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What have we done to the old gods of digital marketing? A new divinity has just joined the pantheon, and it seems to dominate all business ceremonies: Artificial Intelligence. A new sheriff is in town; it’s official.
After thirty years of honorable service, internet is dead. New ways of browsing information are stealing share of search, mind and ears. Social media are so out of fashion, as people are now surrounded not by friends and influencers, but by agents, who are our new angels and custodians, both at B2C and B2B level. Nobody reads email newsletters, let alone texts, any longer, as voice and AR/VR start to become new means for finding, exploring and discovering the world. Personas and audiences are being replaced by ultra-personalized, dynamic and predictive offers, just for me and you; and we are not equal before the new marketing laws.
The consumer funnel doesn’t start on mobile and doesn’t end up with a purchase anymore, as we will be wearing smart glasses or other smart gear, and reality will appear in front of our eyeballs, literally. Are brands ready to go from 2D to 3D and hybrid funnels? As a matter of fact, buying is equally if not as important as advocacy, affiliation, followership, community membership, and, above all, exchange. Engagement will be more like trading than listening to commercial stories or attention-grabbing ads. What is conversion and return on investment of every media dollar spent in a world taken by storm by Artificial Intelligence? Alphabet and Meta, especially, are re-thinking their businesses, spreading AI across all of their products.
At every product presentation, townhall and newness roadshow, the two giants are slowly and continuously hinting at a future made of hardware and software, where digital blends into physical, and where AI automatically optimizes reality for each one of us. What’s a touchpoint? Or, better, where is it? It doesn’t happen on a digital screen, or not only there. We live in the era of Total Marketing, which is a sort of a new pantheism. Is digital marketing really a thing of the past? Are great American brands (the benchmark of Tier 1 marketing) boiled, as The Economist recently mentioned (May 2025)?
Let’s try to make a bit of sense of what’s happening, in light of the latest moves by the likes of OpenAI, Nvidia, Meta, Alphabet, Microsoft and all the other tech illuminati. What changes and what doesn’t change in today’s marketing? In the end, do we convert our fans, or what should we do when we approach them?
What changes? Speed.
And that’s so good. AI will exponentially boost our ability to craft and serve experiences to our fans, via a new “Marketing of One” way of operating. Traditional testing of landing pages, content, text and images doesn’t need to be done upfront and sequentially, to maximize clicks and other KPIs, but it will be done before, during and after any single interaction, via a continuously improved and improving, co-created messaging, which will touch all 4 P-s of a brand’s mix. The real change: it will be done instantly, in a matter of seconds. It will take place before our eyes. It will be as fluid as a conversation with a good old friend, who knows us too well. Are brands ready to let loose, and especially let AI manage this one-to-one interaction with fans, not to interrupt them, but to serve them where and when needed in their natural, physical and digital, random walks through life? One thing is sure: we will be at the fans’ side efficiently and fast. We can finally personalize at scale and cheaply. Now, what unique and inspiring message are we going to recite, when prompted by people in need?
What doesn’t change? The ultimate why of marketing.
In traditional digital marketing, conversion would turn every touch point into a point of sale, ideally, channeling needs and desires towards a check-out and pay screen. Having to spend less time on producing and finessing content, the big opportunity here is to turn every chance of talking to people not only into a sale window, but also into a point of listening, hearing, knowing, and – hopefully – into a safe space, where fans and brands can co-create a better future for themselves, the broader community and society at large. Marketing used to be a synonymous of service, before 20 years of Private Equity and Venture Capital transformed every business into a P&L, ruled by hard KPIs. We need business acumen and fiscal discipline, and that’s fine. We will have more data than we dared to dream about people and about us, manufacturers and suppliers. It’s up to us, whether we want to turn that into cash, by just selling stuff efficiently and door-to-door, or whether we transform redemption not into dependency, but long-term alliances to create value for all. Isn’t that the ultimate “why” we market our branded products and services with so much pride, and we make them in the first place? Are we ready to be judged by a broader array of KPIs, which include people’s and the world’s welfare, now that we can observe it and measure it? Can a new conversion rate be the rate with which we convert all stakeholders to a more elevated standard of life, at a profit? We now have the tech tool, which is called Artificial Intelligence. Do we want to?
Great brands know something about the world that others don’t see yet. AI will give us speed and knowledge. Brands need to decide how to use these super-powers. And that’s a profoundly human decision. Hopefully hard KPIs will be accompanied by a vision of a better world, which is the ultimate “why” great brands bother with challenging status quo. True conversion is as much about changing fans’ behavior as it is about brands’, stakeholders’ and their enlarged networks’ ability to create and share true value. Let fans and the world convert you, as they buy your swag, Dear Digital and Physical, AI-powered marketing guru.
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