted in a sharp neglect and discrediting of human experience; and this neglect has had drastic effects. 

To define the perils of the blind spot, we have to define where it came from, how it developed, and what a possible eyes-wide-open alternative blending of rationalism with reason might look like in the future.

SOCRATES & PLATO WERE DICKS

The book starts with a portrayal of the birth of the blind spot, with Socrates and Plato, the original philosophical wedges in between the real world humans experience and something else called “reality.”  

As a longtime fan of philosophy, platonic solids, and the socratic method, it’s shocking to hear that Socrates and Plato, the founders of the philosophical and scientific traditions, were kinda dicks. And the reason for it was their belief in “logic” 

Nietchze referred to Plato and Socrates as the world’s first “degenerates” – why?

The answer is their development of something now called FORMALISM and REDUCTIONISM – which mean, respectively, that the world is made up of many forms, and can be fully, logically explained and understood by breaking down, or reducing anything into composite parts. This is the birth of “the blind spot”.

Plato/Socrates believed in an abstract “more real” reality, which Nietzsche found to be self-defeating. Nietzsche argued against the concrete existence of abstracts, and urged us to embrace the material world more fully.

Socrates hated the irrationality of music, thought poetry was banal and writers of it should be excommunicated. He once said that if you translate poetry into prose, you can see poets aren’t saying much. So send them to an island? Ouch.

The main takeaway is they kicked off this “other than” relationship between objective reality and the subjective experience of it. Seen through the left brain/right brain lens of Ian McGilchrist, Socrates and Plato were heavily into left brain thinking, breaking everything down into parts, calculating, machine-like, not embodied, but empirical. 

This grew into the modern philosophical and scientific belief that the primary level of reality is the measurable, objectifiable, quantifiable WHAT of existence, and the ineffable, subjective, and qualitative HOW we experience existence through, is a secondary phenomena, and to some, an illusion all together. 

THE SCIENCE IS COMING

The book then leaps into the Enlightenment, and all the science that kicked off during this time. The establishment of empirical, testable, methods helped jump start massively great things. But again, this entrenched the Blind Spot into the Western world even more.

A causality of empiricism is the thinking that primary processes (atoms/cells/forces) are concrete reality, and secondary phenomena (feeling/experience) is window dressing. When the blind spot really digs in, is when something called surreptitious substitution happens, when we replace our experienced world for the empirical one.

“In the development of the modern scientific worldview, the abstract and idealized representation of nature in mathematical physics is covertly substituted for the concrete real world, the world we perceive. The perceptual world is demoted to the status of mere subjective appearance, while the universe of mathematical physics is promoted to the status of objective reality. Thus according to this way of thinking, temperature or the average kinetic energy of atoms or molecules is what’s objectively real, but the feelings of hot and cold are mere subjective appearances.” 

Galileo’s frictionless plane, Newton’s absolute time, the Bohr model of the atom with a dense nucleus surrounded by electrons in quantized orbits, and evolutionary-biological models of totally isolated populations – these are idealized representations that came from and exist in the minds of scientists. They are not concrete realities in the natural world we live in.

“The predictive models of physics work mostly inside walls – the walls of a lab, a particle detector, a large thermos, a battery casing. In other words, the models work in places what we can control and shield from outside influences and where we can precisely arrange the conditions to fit the models.”

This is where I struggled a bit – it isn’t that these models of scientific thinking are MADE UP, but that they were created by the subjective understanding and experiencing of things by these scientists, and then replicated in tightly controlled, easily measurable, laboratory workshops – but in the real world, these things are in such a dynamic and complicated web of systems, the lab findings rarely match up with life, so rather than cop to that reality, we break off into more abstractions.

“A loaded and unnecessary metaphysical assumption about what the world is like outside the range of our ability to construct and test predictive models. The assumption is that how things behave in tightly controlled and manufactured environments should be our guide to how things behave in uncontrolled and unfabricated settings.”

So, the TL;DR is:

Real: objectivity, planes, atoms, genes, math, statistics
Illusion: subjectivity, experience, reality, life, existence 

This is our modern approach to the world, and it’s messing us up….because it seeks to remove us (the understanders) from understanding.

Here’s where the Blind Spot hits our modern problems and touches on our fervor with consciousness in AI. We are trying to measure consciousness in humans, to then map it onto AI, but we cannot do this without using our consciousness or our subjective experience.

“There is no way to step outside of consciousness and measure it against something else. Everything we investigate, including consciousness and it’s relation to the brain, resides within the horizon of consciousness.”

THE ANSWER

The way forward is to accept that through an over-reliance on science and measurability, we have been substituting our ability to map out our experiences of the world, for the world itself. We have to develop a world-view that views life as a huge, dynamic, non-linear, insanely complex network that can be reduced to parts to understand functions, but these small patches of clarity cannot be bubbled up to explain the entire web.

“We’re authors of the scientific narrative, and we’re characters within it. As authors, we create science. As characters in the narrative we’re a miniscule part of the immense cosmos. This is how we must portray ourselves as creators of the scientific narrative. There is no way to take ourselves out of the story and tell it from a God’s-eye perspective. Instead of saying that science is a means for rising above the great, strange mystery of being human, a better story is that science takes us deeper into that mystery, revealing new ways to experience it, delight in it, and most of all value it. By leaving behind the Blind Spot, we can properly understand the crucial importance of objectivity as a means for public knowledge without transforming it into a dubious ontology.”

PICK UP THE BOOK – https://a.co/d/6edWUje

A quick review of Hubert & Stuart Dreyfus 1988 book on AI

The 1988 book, “Mind Over Machine,” covers the capabilities and limitations of computers in mimicking human intelligence and decision-making. A central theme in the book is skepticism towards the ability of computers to replicate higher-level human cognitive functions. Dreyfus argues that human expertise embodies a kind of knowledge and skill that goes beyond formalized rules and logical reasoning, reaching into the realm of intuition and subtle judgment that machines are unable to replicate.

Stages of Expertise

Dreyfus outlines five stages through which individuals progress to develop expertise in any field:

Novice:

Beginners follow strict rules and guidelines for performing tasks. Their actions are heavily context-independent because they have not yet experienced enough of the real-world scenarios to make nuanced judgments. This stage is where instruction is most rule-based and rigid.

Advanced Beginner:

At this stage, individuals can recognize certain contextual elements and start to apply rules in specific situations. However, their understanding is still limited, and they often need assistance when problems are more complex.

Competence:

Competent individuals have gained more experience and can devise plans when handling large amounts of information. They can see actions in terms of long-term goals and begin to prioritize which aspects of a situation are most important.

Proficiency:

Proficient practitioners have developed a deeper background in the field, allowing them to intuitively understand what needs to be done in various situations based on their vast experience. They may struggle to verbalize their reasoning because much of their knowledge is tacit.

Expertise:

At the highest level, experts no longer rely on rules, guidelines, or maxims. They have an intuitive grasp of situations based on a deep, implicit understanding. Experts know what needs to be done, often without conscious consideration of alternatives. They see problems and solutions holistically.

Transition from Rule-Based Learning to Expert Intuition

The transition from rule-based learning (novice) to expert intuition (expertise) is marked by a shift from reliance on predetermined, abstract rules to an intuitive, often unconscious understanding of complex situations. As expertise develops, reliance on conscious analytical reasoning decreases, and individuals begin to operate more on instinct and deeply ingrained knowledge. This expertise allows for quick, effective decisions that are difficult to articulate but are based on a rich understanding of what typically works.

His story about Air Force instructor pilots is worth sharing….

Dreyfus argues that human expertise is fundamentally different from and superior to the capabilities of computers. While machines can excel in applying predefined rules across vast datasets — surpassing even skilled humans in speed and accuracy — they lack the ability to make the intuitive leaps or understand the deeper meaning that comes from real-world experience and human understanding.

Calculative rationality actual fixes thinking in the advanced beginner stage, because it’s engineered to work with numbers/patterns/statistics. At a certain point of fluency based on lived experience, human expertise escapes these confines.

In “Mind Over Machine,” Dreyfus makes a compelling case for the unique aspects of human cognition and expertise, highlighting the limitations of computers in areas that require nuanced judgment and a sophisticated sense of context. This discussion raises important considerations about the role of artificial intelligence in society and the fields where human expertise will remain indispensable.

Quick review of “Master and Emissary” by Ian McGilchrist

Since you can’t throw a rock without hitting AI these days, I’ve been reading a ton lately on regular old human “intelligence” and one book really got my noodle cooking, so I’m gonna share for the class….

This book was a sea-change event for me. Main takeaways – the brain has two different methods for engaging the world, and they are associated with the big crease in your brain which separates, and connects, the left and right hemispheres.

THE RIGHT BRAIN – is the holistic, Gestalt, big picture, irrational side of thinking. Prefers living things, is associated with understanding themes and context, poetry, metaphor, music.

THE LEFT BRAIN – is the detail-oriented, calculative, procedural, rational side of thinking. Prefers inanimate objects and machines, associated with content and particulars, prose, numbers, and abstraction.

What was a main theme of the book is how we need both sides of the brain to pull off human intelligence, taking in the world as a whole (right brain) then processing details (left brain) then sending it all back to the right brain for intuition/understanding/knowledge. We need and use the whole brain to live in the real world. However, dopamine connections between the hemispheres, when mixed with dominant engagement with a specific hemisphere, can end up rewiring a brain to prefer one side over the other. The emissary overpowers the master.

This happens because the way we attend to the world, creates the world. McGilchrist summarizes this in a pithy manner; “The world appearing as shit doesn’t cause a person to become depressed, but rather depression causes the world to appear shitty.”

“Things change according to the stance we adopt towards them, the types of attention we pay to them, the disposition we hold in relation to them.”

Our search for defining what processes and computations are involved in human intelligence/consciousness, misses how we do it. We are obsessed with defining consciousness as something apart from us, when it is in fact, us.

“The fundamental problem in explaining the experience of consciousness is that there is nothing else remotely like it to compare it with: it is itself the ground of all experience. There is nothing else which has the ‘inwardness’ that consciousness has.”

“We are not sure, and could never be sure, if mind, or even body, is a thing at all. Mind has the characteristics of a process more than a thing: a becoming, a way of being, more than an entity. Every individual mind is a process of interaction with whatever it is that exists apart from ourselves according to its own private history.” 

One of the most compelling arguments in the book is that we shape the world to fit our dominant way of thinking, which coincides with a preferred hemisphere.

The Renaissance was associated with the right hemisphere, and the industrial revolution with the left. And since that time, we have shaped and conformed our physical/social realities and financial/organizational systems to be in line with the left hemisphere, resulting in industrialized populations that have little choice but to prefer rationality, machines, logic, and straight lines. 

We are increasingly existing in a left-hemisphere dominant world, where everything needs to be broken apart, objectified, calculated, correlated with value creation, unambiguous, and predictable through probabilities. The world can, and must, be broken down and understood through the parts.

And yet we LIVE in a subjective world with no straight lines, within complex, dynamic systems, filled with ambiguity, randomness, and holistic interaction. The world needs to be understood in a way that mirrors our lived experience of it; as a whole, and not just outputs of calculated processes.

The answer is to recalibrate our understanding of how human excellence and natural intelligence is defined, protect areas where cross-hemispheric cooperation (the only way human brains work in the real world) is exalted, and to bring the creative right hemisphere, and it’s resultant world-view and manner of engagement, up in stature with the calculating left, and blend/bake-in the two inseparable approaches into our societies and infrastructures.

Imagine living and interacting with technology and advertisements, in a world where EVERYTHING is personalized – it’s all about YOU!

Books, devices, billboards, search engines, display ads, your thermostat, your home computer – all of them are constantly speaking about you, talking to you specifically – everything is about you, your choices, your purchases, your habits – it’s all about YOU!!

Now, imagine living in a world where technology and advertising is impersonal, a world where everything is NOT ABOUT YOU!

All of the content and advertisements you interact with are static – the messages and delivery of marketed communications happen to everyone around you equally at the same time. There is a general absorption level of content across a wide social spectrum. Society interacts with mass media, and that symbiotic relationship inspires both to change and evolve together.

Now – envision the psychological differences between citizens living in the first society, versus citizens living in the second society. . . 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Two Schools of Advertising

Of course I am being reductionist here, but I think advertising can be segmented into two schools of thought –

1) –  Hyper-personalized ads – powered by Big Data amassed from customer surveillance –  Ads are able to follow customers wherever they go; on their fridge, in their phones, in their car, on their desktops, on their kid’s faces, on all the billboards they pass.

2) – Mass media – powered by impressions, communicating through shared values on larger scales, interacting with and inspiring popular culture on a societal level. Advertising aims to get groups of people talking to one another about a common, shared experience. The public square – the big billboard – the SuperBowl Commercial – the water cooler.

Modern marketers use a mixture of both of these approaches when it comes to advertising, but more and more our culture and society is embracing the first school – hyper personalized experiences, big data science, surveillance.

Could hyper-personalization and heavy curation of advertising environments to the individual level, endanger our society, our culture, our ideological mobility?

What happens to the individuals living in a society that depends economically on its citizens living in a hyper-personalized world? Does this reinforce our echo-chambers, our egos, our narcissism?

What are the psychological ramifications of living a commercial existence that is shaped and tailored to fit your every need, understand your desires, predict your behaviors?

The quest for personalized advertising underlies the shift from “us” thinking, to “me” mentality. We all lament the death rattle of community and the loss of common ground, but some of us are commoditizing that divorce.

People are more likely to like/engage an ad where they feel they’ll be a part of something bigger than them, a trend wave. But if all the ads we see are personalized, then it’s just a myriad of small waves which don’t add up to one huge wave; it’s just ripples.

As marketers, do we question what kind of society we are creating when we adopt the latest technology, advertising philosophies, or market research capabilities?

Do we recognize the important and powerful effect advertising has on shaping people, on shaping culture? What will we lose when we abandon thinking about advertising, marketing and business development on a social level?

What kind of consumers are we creating?

What world do you want to live in?

Is there a socially responsible way to market products and services, develop sound business strategies, and create valuable, meaningful advertisements – without having to monitor and collect everyone’s search engine history, credit card purchases, wearable analytics, social media posts/reactions/shares, private messages, emails, voting records, chats, thermostat usage, medical history, psychological profile, media consumption, driving habits and bathroom usage?

What do you think?

— originally written Oct. 18, 2017

An ancient marketer answers modern marketing questions

HOST – About ten days ago, a plane landed at Denver International Airport. The plane came from the cradle of civilization, the Middle East, bearing a marketer who claims to be over 2,000 years old. He’s spent the last six days in a marketing hospital. He’s here with us today to discuss the past, the present, and the future of marketing.

Direct Response

2,000 Year Old Marketer – Most marketers are ashamed to admit that a ton of “direct response advertising” in the past, was done with swords. Conversion rates go up when you pull a sword out.

HOST – I would imagine so. Any other ancient advice about direct response for the modern audience?

2kM – If you really want to study hard selling conversion tactics, take a look at the Spanish Inquisition….(stunned silence in audience)

HOST – That is considered a human rights atrocity now, you realize?

2kM – Sure, even back then it was atrocious, but the conversion rates were un-Godly.

HOST – That’s barbaric, we aren’t like that anymore, conversions are figurative, not religious or forced through violence.

2kM – So do marketers do any blood sacrifices?

HOST – No.

2kM – Blood letting?

HOST – Definitely not.

2kM – Alchemy, magic?

HOST – No, no, there’s no magic at all in marketing today.

2kM – Well, maybe that’s the problem?

Organic Social

HOST – How do we know you’re a 2,000 years old marketer?

2kM – Because I’ve been waiting that long to make a sale off organic social.

Account Based Marketing

HOST – What is your thoughts on account based marketing

2kM – I think every marketer should be able to count.

HOST – No, no, account, like a –

2kM – Like a duke or a lord, right? A count.

HOST – No, listen – account based marketing is a type of marketing that deals only with certain accounts or groupings of prospective customers.

2kM – What makes one group more special than others?

HOST – High value accounts, well, these are men of means, they are prepared to do business, they wear a certain type of clothing, drive a certain type of…horse.

2kM – Why wouldn’t you sell to everyone?

HOST – To save resources, you only want to be visible to and directly engage with those that have the most means. Not everyone in the market is prepared to buy, so why bother shouting at everyone all day?

2kM – That day. But what about the next, and the days and weeks after that?

HOST – Only the worthy accounts need to hear our message; they will see us as the right choice for qualified buyers, and respond to our calls when we make them.

2kM – How will they recognize your message or anticipate the worth of your offerings, if they’ve never heard of you?

Attention

HOST – So what was marketing like 2,000 years ago?

2kM – It was a lot more in your face.

HOST – How?

2kM – Attention. In the ancient marketplaces, the art of grabbing and holding attention was a respected part of the trade. Marketers today are struggling with this.

HOST – Well naturally, there is too much content out there, attention is fractured across channels. Pinning down the audience is a mess. 

2kM – Isn’t this where all your data lakes and warehouses kick in?

HOST – I suppose they should, but it’s not that easy.

2kM – Don’t you have performance data on what types of messages absolutely work? Your computers should have the formula for grabbing and holding attention?

HOST – We use data for different purposes. Marketers don’t have to be in your face, bold and brash; in fact, this is a waste of time if you aren’t selling to people who will buy today. We use data to respect the larger audience, make rational promises only to engaged personas with targeted messaging that speaks to the sensible parts of people and causes a direct response we can measure. Data increases our chances of success.

2kM – No, over-interpretation of data increases self-awareness and limits attention grabbing potential. Because of all the “performance data” modern marketers are too shrewd and keen to avoid scrutiny and a spotlight, so attention becomes unachievable and unfortunately seen as a liability really smart people avoid. So marketers mint less copper into the clang of the bell, thin the fonts on the sign, mumble in the corner, and “hate to be a bother, oh by the way” until sundown….

HOST – Marketers today don’t need to get everyone’s attention. We don’t need to be appealing to anyone else other than the people that match our in-market target profile. Data again increases our chance of success. We reach them with rational messaging that gets a response. 

2kM – Marketers today want to be rationalized, more than they want to be remembered. Maybe data is to blame, but that’s a strawman argument, which was originally called a scarecrow argument, but we changed it in the 200’s because of Pope Zephrinyus, who was woke AF. 

HOST – So is the secret to getting attention shamelessness? You just wear loud colors, clang a bell, and use large type and active language on your signs? People prefer not to do business with clowns.

2kM – How is Ronald McDonald doing, anyway?

HOST – Ha! I suppose pretty well. But most of us don’t sell hamburgers. We sell extremely complicated things that require a ton of content creation and consumer research.

2kM – Can you put all that complicated stuff into a jingle? Something peppy?

HOST – I’m afraid the marketplace has changed. People don’t pay proper attention like they used to.

2kM – These are the same researchers you just spoke of? Maybe marketers stopped valuing the audience’s attention properly?

HOST – I think many folks just want to skip the nonsense and get to the point of things. A lot of old advertising trickery is just creative flim flam and easily dismissable. People want to know what’s in it for them, nothing more. 

2kM – Think about it this way – there are only a few ways to rationalize the benefits of a product, but there are a million ways to irrationalize the benefits. If the marketplace is as competitive as you say it is, and consumers are as distracted as you say they are, wouldn’t rational promises be the LAST thing a marketer would choose to shout out? It’s obvious what software or soap is supposed to do; but what does it make you feel like, what associations does it conjur, what invisible magic can you bring out of the irrational, illogical realms – that’s the sticking point. That’s your differentiation, distinction, the memorable way you grab and hold attention. 

Influencers

HOST – Let’s talk about influencers.

2kM – Guzuntight!

HOST – No, influential people, celebrities, well known people

2kM – Oh, sure sure – Typhoid Mary, Caligula, Machiavelli, Genghis Khan

HOST – Well, not so much those types of figures, less menacing…

2kM – Caligula was a great entertainer. That barge. If you remember being on Caligula’s party barge, you weren’t on Caligula’s party barge. 

HOST – Ah, so were there any local merchants during Caligula’s time, that made it their goal to get their wine, honey, plain cake on the boat? To be seen on Caligula’s boat must be a noteworthy achievement?

2kM – Buddy, when you’re five papyrus’ to the wind, taking a ram’s horn up the back in a public orgy, you’re not really taking notes.

HOST – Point…taken.

2kM – Literally. For me, the problem with influencers, is the imbalance of interest. Caligula’s influence and interest matters more than any product or brand on his Pleasure Boat. It’s never “what’s the product?” it’s always, “what does Caligula think?” There is almost an influential force field emanating from Caligula that blocks a clear recognition of the products.

HOST – So then what about celebrity endorsements?

2kM – An advertisement featuring a celebrity endorsement is better than using an influencer.

HOST – Aren’t these just the same thing as influencers, only less effective because the addressable audience is so large because everyone knows them?

2kM – That’s the exact reason celebrity endorsement may be more effective than influencers. There’s less distraction.

HOST – Less brands to compete with?

2kM – No, less dildos flying about – remember, this is Caligula’s Party Boat – the influence may cut deep, but anything that happens on that orgy boat is not shareable or useful outside the orgy boat.

HOST – Surely there is some overlap – what we do in private can influence our public behavior.

2kM – For you maybe, for everyone else it’s a matter of signaling that they are keeping up with The Jones, which, having been alive this long, I met the original Jones’, lovely people.

HOST – Back to influencers and the orgy boat, I mean pleasure craft.

2kM – With influencers, the addressable audience is comparing itself to desires and decisions made by, in this case, one horny dude on a pleasure craft that is literally cut off from land, from reality. There is so much emphasis put on the influencer’s opinion and thoughts, that there is no room for anyone else to think for themselves, let alone think intently about a brand or product.

HOST – The audience is waiting to like something, or hate something, because of Caligula’s outsized influence on their reality. 

2kM – Exactly. Endorsement is effective not because we see a vaunted figure behave one way, or use one product, it’s because we see an audience of “other people like us” engage in a particular way in society and shared spaces. This is culture. This is how influence in a marketplace works.

Personalization

HOST – Let’s talk about personalization. 

2kM – I don’t like to monogram anything, feels too Henry the 8th, you know? You really want to keep your head about that stuff.

HOST –  Not you personally, but other people’s, persons – making marketing personalized to individuals, this is possible now with computers, you know?

2kM – Really?

HOST – Oh sure – You can track who buys a product, you can find out where they live, you can gain access to their habits, net worth, and daily routines.

2kM – Ok?

HOST – You can send thousands of people personalized communication wherever and whenever you want.

2kM – Wow. 

HOST – Even better, once you can keep tabs on every customer you have, you can make them happy and address their needs at an individual level.

2kM – This sounds crazy.

HOST – Craziest part – Once you know them, they know you know them, so they never leave, and will always repurchase and buy more from you. You don’t have to spend money finding new customers. You can surprise and delight them at every unique turn in their life long journey.

2kM – So no more advertising needed?

HOST – Well, not really, but essentially…yeah! It’s exciting. 

2kM – And how do you keep track of all the information and preferences of these customers?

HOST – That’s called data, and it’s all kept in something called a CRM tool – Customer Relationship Management – it’s a computer.

2kM – A computer? Some kinda astrolabe?

HOST – Yes, no. A high powered piece of software and probably some people to run it.

2kM – Sounds like it involves elves. Right? So – Imagine traveling back to a busy ancient marketplace in Mesopotamia…

HOST – I can smell the spices!

2kM – Right – and in order to sell effectively to people, we’d have to track them, put stickers on everyone who buys,

HOST – A great idea!

2kM – Sure. We also have to know where they live, what they do, what they like, and surprise and delight them whenever they show up at my stall, and, even at their house, unwanted, especially on Black Friday?

HOST – Yes. It sounds like a ton of intrusive work, but if you had the information, there would be no other competitor, they would always choose you.

2kM – What if someone rolls into the market with my product, but at a crazy lower price?

HOST – You can offer incentives and discounts to match for certain customers that seem like they might try the competitor, but the real loyal ones will stay with you.

2kM – Why is that?

HOST – Because of the personal touch, you are at the top of their mind and your product is deemed superior.

2kM – If we followed everyone around with stickers and specials and monogrammed sweaters, did we spend all our time and energy on making our product better for every customer, and even future customers? 

HOST – Well, I suppose it doesn’t really matter what future customers think, as long as the customers you currently have love you, that’s all you need. 

2kM – I dated Cleopatra for a while, and believe me – Just because they love you and they let you call them by their first name, doesn’t mean you’re irreplaceable. Incidentally, Cleopatra’s first name was Patty. Patty Cleopatra. 
HOST – That’s odd. 

2kM – What’s weirder is this – I told this same personalization scheme to Jesus while he was writing the Bible!

HOST – Oh, sure!

2kM – I’m serious. Back when Jesus had the first draft done he handed it to me and said, “take a look, tell me what you think?” And I read it and, my God does he talk about himself a ton! It’s just his name everywhere. So I asked Jesus, “what’s the point of this book?” And he says, “I wanna start a religion.” So I tell him, “if you want people to pay attention and be loyal, you gotta put their name in this book.“

HOST – Well, actually, I don’t think that’s how that would work.

2kM – What do you mean? I told Jesus, “Hey man, you’re the hero here, but listen – Rather than share a single version of the Bible, you personalize the story for the congregation, replace your name with every congregation member, and hand out individualized Bibles! There would be no way to secure more loyalty and faith.”

HOST – Besides this idea feeling sacrilegious, what you’re describing is just not how people get inspired by stories or any kind of content.

2kM – What do you mean?

HOST – The personal connection people make with loyalty inspiring content, doesn’t come from a story that features us directly; it’s much more powerful to craft an impersonal story with indirect features the audience can see themselves in.

2kM – Oh…that makes sense….so what were you saying about personalization?

Profitability

HOST – How do we know you’re really a 2,000 year old marketer?

2kM – I’m still waiting for Hubspot to turn a profit. 

USP (Unique Selling Proposition)

HOST – Yessir, a lot has changed in marketing in the last 2,000 years. ROI, USP, LTV

2kM – OMG, LOL, love the abbreviations. 

HOST – No, no, no – those are acronyms, Return on Investment, Unique Selling Proposition –

2kM – Now there is a silly idea.

HOST – Which one?

2kM – You see – you had to ask! Unique Selling Proposition. What is it?

HOST – It’s a widely accepted theory, made famous by Rosser Reeves building off Claude Hopkins, that in order to command a marketplace of common goods, a competitive brand should establish a unique selling proposition in the minds of the consumers, something distinct.

2kM – We tell people what to think?

HOST – Indirectly. People are precious about their individual routines, prefer unique things, handcrafted for them particularly.

2kM – Lemme ask you a question about cowboys – what was their favorite drink?

HOST – Well, I suppose it would be whiskey, some kind of hard liquor. 

2kM – You’d be right. And now, think back to the late 1880s, Dodge City, Kansas – a chaotic atmosphere, literally the Wild West. Now, how many saloons serving whiskey do you think they had in this small town, of less than a thousand people?

HOST – Probably one or two?

2kM – There were six. And each of them had the same whiskey on tap. Why were there so many saloons selling the same whiskey?

HOST – Well here is an example of a failure to develop a USP – if one of these establishments sought to corner the whiskey, and be the best in town, the competitors would have to scramble for different spirits, try to establish their own USP. It’s a good thing really. Diversifies the marketplace.

2kM – But these cowboys aren’t developing a taste for Moscow Mules or pina coladas – they want whiskey. They want the whiskey the other cowboys are drinking. And there are six saloons because of the natural churn rate of customers – saloons lose and gain bar flies from each other, they are 86’d and then welcomed back in a cycle across the establishments, and the fact that they can get the same whiskey here, as over there, keeps them in the town, and in the seat, and in market.

HOST – So what is the lesson?

2kM – Thinking a USP is the key to a successful product that customers love, misses the reality of why customers are in a marketplace to begin with. There can be MANY of the same types of establishments, and the fact that they are COMMON is the reason why they are FREQUENTED – Consumers, people, everyone loves to NOT THINK and would rather make decisions accordingly. What if a Common Selling Proposition is more appealing than a Unique one?

Fame / The Crowd Is In Control

2kM – It’s amazing hearing about the future, but I’m glad that certain fundamentals don’t change. 

HOST – Like what?

2kM – Like fame. Marketers still think being famous is important…right?

HOST – I think it’s become more scientific, thankfully because of all the information we have access to – marketers and consumers behave differently now, they do the research on which product or brand to choose. Consumers are more savvy than ever.

2kM – Ok then – If everyone does their own research, then there should be hundreds of distinct brands in the top of every category, based on the fact that one consumer’s research and experience is not homogeneous with another, and people seek to have their individual needs addressed. Right?

HOST – Kind of. The marketplace is much bigger, but there are still dominant brands.

2kM – Why is that?

HOST – Because a conglomerate or a huge brand can outspend, outadvertise, and outshelf competing brands.

2kM – Then why don’t they buy up ALL the shelf space? Why leave any room?

HOST – I suppose to leave room for options?

2kM – Do you think that’s a choice they make?

HOST – Then it’s a question of stamina.

2kM – A functioning marketplace has consumer-side dynamics that can’t be 100% dominated by conglomerates. Consumers may be in control, not as savvy researchers, but as an easily distractible force unto themselves, looking for what others are looking for – the human is a social animal, when in crowds or communities, we have a logic that inspires individuals to make choices that align with peripheral vision, not direct line of sight. We gravitate towards things we recognize, not things we rationalize.

HOST – In a way I suppose that’s true, but it still doesn’t explain fame, or category domination by one brand.

2kM – Then reverse the question – does everyone choose a dominant brand because they rationalize it and research it?

HOST – No. They choose it because it’s there.

2kM – And, they choose it because they don’t have to rationalize it. They’ve seen it before, it’s recognizable in their mind. We parse the present moment’s decisions through our memories, not via an actuary table that calculates the odds of an improved future version of ourselves.

HOST – I think I get it – if the marketplace was a brain, the goal is to be in easy-recall memory, not in their analytical brain?

2kM – Precisely. This is why fame and recognition amongst crowds can cut into conglomerations. This is something marketers were taught 2,000 years ago, because some of the first really effective advertising came out of China, from a guy that played the hell out of the bamboo flute, sold a ton of candy because of it. Great jingles. And this was 3,000 years ago.

HOST – This is all well and good, but marketers today have to do a lot more than stand up and play a flute to be noticed. 

2kM – But didn’t we agree that the goal is to be recognized, not noticed. 

HOST – Yeah, what’s the difference? The crowd is distracted either way.

2kM – I thought you said they were savvy? Why don’t we throw some research on them? Surely, they’ll notice a really good webinar? Look, the point isn’t fame – fame has it’s roots in rumor and report, reputation & recognition among the commoners. This is where creativity is a distinction, in messaging, in price, in product, in placement. If you focus on generating fame and memorability, you may find doors opening more easily and more often. If you focus on generating a ton of convincing research, you may find your doors closing sooner than you’d like.

Efficiency VS Effectiveness

2kM– Things are so different these days, but marketers still have to deal with werewolves, right?

HOST – Well, not really, werewolves aren’t real – one of the benefits of science and history is that we can gather facts and so we’ve proven werewolves are just a myth.

2kM – So marketers don’t believe in myths anymore?

HOST – No – we have to report on things with metrics, strategize and be data-driven. Marketing is too expensive to rely on myths, so we have tactics to focus energy for consistent outcomes. Channel specific campaigns, targeted audiences, personalized cadences, keyword content; none of these are silver bullets, but they might help you kill a werewolf or two, figuratively speaking.

2kM – Why would you want to kill a paying customer?

HOST – It’s just a figure of speech. We quest for silver bullet fixes to make sure and fast work of execution, it’s about optimization, efficiency is the goal.

2kM – But what about effectiveness? What if a marketer’s goal was understanding larger forces at work, how to be effective, not just efficient, on the chosen channels?

HOST – What are you saying? 

2kM – Marketers seem to be always searching for silver bullets, but they’re never interested in the full moon. 

Patience

HOST – I assume you’ve noticed how fast things move in the marketplaces of today, I wonder how that compares to the pace of ancient marketplaces?

2kM – About the same.

HOST – *pfft* Come on now! The internet, telecommunications, peer-2-peer networks, credit and banking, there have been massive improvements to the speed of business. 

2kM – But there hasn’t been improvements in effectiveness, just efficiency.

HOST – Again, I’d disagree. A/B testing technology, for example.

2kM – You have to test the differences between letters now?

HOST – No, between two things, concepts – When you come up with ideas for an ad or a tagline, you used to have to commit to one, and ignore the potential of the unused ideas. With A/B testing you can separate audiences so one group sees tagline A, and another sees tagline B.

2kM – So you say two different things to people at the same time?

HOST – You can test thousands of different iterations. And what’s best is test groups don’t know they are being tested, nor would they ever compare thousands of different messages.

2kM – So the total group lacks a shared experience, on purpose?

HOST – Yes. It’s brilliant, because you take the results and use the winning idea on the next campaign or iteration.

2kM – Why not test it again? Forever?

HOST – You certainly can, but there is a point where you should aim for consistency.

2kM – When is that point? When should you retest the A/B and C D results?

HOST – Well I guess around 6 months?

2kM – So every 6 months, what you say or sell might change appearance and be slightly unrecognizable, and that’s the point?

HOST – In a way, but there still needs to be consistency – testable, iterations, endless optimizations, that’s what is possible these days.

2kM – Right – I knew a lady once, in a marketplace near Cairo, had one sign, one tagline, and never changed it for all of the 50 years. 

HOST – With A/B testing she could’ve improved her performance significantly.

2kM – She was a massive success because she figured out what worked and left things alone. She owned her corner, she commanded her spot, and her presence became a tradition.

HOST – Traditions change, they have to be challenged.

2kM – Says who? The community? Everyday people that perform the rituals and are held together by tradition? They want to change things every 6 months?

HOST – People are drawn to what is new, they ignore things they’ve seen a bunch of times.

2kM – I’d say people are drawn to things they don’t have to consider, tradition establishes this in daily life. Tradition is just a series of unchanged behaviors; the goal of a marketer is to tap into, understand, and become a part of these behaviors. By flip-flopping the messaging and packaging and brand, there is no ACTUAL consistency being perceived by the marketplace, and there is no commitment from the marketer.

HOST – So testing things is bad?

2kM – Not necessarily. Experience and time are their own laboratories, everything gets tested in the end. I think your A/B testing leads to homogeneity, not distinct harmony. There is no style in a lab environment, because the germs aren’t left to marinate on the petri dish; everything is sterile, testable, fungible, uncommitted to and up for debate. If modern marketers practiced patience and consistency as much as they practiced on their campaigns like patients, then patterns and data sets which reveal natural style, strength, and stamina would be easily evident.