A Brief History of Marketing Irrelevance
“I want to know how many of my customers have red hair, drive a convertible, and are left handed.” This was a direct quote from a client back in 2010. The marketing world had become obsessed with data—big data to be precise—and many marketers were dreaming about knowing their customers better. “What would you do with that information?” I asked. An awkward silence followed.
Most of our marketing clients have become data collectors. The systems built to capture, organize, relate, and visualize mountains of consumer information have become an industry. And if we’ve learned one thing from our data hoarding practices, it’s that we understand our customers are unique individuals with different connections to our products and services. But I ask again, what are we doing with that information?
When we launched Banjo—a product that produces automated direct mail from marketing platforms like Salesforce, Hubspot, and Marketo— the plan was to expand the data-driven marketing sophistication promised by these tools to the direct mail channel. Much to our surprise, we discovered that most of these sophisticated tools were being used to send mass, generic, email communications. Even with great data and advanced systems, variable content wasn’t on the table for many marketers.
Searching for Knights on White Horses
Many of us live with marketing systems that are only partially deployed—platforms launched with big expectations created during a product demonstration, but then never realized. Why? Because third party platforms have made it too easy for us. Relevance has become a marketing outsourcing project—buying the sophisticated algorithms of Google, Meta, and TikTok have allowed marketers to place ads directly on the screens of potential and existing customers. It’s been easy, cheap, and effective. And in many ways, it’s prevented progress on internal marketing sophistication. But no good things last forever.
Google and Meta are both offering ad-free experiences for consumers. Meta, whose website once claimed “it’s free, and always will be,” began offering ad-free subscription services in Europe last fall. Google TV and YouTube are both offering subscriptions devoid of advertisements, joining the ranks of X Blue and Snap X. To date, the amount of people paying for the ad-free services on these platforms is minimal. But for behemoth Google, the potential of less ad revenue might be the least of its problems.
Generative AI Will Dominate Search and Destroy the Old Ad Model
I recently experimented with Perplexity AI’s search engine, asking for restaurant recommendations in Alexandria, Virginia. I wanted “a fine dining experience, but with a cool vibe.” I received a beautifully written review of some great restaurants including some signature dishes, but also the reasons people thought they were cool. Doing a similar search on Google gave me a list of paid advertisements, then paid review sites, and finally, some terrible establishments with large SEO budgets. Not a single restaurant identified by Perplexity showed up until page 3. Yes—ad revenue has diminished the effectiveness of Google search; AI platforms will be eating their lunch and dinner. Where will those strained consumer eyeballs head?
Is it time to finish implementing our own marketing systems? All of that data and all of those tools—could we start developing our own algorithm? Our own unique content? We think the answer is yes. Ten years ago, we began working on our donor relations platform, Mythos. Originally, the tool was designed to capture first person “social” narratives related to gift impact. Two years ago, we made a technological breakthrough. We built an engine that could publish thousands of sites—each with relevant content and person-specific analytics—at the touch of a button.
Sites by More Vang
Sites (our name for this new technology) requires data, a relevance strategy, and marketers that understand the differences between their many customers. It utilizes generative AI technology to summarize individualized site content into personalized direct mail and email marketing campaigns. For so many of us, it completes the dream—telling that red haired, left handed, convertible driving client exactly why we’re relevant to them.
Our customers wake up every day expecting relevance from their information sources. It’s time for all our marketing to meet that expectation.
