Profipoly: Marketing’s Fourth Wave and Final Frontier (Part 11)

Ideas and Innovations: Unichannel, Email 2.0 powering Inbox Commerce

7. Unichannel

Unichannel can be viewed as a subtle yet significant refinement of the omnichannel concept. While it’s true that customers crave a seamless experience across channels, it’s challenging for marketers to deliver this, as they often work with multiple vendors for various channels. Consequently, customers could be bombarded with an email, SMS, WhatsApp message, and a push notification – all conveying the same message. This redundancy can become extremely irritating, leading some customers to opt out of receiving brand messages. Unichannel rectifies this by (a) identifying each customer’s preferred channel and (b) implementing a journey overlay for message delivery. This means that if I receive a push notification and respond to it, no additional messages with the same theme will be sent to me. If I don’t respond within a specified time, an email can be triggered, and so forth with follow-ups on other channels as needed. Unichannel essentially adheres to the “One Customer, One Message” principle. It is designed to fix another commonly broken customer experience – the repetition of identical offers or alerts.

[Source: Martech 2.0: A New Profits Paradigm for Marketers and Vendors]

8. Email 2.0 powering Inbox Commerce

Unless ecommerce businesses have established a strong brand recall or have become indispensable fixtures in the lives of their customers, push messages are the only tool to entice shoppers to their properties (website and app) completing transactions. Push channels available to marketers are email, SMS, RCS, app notifications, and in some countries, WhatsApp. Each of the channels has their pros and cons, but what’s common is the low clickthrough rate: typically 1%, or 1 in 100. This constitutes a significant friction fraction.

For ecommerce companies, the solution is Inbox Commerce. It is about bringing the conversion funnel closer to the customer – from the website/app to the inbox. It seeks to consolidate the customer’s journey from awareness to purchase within the inbox itself, effectively acting as a micro-ecosystem. This is particularly powerful in an era of overwhelming digital noise, as it provides a streamlined, focused, and more personalised user experience.

Email has emerged as the most promising channel for this strategy due to its widespread use and acceptance, especially in developed markets, where it can account for 20-40% of revenue. I explored the idea of Email Shops in a recent essay: “The transformative solution in eCommerce is to think of websites and apps inside emails – where the entire journey from search and browse to purchase can be completed right inside the inbox. AMP makes this possible. These “email shops” are the next storefronts – and one which marketers can control because they can “push” these messages to their customers rather than relying on them to remember to visit their properties. Combined with Atomic Rewards to incentivise opens and other non-transactional actions, email shops have the potential to increase conversions exponentially, thus reducing the need for expensive and continuous new acquisitions to drive revenue growth. Email shops can thus become the profitability drivers for brands.”

Email 2.0 (powered by AMP in email) can harness data to deliver highly unique content and offers to each subscriber based on their behaviour and preferences – all in the sanctuary of the inbox. It thus has the potential to stand as the fulcrum for resolving all five friction points: Inbox Commerce, Green Journeys, Reactivation Progency, Near Zero Acquisition Cost, and Anon-to-Known.

[Sources: ProfitXL to Profipoly: Solving the Four Funnel Frictions and Email 2.0: The Fulcrum for Fixing Five Funnel Frictions]

Thinks 1064

National Review: “Central planning didn’t make China richer…“China became an economic powerhouse by opening its markets, recognizing the nonstate sector, and allowing individuals to lift themselves out of poverty. Attempts at industrial policy under the SASAC failed,” Dorn writes. “The lesson for China is to continue on the path of marketization and liberalization, not to revert to destructive state control and repression.” If China wants to ignore that lesson and persist on its return to state-run economic planning, the U.S. shouldn’t get in the way. And hopefully someday the communist regime will fall, and Chinese people will be able to prosper as much as they could if only they lived under the rule of law with property rights and free markets.”

Noema: “Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) means many different things to different people, but the most important parts of it have already been achieved by the current generation of advanced AI large language models such as ChatGPT, Bard, LLaMA and Claude. These “frontier models” have many flaws: They hallucinate scholarly citations and court cases, perpetuate biases from their training data and make simple arithmetic mistakes. Fixing every flaw (including those often exhibited by humans) would involve building an artificial superintelligence, which is a whole other project. Nevertheless, today’s frontier models perform competently even on novel tasks they were not trained for, crossing a threshold that previous generations of AI and supervised deep learning systems never managed. Decades from now, they will be recognized as the first true examples of AGI, just as the 1945 ENIAC is now recognized as the first true general-purpose electronic computer.”

WSJ: “Workers around the world are adopting artificial intelligence to streamline tasks ranging from email writing to product development. Now companies have begun using AI to root out another workplace inefficiency: meetings. Across the U.S., some workers are using tools that record, analyze and summarize what has been said, allowing them to skip gatherings entirely and skim the highlights. The AI also acts as a kind of virtual Miss Manners, reminding people to share the mic and to modulate their speaking pace, and advising them how to avoid verbal flubs.”

Ninan: “The overall picture of the [Indian] economy is, therefore, painted in broadly optimistic hues, with some contrapuntal colours a part of the mosaic. The economy is, therefore, chugging along at the “new-old normal” growth rate of 6-plus per cent. That’s great, given the global context, but there’s no near-term prospect of acceleration.”

Ashu Garg: “As we enter 2024, founders will need to balance ambition and caution. Startups with proven PMF and sound unit economics should lean into capturing market share, but prepare to tap the brakes if economic conditions deteriorate…Founders have learned hard-won lessons from the ups and downs of the past few years. Now is the time to apply them: remain vigilant about cash runway, concentrate resources on proven areas of strength, and optimize GTM efforts. For all its uncertainty, 2024 holds ample opportunities for startups that can embrace efficiency without sacrificing ambition.”

Profipoly: Marketing’s Fourth Wave and Final Frontier (Part 10)

Ideas and Innovations: Catalog and Customer Data, AI-enabled Catalog Enrichment

5. Catalog and Customer Data

Every eCommerce site is about two elements: the product catalog and the customer’s interactions with the catalog. Search and product discovery is about matching customers to the right products in the catalog. What is needed is a tech stack that combines the inputs from both.

A successful eCommerce platform essentially revolves around two core components: the product catalog and the customer’s interactions with the catalog. Let’s delve deeper into the significance of each and their symbiotic relationship:

  • The Product Catalog: This isn’t just a list of available products. It’s a dynamic and comprehensive representation of a brand’s offerings. Each product entry is often laden with metadata – descriptions, specifications, images, reviews, and more. This metadata isn’t just informative; it’s crucial for search algorithms to understand the product’s context, relevance, and value proposition.
  • Customer Interactions: Every click, search query, and purchase made by a customer is a data point. This data, when aggregated and analysed, provides invaluable insights into customer preferences, behaviours, and buying patterns. It sheds light on what customers value, how they navigate the site, and where they face challenges or drop-offs.

The magic lies in the confluence of these two streams. When we speak of search and product discovery, we’re essentially talking about a sophisticated matchmaking process. Customers arrive with specific needs, intentions, or sometimes just vague curiosities. The platform’s role is to guide them, using data-driven insights, to products that best align with their desires, thereby facilitating a potential purchase.

This is where the tech stack plays a pivotal role. A robust tech stack doesn’t just operate these two elements in isolation; it intertwines them. It utilises customer interaction data to continuously refine and tailor the product catalog’s presentation. Moreover, this union of catalog and customer data can drive other functionalities like personalised recommendations, targeted marketing campaigns, and predictive stocking. If the system identifies a rising trend in, based on search and interaction data, it can promote such products more prominently, recommend them to relevant user segments, and even advise the inventory team to stock up based on projected demand.

In essence, the fusion of catalog and customer data, facilitated by a powerful tech stack, is what propels e-commerce platforms from being mere digital storefronts to intelligent, responsive, and highly efficient marketplaces. By understanding both what they have to offer (catalog) and what their users are seeking (interactions), e-commerce platforms can perfect the art of delivering the right product to the right customer at the right time.

6. AI-enabled Catalog Enrichment

The vitality of product discovery hinges on the depth and accuracy of the data associated with each product in an eCommerce catalog. Traditional methods of product listing often include basic details – a standard description and a handful of keywords, usually inputted manually by merchandisers. While this baseline information might be accurate, it’s often not comprehensive enough to fully exploit the capabilities of advanced search algorithms. This is precisely where the power of AI can transform the game.

  • Deepening Descriptions: AI can delve into product details and, by analysing patterns from similar or related products, expand on the descriptions provided. It can include attributes that human merchandisers might overlook, such as subtle product features, associated uses, or even the contexts in which a product might be beneficial.
  • Keyword Augmentation: Beyond the basic keywords associated with a product, AI can generate a plethora of related terms, synonyms, or frequently searched phrases. Drawing from vast datasets and understanding user search behaviour, AI can predict and append keywords that potential customers might use, increasing the likelihood of a match.
  • Contextual Understanding: AI’s ability to comprehend context can be invaluable. Recognising that users might be searching for solutions rather than specific products, AI can associate products with needs.
  • Continuous Learning and Adaptation: One of the standout features of AI is its ability to learn continuously. As users interact with the platform, AI can understand which product descriptions and keywords resonate most with users, refining and optimizing the catalog in real-time.

The Hindi saying, “Jo Dikhta Hai, Woh Bikta Hai” beautifully encapsulates the essence of this AI-powered transformation. In the vast digital bazaar of eCommerce, visibility is currency. And by enriching product catalogs using AI, products don’t just wait to be found; they proactively reach out, ensuring they’re ‘seen’ by those who would most value them. In this dynamic landscape, AI isn’t just a tool; it’s a bridge, connecting products to their potential customers in meaningful and impactful ways.

[See Unbxd’s page for a glimpse of the possibilities.]

Thinks 1063

Donald Boudreaux: “The market is beautiful. It is that system through which each of us taps into the talents, knowledge, and material possessions of others in exchange only for our agreeing to allow these others the ability to tap into our own talents, knowledge, and material possessions. Each person is free to say ‘no’ to any offer, but is also free to make to any other person or persons peaceful offers – offers that the offerees may accept or to reject. This ability to say ‘no’ ensures that all exchanges are mutually beneficial.” More: “Free trade is simply a policy of allowing each individual to spend or invest his money in whatever peaceful ways he chooses regardless of the nationality or residence of any of his trading partners. With a policy of free trade, no one is prevented from dealing with any person, nor is any person forced to deal with any other person or persons. To claim that a government that eliminates tariffs ‘imposes’ on its citizens the freedom to trade makes no more sense than claiming that a kidnapper who releases his hostages ‘imposes’ on these hostages the freedom to return home. Pundits and politicians who describe free trade as an imposition are either hopelessly ignorant of the meaning of free trade, or they are intentionally portraying it in a false light in order to scare people.”

The Generalist: “A company that does not change will eventually die. How do you build a focused, stable organization while leaving room for experimentation? I’ve come to see The Generalist’s journey in phases of “exploration” and “exploitation” (a nasty word for a reasonable idea). Essentially, chapters that prioritize trying out new approaches or making the most of our best ones…Knowledge often takes the shape of an iceberg. What we appear to know is usually a fraction of our accumulated information and wisdom. How do you bring that intelligence into the open so others can benefit from it? Many of The Generalist’s series have been designed to unearth these strange information “surpluses” – with more to come.”

HBR: “Self-introductions are the most direct way to reinforce your desired personal brand. And they can be easy to do. The secret is using a simple framework: Present, past, and future…Start with a present-tense statement to introduce yourself…The second part of your introduction is past tense. This is where you can add two or three points that will provide people with relevant details about your background. It is also your opportunity to establish credibility. Consider your education and other credentials, past projects, employers, and accomplishments…The third and last part in this framework is future-oriented. This is your opportunity to demonstrate enthusiasm for what’s ahead. If you’re in a job interview, you could share your eagerness about opportunities at the firm. If you’re in a meeting, you could express interest in the meeting topic. If you’re kicking off a project with a new team, you could talk about how excited you are, or share your goals for the project.”

Economist: “Manuel Funke and Christoph Trebesch of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy and Moritz Schularick of the University of Bonn, look at over a century of data. They classify administrations as “populist” or “non-populist” (or what you might call sensible), based on whether the administration’s ideology has an “us-versus-them” flavour. This is inevitably an arbitrary exercise…Having identified 51 populist presidents and prime ministers from 1900 to 2020, the authors find striking results. For two to three years there is little difference in the path of real gdp between countries under populist and sensible leadership. For a time, it may seem as though it is possible to demonise your opponents and run roughshod over property rights without all that much consequence. Yet a gap eventually appears, perhaps as foreign investors start to look elsewhere. Fifteen years after a populist government has entered office, the authors find that gdp per person is a painful 10% lower than in the sensible counterfactual. Ratios of public debt to gdp are also higher, as is inflation. Populism, the authors firmly establish, is bad for the pocketbook.”

Fortune: “While walking has so much to offer regardless of the time of day, [Neil] Paulvin says there are a few specific wins when it comes to strolling at night. “In general, walking is great for longevity and helping you sleep,” says Paulvin. “Walking before bed will decrease stress and calm down the sympathetic nervous system to help you sleep,” he explains. Because melatonin—the sleep hormone—is stimulated by darkness, taking a walk away from screens and artificial lights will send the message to your body that it’s time to prepare for some much-needed R&R. Research shows that walking before bed may help you fall asleep faster and may even improve sleep quality and sleep efficiency (the amount of time you spend asleep in bed).”

Profipoly: Marketing’s Fourth Wave and Final Frontier (Part 9)

Ideas and Innovations: Digital Twins, Velvet Rope Marketing

3. Digital Twins

Imagine being able to use Generative AI to “copy” the behaviour of every consumer in the form of a “digital twin” and immerse a digital twin for every customer into a “mirror world.”

…These software models are personalised depictions of individual customers, amalgamating their demographic, psychographic, and behavioural data. The creation of these digital twins allows brands to tailor predictions for the next best action for each customer, offering personalised recommendations and services that significantly enhance their experience and increase conversion rates.

…The Digital Twin is built on a Large Customer Model. While LLMs anticipate the next words in a text sequence and LCMs predict the next actions in a customer journey…by analysing extensive datasets of customer interactions and behaviours. The aim is to recognise patterns and sequences leading to specific outcomes. A prime example would be a good recommendation engine, which predicts what product a customer is likely to be interested in next, based on their browsing history and past purchases.

[Source: iDarpan: How Mirror Worlds and Digital Twins will Revolutionise eCommerce

4. Velvet Rope Marketing (VRM)

Velvet Rope Marketing (VRM) is a potent strategy where marketers create a ‘VIP experience’ for their high-value customers based on their customer lifetime value (CLV). By identifying these key customers through data analytics and then treating them to exclusive, personalised experiences, we essentially give them the royal treatment, much like airlines do for business- and first-class passengers with the ‘velvet rope’ and red carpet providing the differentiation.

So, why is this important for B2C/D2C brands? Studies have shown that around 60% of your future revenue and more than 100% of profits will come from these 20% Best customers. (This occurs because the “long tail” customers typically yield losses due to acquisition and servicing expenses.) Yet, surprisingly, many marketers continue to provide a uniform approach to all customers…Investing in creating memorable experiences for the Best customers can significantly bolster profitability. In addition, by creating this ‘VRM experience’ (based on ease, exclusivity, and access), marketers are building strong, emotional connections with these key customers, driving higher customer loyalty and reducing the propensity for them to switch to a competitor.

An effective VRM program should incorporate three main components. First, a comprehensive audit of your customer base to gain insights into the buying behaviour of existing customers via a systematic transaction review. Second, the dual application of customer lifetime value (CLV) and Best Customer Genome (BCG) to identify your most valuable customers and understand their key attributes. Third, the establishment of a distinct business unit dedicated to delivering tailored experiences for your top customers. This three-pronged approach ensures that VRM is not just a marketing strategy, but an essential business philosophy.

[Sources: ProfitXL: Supersize Profits with the SHUVAM Framework and Martech 2.0: A New Profits Paradigm for Marketers and Vendors]

Thinks 1062

Adam Lashinsky: “Crypto was supposed to represent nothing less than a paradigmatic shift in the global finance industry. Its backers, led by Silicon Valley venture capitalists bent on divining their next fortunes, envisioned a new, digital form of currency that couldn’t be controlled by any government. They dreamed of a new method of stored value, like gold. And they foresaw a more efficient way for people to move money across borders, given that the global remittance business is stodgy and controlled by a small handful of companies. Dreams are all good and fine. But cryptocurrencies had two things working against them from the outset. First, they have no inherent value, no matter what their promoters insisted. Second, not being backed by the full faith and credit of a credible government turned out to be a liability rather than a virtue. Most non-dreamers now see these limitations for what they are, and the trial of Bankman-Fried is a painful reminder of how easy it is to run the big con on a lot of folks.”

Kenda Mutongi: “Unlike in many Western cities where the rich can live easy lives and forget that the poor exist, in Nairobi the rich are forced to confront the consequences of poverty as soon as they emerge from their gated compounds. The social and economic differences do not confer an epistemological difference. Once the security guard closes the gate behind them, the well-to-do walk — or more likely drive — on the same streets as the poor. “Just look at the roads in this rich neighborhood where we are staying,” I say to my daughter. “The wealthy must dodge potholes along with everyone else.” The moment they venture out, they witness all the vexations of the disadvantaged and the destitute. “Of course, if the government paid policemen a living wage, they wouldn’t feel the need to take bribes from the vendors,” Ada says. I reply: “But what would the vendors do then? They wouldn’t be able to make a living. It looks like the system works. In the end, the police get what they want and the vendors get what they want.” Ada doesn’t like the sound of this: “That doesn’t seem right, Mom.” “Yes, I know. But that’s the way it is in most of the Global South.” The “instrumentalization of disorder” is what scholars Patrick Chabal and Jean-Pascal Daloz call this kind of social arrangement.”

WSJ: “Why do some people live longer than others? Mr. Kole cites studies showing that only 25% of longevity is driven by genetics. Good dietary habits and plenty of exercise will help get you to 90, but genes take over after that. Men with a sibling who has reached 100 are 17 times more likely to become centenarians themselves. (For women, the figure is eight times.) Of the medical realms in which life-extending treatments seem most promising, Mr. Kole cites genetic sequencing, gene therapy and immunotherapy. He also mentions the potential of liquid biopsies, which involve analyzing blood for evidence of DNA fragments from cancer cells—a test that contributes to early detection. For developing countries, he thinks that a new vaccine for malaria holds out great promise.” More: “About 25% of your ability to live to 90 is determined by genetics, says Dr. Thomas Perls, a professor of medicine at Boston University who leads the New England Centenarian Study, which has followed centenarians and their family members since 1995. By age 100, it’s roughly 50% genetic, he estimates, and by around 106, it’s 75%. Knowing what enables some people to live very long lives has consequences for the rest of us. Ongoing research into very old age may help provide insight that could eventually be used to develop drugs or identify lifestyle changes to help people live healthier for longer, says Dr. James Kirkland, president of the American Federation for Aging Research.”

Business Standard: “It is nobody’s case that vulnerable or needy sections of the population should be excluded from subsidies and support. But the structure of subsidies in India tend to congeal into static rights that gain political traction, though they may have little connection with facts on the ground. They have increasingly become a knee-jerk response to welfarism from politicians who lack the nous or imagination to tread the tougher and less populist route up the development value chain. Subsidised cooking gas for poor households, for instance, proved an election game-changer earlier; but the costs of maintaining the momentum of this scheme is straining the exchequer. A better alternative could have been distributing solar cookers that rely on a free, non-fossil, healthy fuel source that could have saved the state from recurring payouts. The urge to retain hand-outs that perpetuate power equations has left governments with less to spend on the things that really matter to people —education, healthcare, access to employment and welfare for the truly needy — as lower-than-potential economic growth constrains their revenues and keeps large swathes of Indians in a permanent state of expectancy. Freebies may be the lazy politician’s go-to technique. In the long run, they do a disservice to India.”

Profipoly: Marketing’s Fourth Wave and Final Frontier (Part 8)

Ideas and Innovations: Unistack, Generative AI

Could profipoly marketing have emerged earlier? I don’t think so. It needs multiple innovations that have been in the works for some time to come together. Profipoly marketing is not just about taking consumer data and running algorithms to personalise recommendations. It is about a unified experience across channels and brand properties. It is about differentiation in terms of ease, exclusivity, and access for the Best customers. It is about frictionless journeys, perfect predictions, and inbox commerce. All of this requires thought and technology breakthroughs – just like the transformers idea and cheap computing enabled the Generative AI revolution. Twelve ideas and innovations provide the foundation for the profipoly revolution.

1. Unistack

Unistack, or a “unified stack,” aims to address the issue of integrating diverse point solutions. Over time, marketers have leaned on various point solutions for handling distinct facets of their marketing efforts, like data gathering, customer segmentation, and campaign orchestration across different channels. However, this approach has resulted in fragmented data and integration hurdles, obstructing marketers from achieving a comprehensive understanding of their customers.

Attempts to remedy these issues have been made through Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) and Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), but the fundamental problem persists. Marketers are still wrestling with disjointed databases and inadequate AI-ML effectiveness because of the siloed data, which hampers their ability to deliver optimum customer experiences. The first-generation martech solutions contributed aggregation and automation, but inadvertently created data silos and failed to provide a complete, seamless solution. Unistack consolidates customer data, engagement, and experience management, and full channel control into one platform. Adopting a Unistack approach allows marketers to gain a holistic, integrated perspective of their customers, thereby improving the effectiveness of their customer relationships and unlocking the potential of seamless omnichannel personalisation.

[Source: Martech 2.0: A New Profits Paradigm for Marketers and Vendors]

2. Large Customer Model

The first wave of Generative AI in marketing is helping drive content creation. Anna Anisin explains the uses:

Brainstorming and Idea Generation: Coming up with fresh ideas is essential to capturing customer attention. Generative AI models, such as ChatGPT, enable brainstorming sessions, offering creative suggestions and alternative perspectives.

Automating Content Creation: Generative AI can empower marketers to automate various aspects of content creation, saving time and resources for faster time-to-market. From generating social media posts and blog articles to crafting email campaigns, AI models can produce draft content that human marketers can refine and personalize.

Enhancing Existing Content: Generative AI can update existing content by providing valuable insights and suggestions for improvement. By analysing data patterns and user feedback, AI models can identify areas where content such as marketing copy, ad creative and customer messaging can be optimized.

Creating Visuals: Generative AI models can generate stunning visuals, including graphics, images, art forms and videos. Marketers can leverage these AI-generated visuals to enhance their storytelling, create eye-catching social media posts and produce visually engaging presentations.

The real opportunity lies beyond. Generative AI, with its ability to simulate and create data-driven patterns, is poised to revolutionise the marketing landscape. In the realm of predicting customer behaviour, this form of AI can sift through vast amounts of historical data to construct highly accurate models of customer preferences, behaviours, and potential future actions. By identifying subtle patterns and correlations that may elude traditional analytics, Generative AI can anticipate the ‘next best actions’ of customers with unparalleled precision. This not only ensures more personalised customer experiences but also enables marketers to be proactive rather than reactive, crafting campaigns and strategies that align seamlessly with evolving customer desires and needs.

In the world of customer engagement, Gen AI can be used to create a Large Customer Model (LCM), analogous to the LLMs we are seeing and using. From a previous essay:

LCMs…operate in a different ‘language’—the language of customer behaviour. They predict the next action in a customer’s journey by analysing extensive datasets of customer interactions and behaviours. The aim is to recognise patterns and sequences leading to specific outcomes. A prime example would be a good recommendation engine, which predicts what product a customer is likely to be interested in next, based on their browsing history and past purchases.

However, LCMs surpass LLMs in their ‘vocabulary’ breadth. They not only consider individual actions, like browsing a product or making a purchase, but also can consider a wide array of external factors. For instance, factors like the time of day, weather conditions, or significant events like holidays and festivals can influence customer behaviours.

What makes LCMs truly powerful is their ability to fuse learnings from vast datasets with real-time behavioural information. They capture the ‘customer language’ at an individual level, learning from each interaction to refine the predictive models. They anticipate behavioural changes, offering marketers the opportunity to adjust strategies proactively.

Think of the LCMs as next-generation Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) where data comes to life with predictions of next best actions.

Thinks 1061

Erik Matson: “The decision to read a book depends on your purpose. People have different callings, and there are returns to both intellectual and material divisions of knowledge and labor. If your goal is to learn the mechanics of price theory or monetary theory, the works of Smith might be an interesting historical touchstone; but they are not where you should spend your time. The same could be said of Euclid with respect to geometry and Newton with respect to physics. I would wager that most applied mathematicians and engineers have not read either and not obviously to their detriment. If part of your calling or purpose involves participating in public discourse about economic and political affairs, however, and working to preserve and promote the principles of a free, flourishing society, then the case for [Adam] Smith becomes stronger. For one thing, despite his occasional ambiguities and possible lapses in policy judgment, Smith’s ideas remain highly relevant. His economic insights have been largely affirmed by what Pete Boettke calls the “mainline tradition” of economic thought in the centuries since he wrote.”

FT: “The US Federal Reserve kept money free for nearly 14 years in the name of stimulating the economy. This period of “zero-interest rate policy”, or “Zirp”, was characterised by tepid growth, increased market concentrations, low productivity and yawning wealth inequality. Now that the Fed has shifted to a “higher for longer” stance to combat inflation, our economy will have to make painful adjustments to the rising cost of money. But we need to hold our course. Ultimately, higher rates will lead to a fairer, more productive and resilient economy. The theory of Zirp is that it boosts consumption and productive capital investments by making it cheaper for businesses and consumers to borrow. But the theory has not proved itself in practice. Economists have struggled to find a correlation between low interest rates and economic growth. Some studies suggest that higher rates are associated with higher economic growth. This is consistent with the US experience.”

McKinsey: “They don’t want one thing or another—they want both, but in different ways. Today’s consumers don’t fit into neat segments. They’re living in a world of “ands,” to cite a phrase that we’ve been using to describe the seemingly contradictory shopping behaviors of people across the globe. The phrase very much applies in the United States as well: new data reveal four “ands” that characterize US consumers today. For example, they’re splurging and trading down; they’re saving money on food and planning to spend on restaurants…In this world of “ands,” CPG companies must find ways to serve consumers’ sometimes-conflicting needs and desires. For example, a company would do well to develop high-quality options at both ends of the price spectrum: entry-level options for the down-trader and premium offerings for the splurger. What’s clear is that the future belongs to companies that can better understand—perhaps even anticipate and shape—the decisions and behaviors of the modern consumer.”

NYTimes: “Roti is one of the world’s most ubiquitous and shape-shifting foods, a round, unleavened bread of uncertain origin that has spread around the world, changing every time it reaches a new country, region or even household. There are the simple wheat-flour-and-water versions found across India, the stretchy, layered variety known as roti canai in Malaysia, the shaggy roti in Guyana and the slightly chewier ones in Kenya (also known as chapati), to name just a few…Roti has evolved to suit the tastes of a multitasking generation who didn’t grow up strictly eating traditional foods. For home cooks, roti can provide the base for panzanella, French toast, quesadillas, tacos or pizza.”

Profipoly: Marketing’s Fourth Wave and Final Frontier (Part 7)

Profipoly Marketing

To summarise the story so far: in the expansive saga of marketing, we have witnessed three formidable waves that have dictated the rhythm of this discipline. The first wave, centred on branding, established the importance of creating a distinct identity in the minds of consumers. This was followed by the performance wave (adtech), which harnessed the potential of digital landscapes to target and capture specific audience segments with precision. The third wave, focusing on retention through martech, recognised that acquiring a customer was only half the battle—keeping them loyal was where long-term value lay.

Emerging on the horizon now is a wave that promises to revolutionise the marketing world: profipoly marketing, a natural progression from branding to performance to retention and finally to profits, in sync with the marketing industry’s evolution and its increasing sophistication. What does this entail?

Profipoly marketing isn’t a departure from the previous waves but rather a synthesis and evolution. The foundational branding efforts ensure that businesses establish trust and identity, while performance marketing builds on this by identifying and acquiring the most suitable audience. Once acquired, martech ensures they stay loyal. Profipoly takes this a step further by emphasising not just loyalty, but profitability. Instead of casting wide nets or even targeted nets, profipoly marketing aims to maximise revenue from the most valuable customer segments and their networks.

The term “final frontier” often conveys a sense of reaching the pinnacle or zenith of a particular journey. In the context of marketing, the profipoly wave stands as the ultimate goal that every brand aspires to achieve—a monopoly on profits. Unlike the previous waves that tackled specific challenges of the marketing journey, profipoly is holistic. It looks at the entire customer lifecycle and optimises it for maximum profitability. It’s not just about making sales but making the most profitable sales.

Moreover, profipoly marketing consolidates lessons from previous waves, integrating branding’s trust-building, performance marketing’s precision, and martech’s retention strategies, all with a razor-sharp focus on profits. This integration makes it a comprehensive approach, leaving little room for another wave to supersede its ambition.

In a profipoly world, brands will become incredibly adept at identifying their Best customers – those who not only bring business but also influence others to do the same. These customers won’t be valued just for their current worth but their entire potential lifecycle value.

With the integration of advanced analytics and AI, brands will forecast buying behaviours, preferences, and even periods of lull in a customer’s journey. They will preemptively address concerns, offer tailored solutions, and constantly recalibrate strategies to ensure that the Best customers stay forever.

A profipoly-driven brand will not expend resources equally on all customers but will invest disproportionately in keeping its highest value customers engaged and satisfied. This doesn’t mean alienating other customers, but rather optimising resources for maximum profit generation. Moreover, the line between loyalty programs and customer experience will blur. Brands will offer unique, hyper-personalised experiences to their top-tier customers, making them not just loyal followers but ardent brand advocates.

Profipoly marketing is not just the next phase but arguably the most pivotal one. As we transition into this new era, brands need to recalibrate their strategies, tools, and mindsets. The goalpost has shifted from mere sales or loyalty to maximising profitability. In this brave new world, the brands that master the art of profipoly will not only survive but thrive.

What is changing for marketers to cross the chasm? A dozen new ideas and innovations.

Thinks 1060

Yuval Levin: “Ranked-choice voting in primaries could be particularly promising. A ranked-choice election allows voters to select multiple candidates in order of preference and then have their vote count on behalf of their second or third choice if their first or second choice is not among the top vote getters. In most forms, it is essentially an automatic runoff. From the point of view of candidates, such a system creates a strong reason to be many voters’ second choice, as well as the first choice of some. That naturally invites a coalition-building mind-set and could do a better job of attracting candidates capable of broad appeal both on the campaign trail and in office. It would compel politicians to feel accountable to a broader swath of voters, even in safe districts where only the primary matters.”

WSJ: “What’s a billionaire to do if he doesn’t want yachts or mansions, is disinclined to spend more than $15 on a watch and is satisfied with economy class even on long flights? For Charles Feeney, the answer was obvious—he gave nearly all of his money away and got that done while still alive. A co-founder of what became the international retailer Duty Free Shoppers, Feeney made billions of dollars by operating a global network of shops selling liquor, perfume, jewelry and other items at tourist hubs. Much of his success, he said, was “dumb luck,” and he didn’t need a vast fortune to support his modest tastes. So he created a group of foundations that gave away about $8 billion. He kept around $2 million to cover his retirement. “I concluded that if you hung on to a piece of the action for yourself you’d always be worrying about that piece,” Feeney told Forbes magazine in 2012. “People used to ask me how I got my jollies, and I guess I’m happy when what I’m doing is helping people and unhappy when what I’m doing isn’t helping people.””

Quantum Magazine: “Assembly theory predicts that objects like us can’t arise in isolation — that some complex objects can only occur in conjunction with others. This makes intuitive sense; the universe could never produce just a single human. To make any humans at all, it had to make a whole bunch of us. In accounting for specific, actual entities like humans in general (and you and me in particular), traditional physics is only of so much use. It provides the laws of nature, and assumes that specific outcomes are the result of specific initial conditions. In this view, we must have been somehow encoded in the first moments of the universe. But it surely requires extremely fine-tuned initial conditions to make Homo sapiens (let alone you) inevitable. Assembly theory, its advocates say, escapes from that kind of overdetermined picture. Here, the initial conditions don’t matter much. Rather, the information needed to make specific objects like us wasn’t there at the outset but accumulates in the unfolding process of cosmic evolution — it frees us from having to place all that responsibility on an impossibly fine-tuned Big Bang. The information “is in the path,” Walker said, “not the initial conditions.””

Hitesh Vaidya: “Cities embody a symphony of municipal governments, universities, companies, and community organisations working in concert. Their potential, when combined, expands and multiplies in unpredictable ways. The new age of urban agenda requires new age skills and organisational setup for implementation, improving quality of service and efficiency. A robust network for multi-level governance and strong linkages with private and non-governmental stakeholders is imperative for significant urban impact. Urban local bodies are the most “visible” among all federal government levels to the ordinary citizen, forging an unwritten social contract between them and the citizens, necessitating a more structured and inclusive citizen engagement process. Transparency, data availability, and systematic citizen engagement are crucial to building trust and designing and implementing policies that align with urban residents’ goals and aspirations. For this to happen, cities must be recognised as the first tier of governance instead of the third, as they are popularly referred to in various terminologies.”