At the end of Marketing Rebellion, a bestselling book that served as a wake-up call for the state of marketing, I predicted what might be the next consumer rebellion. I believe I got it right, and the revolution could be coming sooner than I expected. Let’s take a look at what’s going on, and the implications for marketing and our AI future.
The First Three Rebellions
The thesis of Marketing Rebellion is that every time businesses and their marketing efforts push consumers too far, the customers rebel, resulting in a cataclysmic shift in marketing strategy.
The first rebellion came in the 1920s. The advertising industry had become a multi-billion-dollar industry, attaching remarkable claims to everything from cigarettes to toothpaste. But when these claims became TOO remarkable, they were outright lies. Consumers rebelled, and the industry was regulated through the Federal Trade Commission and similar agencies in other nations.
The second rebellion occurred in the 1990s. Companies made money on what you didn’t know. Profit margins were made on the public’s ignorance about the truth of insurance policies, used cars, and vacation plans. The internet ended all that. There were no more secrets. Today, it’s likely that an informed consumer knows more about your product than you do!
The third rebellion started around 2010 and the advent of social media. Historically, a “brand” is what a company told you it was. Advertising disrupted your view that Coke was colored sugar water and turned it into playful polar bears, for example. However, with social media, brand marketing was disrupted because customers owned the conversations. In fact, more sales occur through consumer social posts than traditional brand marketing. This was the end of marketing control.
The Fourth Marketing Rebellion
At the end of the book, I projected that the fourth marketing rebellion would have something to do with biometric data.
I wrote that the next technological revolution would depend on securing mountains of data on personal habits, down to every heartbeat. While consumers are normally resigned to the fact that we’re being tracked all over the internet in exchange for free search and social media, collecting and selling our bodily data might be a step too far.
In my recent post, “Are we creating AI, or are AI Agents creating us?” I summarized a research report on the ethics of AI. A few points pop out for me:
- AI Agents will monitor biometric data, facial expressions, and emotions to determine our state of mind. They will react differently to us if they know we are irritable or sleep-deprived, for example.
- AI Agents will have access to so much personal information that significant new levels of consent and security will be required. The threat level of information being used out of context is extremely high. Since agents will “plug in” to external services, we will place abnormally high trust in our agents and how information is stored and used. A data breach might mean that every fact of our life and health would be available on the web.
- The economic incentive will be to create bots that make the user happy in a way that cultivates dependence. Connecting with a bot in a deeply personal way could adversely affect user well-being and create the risk of infringing on user privacy and autonomy.
- As we become dependent on bots to take over daily interactions, humans will be “out of the loop,” and disconnected from many normal human interactions. If agents are designed to monitor our vital signs and promote “well being,” how is that defined? If we follow a path of automated, programmed self-improvement, are we improving as human beings or conforming to an algorithmic definition created by programmers? Will AI change society based on the coding preferences of developers?
Do you think this would push consumers into a rebellion? I think it is already happening.
Is the fourth marketing rebellion already here?
I can imagine a world where these bots are so useful that we ignore the vast data collection going on. But I think there are two places where we might draw the line:
- If biometric data collection affects how we raise our children. For example, a new AI app called Ursula records a child’s response to information and makes money by interpreting potential emotional problems or learning disabilities to parents. It promises that “no kid will feel alone again.” Are we going to put AI in charge of that?
- People will resist if data collection becomes required to function in society. A recent sign that the fourth marketing rebellion is upon us is that U.S. legislators are pushing for limits on facial recognition data collection at airport security, arguing that facial recognition poses “significant threats to our privacy and civil liberties.”
In the next few years, collecting and accessing customer biometric data could present revolutionary new marketing opportunities for personalization, customized drug therapies, and products that adjust to moods (and change them!). Yes, this is exciting. Yes, this can be profitable. But let’s not lose sight of history and the implications when we cross the line.
A note about that photo: “I am Robert Robot, mechanical man. Drive me and steer me, wherever you can.” These were the words uttered by Robert the Robot, a 1954 tin toy robot produced by New York-based Ideal Toy Corporation. Robert was run via a wired remote control, and about half a million units were sold. Robert is one of the staples of any vintage toy robot collection, with several dedicated fan pages on the web.
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