You didn’t Choose That Car Or: Why AI is Your Stalkery Best Friend

Words by Johanna Moyano

Of course, the very best native advertising or branding or top of mind associations are so good, so subtle that its like magic, they creep into your day to day life and infect you with desire. I DO need that pore refiner, where has this shop been all my life I WANT TO LIVE HERE, can I even function without my juicer?

Savvy we are not. In fact, we have been carefully pruned, nurtured, guided and ultimately led down a lovely path made of digital crumbs and not so secret desires that we, the super cool digital generation, have given away. Making it rain with our information, preferences and of course ‘likes’ Forbes hit the donkey on the nose quoting Kate Harris when she observed that “Data-driven marketing is a powerful tool, but how that data translates to the customer journey will be paramount in digital marketing success in 2018” Its about the journey man. The journey.

In fact, we have been carefully pruned, nurtured, guided and ultimately led down a lovely path made of digital crumbs and not so secret desires that we, the super cool digital generation, have given away.

As we learned long ago from Fight Club we are NOT unique snowflakes. At least not to brands and super smart services providers. We are, a personality, a profile, person X. “Julie” is 30-35 years old, lives alone, wants children and wants to travel but never does. She also is allergic to cats, is fascinated by true crime and wishes her skin was less splotchy. “Julie” has “researched” all the above to buy the best antihistamine, signed up for a dating app, looked up fertility drop off rates and often watches true crime stories on YouTube.

Julie will begin to get a pop-up ad for a discounted trip through London’s Jack the Ripper City Tour via a Singles and Ready to Mingle blog in 1….2……wait for it…its going to be legend…ary. Here is the secret to the sauce, we, as consumers, don’t seem to mind. Who doesn’t want to ads on exactly the kind of cars we have been researching to come to our attention? Why NOT show me the Top 5 exfoliators for my skin type? We may all be replaced by bots in the future anyway or technology might leap frog client using interfaces with someone like AI darling “Sophia” instead but for now DIGITAL is a king.

If you are not using inbound marketing and all its glory (may we personally suggest React-Digital or Nexa) then you are sadly missing the boat. The age of just using unconnected digital strategies with no service level agreement (SLA) have gone the way of the dodo. No more smoke and mirrors; numbers don’t lie. Julie is looking to buy a turtle and needs travel insurance for her trip around the world. Find Julie, guide her to your blog, and gently provide her with all the information she needs to come find you. Reverse Stalking. Its like, soooo 2018.