The first opinion piece by anyone in a brand new publication is almost always the origin story of how it all began. I have something slightly different in mind.

A few weeks into CXpose.tech, and I’’m learning lots. It has not all been about marketing, even though marketing technology is what the new magazine is about. I’ve been hearing lots of thought leadership about data, artificial intelligence, data management, data analytics, technologies, strategies, guiding principles, and more.

To be honest, it’s not all martech talk, but rather the enablers and hurdles to cross for wider adoption, right? There are even all the different nuances that marketing brings because of the wide range of audiences it addresses – it’s mind-boggling. It might even be safe to say that new audiences to market to, are being discovered on a regular basis.

As Lynn and I interview our pioneer batch of leaders and experts, I find myself getting pulled into all different directions – that’s how diverse their insights, experiences, and knowledge are. Each unique in how they have progressed in their careers, and each bringing unique perspectives about how they view the landscape.

But a few things remain constant, or have come to mind (for me, at least).

1. The pandemic accelerated the digital transformation. IT, data, and digital projects had to speed up because social distancing and a crippled travel industry necessitated remote working and different ways of collaboration, as well as work and project executions using digital means. Organizations that had events as part of their marketing mix, for example, turned to online events platforms that tried to mimic physical on-site events. Lynn also brought up the matter of a marketer’s identity, which may have subtly changed over the course of the past few years.
2. We are right smack in the middle of an AI revolution for marketing, though mostly for automating mundane tasks and content creation. Generative AI is exciting because of what it can enable for content creation and, yes, even how life-like and ‘autonomous’ chatbots are when interacting with customers. But there are many more use cases that have yet to gain mainstream acceptance, or have yet to be discovered.
3. AI is not going to replace the human touch, anymore than ChatGPT is going to replace code developers. Instead, new types of skills like prompt engineering will become highly useful which led many of our experts to say, it’s not AI that will take over your job, but the person who learns how to intelligently and strategically use AI.
4. Carefully laid out strategies to leverage data analytics and AI and generative AI come to naught without the all-important data management piece. Especially for organizations with many departments, or lines of businesses, being able to pull data from all these different sources to generate insights and emerge a single version of truth for the whole organization, cannot be understated. Also, data governance and ethics are so, so important. The one-hour sessions that we have had so far are not enough to fully explore the breadth and depth of governance and ethics for AI and generative AI. There is latent demand for a conversation (or few) that can fully crystallize what these new technologies mean, and how the many different industries and functions in an organization can harness it successfully and sustainably.
5. Marketing is an art, and in the past decade it has become rather science-driven with data, analytics, performance measurement, and KPIs to achieve. With the advent of automation, analytics, and generative AI, there is a sort of anticipation for the marketing pendulum to swing back once more to being more art-driven and leveraging human elements like creativity, imagination, and emotions. 
6. Convenience and instantaneous gratification aren’t the only considerations for a great customer experience. Overt (creepy) or subtle marketing tactics, and how transparent data collection methods are for example, also matter. 

These are the ideas that I have gathered, to date. More specifically, this is what a nifty tech tool surfaced for me when I inputted all the transcripts generated by another nifty tech tool. Isn’t technology great??

SUMMARY

There are many more expert insights that emerged over the past few weeks during our interviews. Do you have any that you feel have been overlooked? Marie Pettersson, our first CXpose.tech interviewee brought up a great point – AI and automation does not tell us anything that we do not know.

What would you like to add, or think that this enterprise tech journalist should know while foraying into this strange territory called ‘B2B marketing’?