Marketing Gone Turing’d
Kevin Kelly’s Technium has turned out some great articles of late. His latest tidbit is a little question about the computerization of, well, everything.
We have this long list of tasks and occupations that we humans believe only humans can do. Used to be things like using tools, language, painting, playing chess. Now, one by one they get Turing’d. A computer beats them. Does it better.
So far we’ve can check off arithmetic, spelling, flying planes, playing chess, wiring chips, scheduling tasks, welding, etc. All have been Turing’d.
[Via: The Technium]
At the end, Kevin wonders to the audience what else has been Turing’d (i.e. given over to computers because they are better than we are). I’d like to add Marketing to the list of fields and disciplines that have been Turing’d.
Most of us in the online marketing sphere are well past the idea of marketing on instinct. The medium lends itself quite handily to automation and marketing to algorithms.
The direct marketing world is slowly giving itself over to the same idea. Not that they haven’t been using computers and models for years. In fact, direct marketers are some of the most disciplined adherents to deep testing methods that tweak and adjust the smallest minutiae.
Still, this isn’t quite the same thing as giving it over to the computer entirely. To build models that run without human intervention and sort the massive data sets into personalized (and quantified) offers that are proven to be more effective.
It’s coming, folks. Actually, the best companies are already doing it.
