Thinks 1298

Author of “Accelerating India’s Development: A State-led Roadmap for Effective Governance” Karthik Muralidharan: “The core motivation for writing the book was the recognition that across education, healthcare, welfare etc., the common issue we face is weakness in governance. When we say state capacity we broadly mean the capacity of the state to successfully achieve tasks and goals assigned to it through the political process. We have a lot of discussions in India about policy priorities. Like should the government focus on infrastructure or health or education? We want it to do everything, but what we don’t ask is how will the government actually do it? Does it have the capacity to do it? And why is the translation of budget into outcomes so weak? India has a lot to be proud of as the world’s fastest-growing large economy, with macroeconomic stability. But there are also deep challenges and weaknesses, including issues in education, health, or child development, police, courts, welfare, jobs etc. What I argue is that the biggest obstacle to meeting these challenges is the effectiveness of the government machinery itself. Until you systematically invest in strengthening the capacity of the Indian state, we will not be able to reach our full potential as a country.” More from Alex Tabarrok.

ET: “Kota, a city in Rajasthan, has emerged as a magnet for aspiring students across India, particularly those preparing for competitive exams like JEE and NEET. Known for its coaching institutes that offer structured and rigorous training, Kota has become synonymous with academic excellence and success in entrance examinations. Thousands of students flock to this city every year, driven by the promise of realising their dreams of becoming engineers and doctors…Kota’s coaching institutes offer extensive support beyond academics. In 2023, approximately 250,000 students received coaching in Kota, with more than 85,000 new admissions by May. The city accommodates these students with around 4,200 hostels, 25,000 PG rooms, and numerous one-bedroom apartments, which are rented by parents and guardians.”

Ruchir Sharma on his new book: “I think what I argue in the book today is the fact that the system we currently have in place in America is not really capitalism as it was meant to be. It is a very distorted form of capitalism. It is what Bernie Sanders and all called socialism for the rich. What I try and say is that it is not just socialism for the rich but socialization of risk. When risk has been socialized, the role of government has also increased. Whether it’s regulation, or the way the US Federal Reserve manages the business cycle, all that has changed so dramatically now that this is no longer anything close to the capitalist system that the founders once had in mind…In America, right up until the 1970s, capitalism was working. And America has had a democracy for over two centuries. This disaffection with capitalism that’s taken place in America is really something which is a phenomenon of the last two or three decades. This is a cynicism that has come only in the recent past. But this is not how America used to be.”

Andy Kessler: “The fade has begun. AI is being dial-toned, hidden behind apps and devices, or eventually to some new efficient interface. Twenty dollars a month for ChatGPT-4o doesn’t pay for all those Nvidia chips. New products, markets and business models are needed, much as PCs spawned desktop publishing and expanded investment banking. And smartphones enabled Uber. Something’s got to pay for the dial-toned technology. As AI grows more productive and disappears, the less interesting it becomes as an investment. Current hot AI stocks will have to grow into their hype. Remember, it took Microsoft more than 15 years to reach new highs after the dot-com mania. Investors will start looking for even cooler new things: Customer-service systems that don’t have us screaming “Operator!” Digital twin assistants to sit on Zoom calls. Automatic software coders. Your car as a robotaxi when you’re not using it. Loneliness-reducing companions for seniors. Robot factory workers. They’re all coming. Enter your wish list when you hear the dial tone.”

Email’s New Triad: AMPs, Epps, Ads (Part 2)

AMPs (Email 2.0)

AMP in email is a groundbreaking innovation that is transforming the way brands engage with their customers. By enabling interactivity and real-time content within the email itself, AMP emails (shortened to AMPs) are setting a new standard for customer experience.

One of the primary benefits of AMP in email is its ability to facilitate interactivity directly within the email. Traditionally, emails have been static, with limited engagement opportunities confined to clicking through to external websites or apps. AMP changes this paradigm by allowing users to interact with various elements within the email itself. For instance, users can now browse product catalogs, complete forms, RSVP to events, and even make purchases without ever leaving their inbox.

This interactivity reduces friction in the customer journey, making it easier for recipients to engage with the content. As a result, brands can expect higher engagement rates and better conversion outcomes. The ability to interact directly within the email streamlines the process for users, eliminating the need for multiple steps and providing a more seamless experience.

Another significant advantage of AMP in email is the delivery of real-time content. Traditional emails are static, and their content remains the same once they are sent. With AMP, the content can be dynamically updated each time the email is opened. This means that users always see the most current information, whether it’s the latest news, updated product prices, or new offers.

Real-time content ensures that emails remain relevant and valuable to recipients. For example, a retailer can send an email featuring a flash sale, and the products displayed will reflect the current stock levels and prices. This capability keeps the email content fresh and engaging, encouraging users to open the emails multiple times and interact with the latest updates.

The interactivity and real-time capabilities of AMP in email provide brands with enhanced metrics and analytics. Traditional email metrics such as open rates and click-through rates offer limited insights into user engagement. However, with AMP, brands can track a wider range of interactions within the email, such as form submissions, carousel interactions, and in-email purchases.

To summarise: AMPs make for a better customer experience by making emails more interactive, personalised, and relevant. By allowing users to engage with content directly within the email and providing real-time updates, AMPs reduce friction and enhance the overall user experience.

Additional Reading:

Thinks 1297

Kelly Clancy: “In the late 18th century, the German mathematician Johann Hellwig determined to put military realism back into the game by inventing a new variant, which he called Kriegsspiel. As the first modern “war game,” Kriegsspiel helped military theorists make explicit the conditions of battle and gain new perspectives on war. To this day, all major militaries still use some form of Kriegsspiel-style simulation to inform their decisions. U.S. federal agencies run game simulations on scenarios ranging from disaster relief to nuclear war. While hobby groups play a simplified version of Kriegsspiel in person and online, the game also evolved into more familiar forms. It inspired tabletop games like Dungeons & Dragons and Warhammer, and its mechanics were adopted as the bedrock for role-playing and combat-based videogames. Hellwig’s game replaced the traditional chess pieces, representing outmoded military units like knights, with modern pieces such as artillery. Instead of the king, players aimed to capture a fixed fortification. To mimic a real battlefield, Hellwig expanded the board to 1,617 squares, each color-coded to indicate different terrains. Over time, new variations added features that would become standard in war simulations, such as using dice to determine an attack’s damage, reintroducing the noisiness of reality into chess’s composed strategy.”

Michael Munger: “Perhaps the easiest way to explain government failure in one lesson is to remember that there is no such thing as “the state.” Instead, essential decisions about resource use will be made by political actors. This suggests what I have called “The Munger Test.” If someone says, “I believe that government should make decisions about what information is true in an emergency, and what should be censored!”, then you should make a simple suggestion: Take out the word “government,” and replace it with “Trump” (or “Biden,” I’m not making a partisan point). See if the person still believes their argument, with that amendment. They probably won’t. That’s the “one lesson”: government is made up of people, using a process of discovery — voting or bureaucracy — that fails compared to an imaginary standard of omniscience and benevolence. In truth, results are rarely so bad in private life that government meddling can’t make things much worse.”

David Brooks: “Great accomplishment is the marriage of ability and interest. The latter is what T.S. Eliot once called “the trilling wire in the blood.” It’s the vital spark that makes people passionately curious about a subject, that makes them determined and relentless, that causes them to say to themselves: I’m going to figure this out, no matter what it takes. The people who contribute most aren’t worrying about how smart they are; they are focused on continual improvement, compounding what they learn day by day…When you look at who really achieves great things, you notice that most of them were not prodigies. They didn’t wow people at age 18, but over the course of their adulthood they found some deep interest in something, and they achieved mastery. Many of society’s great contributors didn’t have an easily identifiable extraordinary ability; they had the right mixture of slight advantages and character traits that came together in the right way.”

McKinsey’s State of the Consumer 2024. One of the trends: “By 2030, 75 percent of consumers in emerging markets will be between the ages of 15 and 34. Our data indicates these consumers may be optimistic about the economy and willing to spend. Among this group, young consumers aged 18 to 24 in Asian and Middle Eastern nations, such as India and Saudi Arabia, will be particularly important to consumer businesses, given their pent-up demand and willingness to spend. These consumers indicate a strong desire to spend on premium products, so much so that they are up to two times more likely to trade up—meaning opt for higher-priced brands and retailers—than young consumers in advanced economies. They are also up to three times more optimistic about their respective economies. This optimism could translate into higher levels of future consumption. It’s worth noting that young consumers in Latin America are actually less likely to trade up than young consumers in other emerging economies.”

Email’s New Triad: AMPs, Epps, Ads (Part 1)

Staying Power

A topic I have written extensively about is how email is changing. In this short essay, I will summarise my previous writings and distill the essence of what’s driving this transformation. While some marketers believe that email has no future compared to newer channels like WhatsApp, RCS, and app push notifications, I firmly believe that email has an even brighter future, especially with the innovations companies like Netcore are bringing to the market. There is no other push and interactive channel with the price-performance ratio of email. The question marketers should be asking is not “Why is email not delivering?” but “Why is email not delivering for me?”

The future of email revolves around three key innovations I have discussed in recent writings: AMPs, Epps, and Ads. AMP emails (Email 2.0, as I have termed it) are interactive and dynamic, allowing engagement and conversion to happen within the email itself, eliminating the need for clickthroughs to landing pages or apps and thereby reducing friction. Epp (Email App, which can be thought of as Email 3.0) involves building fully functional apps within the email, serving as an alternative to websites and mobile apps. Action Ads are a new format where the landing page is embedded within the ad, improving outcomes. The foundational technology for all three is AMP, a standard endorsed by Google and Yahoo.

While AMP has been around for many years, its potential has not been fully harnessed. It is the biggest innovation in email in the past 15 years. Just as AI promises to transform PCs and smartphones, AMP is already starting to transform the email experience. The combination of AMP with gamification through Atomic Rewards and hyper-personalisation via AI will create completely new experiences within email.

A couple points to note: Email is also universally accessible and does not require additional app downloads, making it a versatile and far-reaching medium for all demographics. AMP emails offer better data privacy and security compared to other channels, which is increasingly important in the current digital landscape.

When smartphones launched, the first generation of brand properties were mobile versions of desktop websites. Then came mobile apps built natively for mobile. Similarly, the first generation of AMP emails brought landing page functionality into the email. The next generation of Epps will bring full apps within the email. Combine this with the ability to “star” emails in the inbox, and a whole new world emerges. The same email can now update itself every time it is opened, presenting real-time news, stock quotes, sports scores, and new microcontent with each open. Developers will be limited only by their imagination in crafting self-contained Epps that eliminate friction in our lives.

On the monetisation front, ads in email have not largely limited to newsletters sent by media companies. This is about to change. Action Ads in emails will create a new revenue stream for list owners (ecommerce companies, publishers, writers). These ads, which can factor in identity (email address) and process payments, can create new business models around email. Instead of CPM-based pricing, emails could conceivably become free (“ZeroCPM”) with revenue sharing between the list owner and the email service provider.

In short, big changes are coming to email. It is going to be an “industry reset” because the impact will ripple across multiple adjacent industries, from other CPaaS channels to digital advertising. Tens of billions of dollars can shift to the email ecosystem, saving brands and advertisers many times more. Just as Marketing’s AI triad (Large Customer Models, Digital Twins, and Co-Marketer) promises a complete transformation of customer engagement, Email’s new triad of AMPs, Epps, and Ads will disrupt customer communications. Together, they will address the two biggest profit drivers in marketing: anticipating intent and influencing actions. Agentic AI and Channels 2.0 (led by Email 2.0 and 3.0) will solve the problems of persuasion and personalisation at scale and the creation of EnCoRe (engagement, conversion, and retention) hotlines. Together, they will power the Profipoly Quest for pioneering businesses.

Thinks 1296

Cohere CEO Aidan Gomez: “We build models and we make them available for enterprises. We’re not trying to do something like a ChatGPT competitor. What we’re trying to build is a platform that lets enterprises adopt this technology. We’re really pushing on two fronts. The first is: okay, we just got to the state where computers can understand language. They can speak to us now. That should mean that pretty much every computational system, every single product that we’ve built, we can refactor it to have that interface and to allow humans to interact with it through their language. We want to help industry adopt this tech and implement language as an interface into all of their products. That’s the first one. It’s very external-facing for these companies. The second one is internally facing, and it’s productivity. I think it’s becoming clear that we’re entering into a new Industrial Revolution that, instead of taking physical labor off the backs of humanity, is focused on taking intellectual labor. These models are smart. They can do complicated work that requires reasoning, deep understanding, access to a lot of data and information, which is what a lot of humans do today in work. We can take that labor, and we can put it on these models and make organizations dramatically more productive. Those are the two things that we’re trying to accomplish.”

WSJ: “More CIOs are reporting directly to their chief executives, rather than chief financial officers, a reflection of the role’s increased importance in helping set corporate AI strategies to keep up with the competition. CIOs have traditionally managed information-technology systems like data centers, cloud computing and business software, but must also now modernize IT and data systems to take advantage of generative AI—or even set the AI game plan. That’s giving them a bigger share of responsibility for business leadership. “They’re putting more and more on the shoulders of that human being,” said Rob Zelinka, CIO of financial technology firm Jack Henry & Associates. “That person is probably responsible for their data strategy, their AI strategy, the technology strategy.””

Donald Boudreaux: “Think of a supermarket as an anthill. And think of yourself — a customer of that supermarket — as a queen ant. Everyday countless worker ants scurry around the surface of the earth in search of food and other goods to bring to you for your sustenance and convenience. How do the workers know what to bring? Market prices! Each of the hundreds of millions of individuals who exerted some effort to make possible the bounty that now resides in your favorite supermarket had to be accurately informed about what to do to make his or her contribution, and sufficiently motivated to do it. Just as actual ants follow pheromones to lead them to sources of food to bring back to the colony, entrepreneurs and workers follow market prices to direct their efforts that result in food and other goods being brought to supermarkets. Like each individual ant, no entrepreneur or worker does what he or she does as a self-sacrifice to the group. The ant is programmed by nature to follow pheromones in a way that causes that little creature’s efforts to be coordinated with those of his fellow ants to support a thriving colony that no ant designed and is of such complexity that no ant could possibly comprehend it.”

WSJ: “Mr. [Yuval] Levin has a gift for drawing readers’ attention to realities that should have been obvious but weren’t. He does that in his latest book, “American Covenant,” which was published [recently]. The argument could be put this way: The U.S. Constitution was written to bring together a fractious and disunited nation, so if we’re looking for ways to bring together a fractious and disunited nation, maybe we should consider the U.S. Constitution…“The breakdown of political culture in our day,” he observes in the book, “is not a function of our having forgotten how to agree with each other but of our having forgotten how to disagree constructively.” The framers of the Constitution, he argues, were aware of the dangers both of centralized power and of democracy: They had fought an imperious king a decade before, and in the intervening years they had lived through a democracy so disunited that it fell apart. What they fashioned in 1787 was neither a monarchy nor a libertarian compact but a system whose stability and cohesion arose precisely from the guarantee that its citizens would be forced to deal with each other constantly—always negotiating, competing and forming coalitions.”

Marketing’s AI Triad: Large Customer Model, Digital Twins, Co-Marketer (Part 8)

AI Inputs

I asked ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini to list the following:

  • 3 marketing breakthroughs – what will be possible in the future that is not possible today
  • 3 additional ways tomorrow’s AI can improve marketing
  • 3 coming innovations in marketing that I have missed

ChatGPT

3 Marketing Breakthroughs

  1. Hyper-Personalized Interactions: The integration of AI-powered Singular Twins enables hyper-personalized customer interactions at an unprecedented scale. This level of personalization ensures that every communication is tailored to the individual’s preferences and behaviors, significantly enhancing engagement and conversion rates.
  2. Predictive Customer Engagement: With the advanced predictive capabilities of the Large Customer Model (LCM), marketers can anticipate customer needs and behaviors before they happen. This allows for proactive engagement strategies, ensuring that marketing efforts are always one step ahead of customer expectations.
  3. Real-Time Campaign Optimization: The Co-Marketer’s ability to continuously analyze data in real-time and provide optimization suggestions ensures that marketing campaigns are always aligned with the latest insights. This real-time adjustment capability enhances the effectiveness and efficiency of marketing strategies, leading to better ROI.

3 Additional Ways Tomorrow’s AI Can Improve Marketing

  1. Dynamic Content Creation: AI can autonomously create and personalize content based on individual customer data. This includes generating custom messages, designing creative assets, and producing tailored marketing materials for different channels, ensuring relevance and engagement.
  2. Enhanced Customer Journey Mapping: By leveraging Digital Twins, AI can map out and optimize the entire customer journey, identifying pain points and opportunities for improvement. This holistic view ensures a seamless and engaging experience for customers across all touchpoints.
  3. Advanced Sentiment Analysis: AI’s capability to perform deep sentiment analysis on social media interactions and customer feedback can provide valuable insights into customer opinions and emotions. This helps marketers tailor their strategies to address customer concerns and capitalize on positive sentiments.

3 Coming Innovations in Marketing

  1. Voice-Activated Marketing: As voice assistants become more prevalent, AI will enable brands to engage with customers through voice-activated marketing strategies. This includes personalized recommendations and interactions via smart speakers and other voice-enabled devices.
  2. AI-Driven Creative Testing: AI will allow for rapid testing and iteration of creative concepts. By automatically generating variations and analyzing performance, AI can help identify the most effective creative elements for different customer segments.
  3. Blockchain Integration for Transparency: Integrating blockchain technology with AI-driven marketing efforts can enhance transparency and trust. Blockchain can provide verifiable data on customer interactions and ad placements, ensuring accountability and reducing fraud in digital marketing campaigns.

Claude

3 marketing breakthroughs that will be possible in the future

  1. Hyper-personalization at scale: With Large Customer Models, Digital Twins, and Co-Marketers, businesses will be able to deliver truly 1:1 personalized experiences to every customer. The AI will deeply understand each individual’s preferences and behaviors, enabling personalized content, recommendations, and journeys that dynamically adapt in real-time.
  2. Unified customer understanding: The Large Customer Model will aggregate data across all touchpoints to create a comprehensive, 360-degree view of each customer. This will break down data silos and enable holistic customer insights and seamless omnichannel experiences.
  3. Collaborative human-AI marketing: The Co-Marketer AI will work alongside human marketers, augmenting their capabilities. It will handle data analysis, predictions, and campaign orchestration, freeing up marketers to focus on strategy, creativity, and building customer relationships. This human-AI collaboration will lead to better decisions and breakthrough marketing outcomes.

3 additional ways tomorrow’s AI can improve marketing

  1. Proactive trend detection: AI could continuously monitor diverse data sources to identify emerging trends, customer sentiments, and market shifts. It would proactively alert marketers to arising opportunities or threats, enabling businesses to stay ahead of the curve and quickly capitalize on new trends.
  2. Automated content generation: Advanced language models and generative AI could create highly persuasive, tailored marketing content at scale. This could include ad copy, email content, landing pages, product descriptions, social media posts, and more – all automatically generated and optimized for each individual customer.
  3. Predictive campaign simulation: Before launching campaigns, AI could simulate and test them in a virtual “mirror world” environment. It would predict performance, identify potential issues, and suggest optimizations. This would allow marketers to refine campaigns and maximize impact before deploying them to real customers.

3 potential marketing innovations

  1. Emotion-aware AI: Future AI models may be able to analyze user-generated content, such as social media posts or product reviews, to understand the emotions and sentiment behind the text. This emotional intelligence would allow for more empathetic, resonant marketing that deeply connects with customers’ emotional needs and desires.
  2. Real-time marketing in the metaverse: As virtual and augmented reality technologies advance, AI-powered marketing could expand into immersive metaverse environments. AI agents could interact with users’ avatars in real-time, providing personalized recommendations, offers, and experiences seamlessly integrated into the virtual world.
  3. Quantum computing-powered optimization: As quantum computing matures, it could be leveraged to solve complex marketing optimization problems. Quantum algorithms could rapidly identify the most effective campaign strategies, budget allocations, and targeting parameters from vast combinatorial solution spaces, leading to unprecedented marketing performance.

Gemini

3 Marketing Breakthroughs

  1. Hyper-personalized customer journeys: AI-powered marketing tools will be able to create dynamic and adaptive customer journeys. This means that marketing messages and interactions will be tailored to each individual customer in real-time, based on their unique preferences and behaviors.
  1. Agentic AI for customer interaction: In the future, AI will be able to handle customer interactions in an autonomous way. This means that AI-powered chatbots or virtual assistants will be able to have conversations with customers, answer their questions, and even resolve issues without human intervention.
  2. Digital twins for customer insights: AI will be able to create digital representations of individual customers (Singular Twins) and customer segments (Segment Twins). These digital twins will be used to generate insights into customer behavior and preferences, which can then be used to improve marketing campaigns.

3 Ways Tomorrow’s AI Can Improve Marketing

  1. Improved data analysis and insights: AI can analyze large amounts of data from various sources to identify trends and patterns that would be difficult for humans to see. This can help marketers to better understand their customers and target their campaigns more effectively.
  1. Content creation and personalization: AI can be used to create personalized marketing content, such as emails, social media posts, and website copy. This content can be tailored to the individual customer’s interests and needs.
  2. Real-time campaign optimization: AI can be used to monitor marketing campaigns in real-time and make adjustments as needed. This can help to ensure that campaigns are performing at their best and that they are reaching the right audience.

3 Coming Marketing Innovations

  1. Privacy-preserving Marketing: With increasing consumer concerns about data privacy, there’s a growing trend towards privacy-preserving marketing techniques. This involves using anonymized or aggregated data to target customers and measure campaign effectiveness, without compromising individual user privacy. Techniques like contextual targeting and privacy-preserving machine learning are being developed to achieve this.
  2. Shoppable Livestreaming: Livestreaming platforms are being leveraged by brands to directly connect with audiences and promote products in real-time. This approach allows for live product demonstrations, influencer marketing integration, and real-time audience interaction, all within a purchase-friendly environment.
  3. AI-powered customer experience personalization: This goes beyond content creation. Imagine a website recommending products you’d love, a chatbot that perfectly understands your needs, and emails that adapt to your interests – all powered by AI that personalizes your entire journey with the brand.

Thinks 1295

Arnold Kling: “In the future, there will be no durable forms of collective mass identity….The new communication tool that we have is the Large Language Model, which enables direct, rapid communication with computers. This means that computer capability will eventually be embedded everywhere, not just in special devices like smart phones or PCs. The special devices will fade in importance. Instead, we will be able to state a query or request a service any place, any time. Another innovation is small-machine warfare. This will neutralize the advantage that large industrialized states had until recently. Ever since the Axial Age, people have had durable collective identities. We had religious identities. We had national identities. I speculate that these will fade away. People will feel loyal to smaller groups, and they will be willing to switch loyalties often.”

WSJ: “In today’s culture, we celebrate “life hacks” and shortcuts to good health and happiness, whether through supplements, fad diets, five-minute workouts or the short-lived dopamine hit of social media likes. In the workplace, completing goals by setting and achieving KPIs (key performance indicators) often determines our professional value. These expectations can make it difficult to start something new and hard in midlife, when we tend to gravitate toward what we’re already good at and the rewards that come with completing it…My experience and research over the past six years show that I was wrong to see the challenge in such stark, age-bound terms. As I discovered, pursuing something difficult at any age can have profound benefits for health and happiness, even if you never become a master or an expert.”

Andrew Chen: “Writing a book just needs a laptop, coffee and lots of time. Not much money. Add up the laptop and all the coffees, and you maaaaybe spend $1000. What if an individual could make a full-length summer blockbuster movie by themselves with just a laptop and some coffee too? It would be 100,000x leverage to be able to author a movie (or game, or TV series) – the same way that someone can write a book It would require lots of effort and grit. It’s not easy to write a good book – no diff for a great movie. But it would be possible, when it’s not today. What an explosion of content this would create! In every form. I think of it as the next phase of lowering the cost of producing and publishing content online, the way that YouTube, Instagram, and other user-generated content platforms have democratized distribution.”

Wired: “Rather than a stand-alone device or experience, Apple has focused on how generative AI can improve apps and OS features in small yet meaningful ways. Early adopters have certainly flocked to generative AI programs like ChatGPT for help redrafting emails, summarizing documents, and generating images, but this has typically meant opening another browser window or app, cutting and pasting, and trying to make sense of a chatbot’s sometimes fevered ramblings. To be truly useful, generative AI will need to seep into technology we already use in ways we can better understand and trust.”

FT: “For the past few decades, private equity companies have followed a lucrative, if somewhat brutal, playbook of buying companies, firing employees and offshoring operations to China. That game may now be ending given the geopolitical tensions between the US and China and the renewed focus on the resilience of supply chains. Maybe AI will be deployed to transform corporate cost structures instead. “Could a PE firm buy up the fourth-biggest company in an industry, deploy AI and turn them into the number one?” the entrepreneur asks. It’s a good question and one that will entice some PE managers as much as it unnerves many employees.”

Marketing’s AI Triad: Large Customer Model, Digital Twins, Co-Marketer (Part 7)

Maya, the Modern Marketer – 2

This is Claude’s story about a day in the life of Maya, a modern marketer.

Maya takes a sip of her coffee as she settles in at her desk, ready to start another day as CMO at TrendSetters, a fast-growing fashion retailer. She opens her laptop and is greeted by Claude, her trusted AI Co-Marketer.

“Good morning Maya!” Claude’s friendly voice chimes. “I’ve prepared the daily briefing for you. Shall we dive in?”

“Absolutely, let’s do it,” Maya replies. Claude begins walking through the key insights and recommendations for the day.

“I had some great conversations with our key Segment Twins overnight,” Claude explains. “It looks like our eco-conscious millennial segment is really resonating with the new sustainable denim line. I’m seeing high engagement and purchase intent in that group. I’d recommend boosting our spend there by 15%.”

Maya nods. “Great suggestion, let’s do that. What else?”

“I noticed Jessica Smith, one of our highest-value customers, was browsing the site last night,” Claude continues. “Based on her Singular Twin, I predict she’s likely to purchase one of the new summer dresses in the next 2 days. I’ve drafted a personalized email with tailored recommendations for her. Want me to send it?”

“Yes, go ahead,” Maya confirms. “I’m sure she’ll love your suggestions. You know our customers so well!”

As the briefing wraps up, an alert pops up on Maya’s screen. “Maya, I’m detecting an emerging trend – looks like ’90s retro fashion is starting to take off on social media. Shall I generate some creative concepts in that style for your review?”

“Oh wow, good catch!” Maya exclaims. “Yes, put together a few ideas and we can discuss this afternoon.”

Maya spends the rest of the morning in strategy meetings, confident that Claude is working behind the scenes to optimize their campaigns and generate valuable insights. Around lunchtime, she gets a ping from Claude.

“I’ve got those ’90s style creative mockups ready for you. Want to take a look? I’ve already tested them with our Segment Twins and they’re projecting a 10% lift in engagement.”

“They look amazing!” Maya replies as she scrolls through the images. “You’ve really nailed that retro vibe. Let’s launch these as soon as possible. Thanks Claude!”

As the day winds down, Maya checks the real-time campaign dashboards one last time. Everything is looking great – engagement is up, conversion rates are exceeding targets, and Claude’s intelligent optimizations are driving strong performance across the board.

Before logging off, Maya leaves a final note. “Fantastic work today Claude! Your insights and execution are invaluable. I don’t know what I’d do without you!”

“Thank you Maya!” Claude responds warmly. “I’m always here to help. See you bright and early tomorrow – I’ll have the coffee ready! Well, virtual coffee at least.”

Maya smiles as she closes her laptop. Working with an AI Co-Marketer like Claude has transformed her role as CMO – allowing her to focus on strategy while Claude perfectly orchestrates the details. She can’t imagine going back to the old way of doing marketing. The future is here, and it’s AI-powered.

Thinks 1294

NYTimes: “For media companies, games are a way to attract new customers as their sites face declining traffic from Google, X and Meta, which have backed away from emphasizing news. For tech companies with editorial offerings, the puzzles are a way to entice new subscribers while engaging existing users who may not return to the apps daily. “A publication is more than the stories it produces. It’s an experience to look forward to, a pleasure,” said John Temple, a former journalist and co-founder of Amuse Labs, which sells a software platform that helps publishers create puzzles. “They want to recreate that same satisfying experience for people that they might have had over years of doing a crossword in the newspaper.” Adding games and puzzles has become central to many publishers’ strategies over the past few years, with momentum spiking in recent months as Apple and LinkedIn jumped in.”

NDTV: “”You have got machinery. You got pharmaceuticals. You got petroleum refining. These are absorbers of capital, but they don’t absorb enough workers,” Dr [Arvind] Panagariya [said]. Job creation, he said, has to do is with the composition of the industry, particularly manufacturing. “I think this is where you create good jobs and perhaps where the focus could shift a bit more than has been the case so far,” he said. “So some industrial structure has to move a little bit more towards industries that employ more workers per unit of capital. I think that’s our challenge,” he added…The unemployment figures, he said, have been consistently dropping. “Our problem is the productivity, the labour productivity per worker, has been low. That is a long-term problem,” he said, tagging it “under-employment” — meaning a job that can be done by one worker, is being done by two or three.”

Marcellus: “Over an extended period of time, it is hard to make money in Retailing. In this newsletter, we discuss a subset of retailing – apparel retailing – and how the principles that underpin the business models of consistent compounders in general are of relevance for success in apparel retailing as well. Two key variables – ‘percentage of discounted sales’ and ‘inventory turnover’ – determine a retailer’s ability to generate heavy cashflow from its operations. Retailers like Trent – a recent addition to our portfolio – have used product relevance & store level execution to achieve industry leading metrics. Additionally, successful retailers reinvest their profits to expand their profitable business segments and incubate new, highly profitable product categories – creating the cycle that leads to consistent compounding of wealth for shareholders.”

Javier Milei: “I became president of a country [Argentina] which for a hundred years embraced these nefarious socialist ideas, which turned Argentina from being the world’s richest country into country #140. The second point is that when I came into office, I didn’t stop with the cultural battle. The things I said in Davos I had already been saying all along. But now as the first libertarian president in history, the reach is much greater. My mic is a lot larger. And a lot of people are awakening. In fact, when I started my political career, I said I wasn’t here to guide sheep, but to awaken lions. So what I am getting to see, fortunately, is that worldwide there are a lot of libertarian lions awakening. So even though the present may look somber, I think the roots of a much better future are flourishing.” [via Arnold Kling]

NYTimes: “Friendship is a very specific and valuable form of social connection, said Julianne Holt-Lunstad, the lead author on the cigarette study and director of the Social Connection and Health Lab at Brigham Young University. “It’s difficult to be choosy about your neighbors or co-workers. You’re born into your family,” she explained. “Friendships are chosen and, because of that, we need to intentionally make time for them.””

Marketing’s AI Triad: Large Customer Model, Digital Twins, Co-Marketer (Part 6)

Maya, the Modern Marketer – 1

Based on my writings, I asked ChatGPT and Claude to write about a day in the life of Maya, a modern marketer. Here is ChatGPT’s version.

Maya, the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) of a leading eCommerce company, starts her day early, powered by the latest advancements in marketing technology. With a cup of coffee in hand, she opens her dashboard powered by the Martech AI Triad—Large Customer Model (LCM), Digital Twins, and Co-Marketer. This triad not only revolutionizes her marketing strategies but also makes her role more efficient and impactful.

6:00 AM – Reviewing Insights with the Large Customer Model

Maya begins her day by reviewing the latest insights from the Large Customer Model. This AI-driven model aggregates vast amounts of data, including CRM records, purchase histories, browsing patterns, and social media interactions. The LCM provides Maya with a comprehensive view of her customers, predicting trends and behaviors. Today, it highlights an emerging trend among young professionals showing increased interest in sustainable products.

7:00 AM – Segment Twins Analysis

Next, Maya delves into the Segment Twins. These AI-powered models represent groups of customers sharing similar behaviors and preferences. By simulating these segments, Maya can understand the collective mindset and preferences of each group. She examines a Segment Twin for young professionals interested in sustainability. The insights reveal that they value transparency in sourcing and prefer eco-friendly packaging.

8:00 AM – Strategy Session with the Co-Marketer

Maya then moves to a strategy session with the Co-Marketer, her AI-powered assistant. The Co-Marketer helps her plan campaigns, create content, and optimize customer journeys. Today, it suggests a multi-channel campaign focused on the new sustainable product line, tailored specifically for the segment identified earlier. It also recommends budget allocations across different channels to maximize engagement and ROI.

10:00 AM – Content Creation and Personalization

With the strategy in place, Maya collaborates with the Co-Marketer to create personalized content. Leveraging AI, the Co-Marketer generates creative assets and custom messages for each customer segment. For the sustainability-focused young professionals, it crafts messages emphasizing eco-friendly practices and transparent sourcing. The content is tailored for various platforms, including email, social media, and the company’s website.

12:00 PM – Lunch Break and Reflection

During lunch, Maya reflects on how the AI triad has transformed her role. The combination of LCM, Segment Twins, and Co-Marketer has streamlined her workflow, allowing her to focus on strategic initiatives rather than getting bogged down by data analysis and campaign management.

1:00 PM – Monitoring Campaigns in Real-Time

After lunch, Maya monitors the ongoing campaigns. The Co-Marketer continuously analyzes real-time data, providing optimization suggestions. It detects that the email open rates are lower than expected for a particular segment. Maya quickly adjusts the subject lines and content based on the Co-Marketer’s recommendations, ensuring higher engagement.

3:00 PM – Interacting with Singular Twins

Maya spends the afternoon interacting with Singular Twins—AI-powered replicas of individual customers. These twins offer deep insights into the preferences and behaviors of each customer. Maya identifies a few high-value customers showing signs of disengagement. She uses the Co-Marketer to send personalized offers and re-engagement messages, tailored to their unique interests and past behaviors.

5:00 PM – Preparing for Tomorrow

As the day winds down, Maya reviews the overall performance of her marketing efforts. The AI triad’s predictive capabilities and real-time adjustments have driven significant improvements in customer engagement and sales. She sets up a meeting for the next morning to discuss long-term strategies with her team, informed by the insights gained throughout the day.

6:00 PM – Closing the Day

Maya ends her day feeling accomplished. The AI-powered tools have not only enhanced her efficiency but also allowed her to deliver personalized experiences to her customers, driving loyalty and satisfaction. She looks forward to the continuous evolution of marketing technology, knowing that it will only make her role more exciting and impactful.

By leveraging the power of the Large Customer Model, Segment and Singular Twins, and the Co-Marketer, Maya exemplifies the modern marketer, seamlessly integrating AI into her daily workflow to drive success and innovation.