Marketing and Democracy 2030

Let's start with the flock.

Marketing Festival 2024 was for me Tragic in content. I left the lectures after 5-10 minutes. Only Tom Fishburne was able to sustain me with thought and content. Networking fine, content tag.

Marketing Festival 2025 was an order of magnitude better. Networking fine, content fine. Jindra, good job, I look forward to the next time.

The end of the flock, the beginning of the end.

Let's say we have a decade.

My personal apprehension of World War III or some form of coup of the current order after Marketing Festival 2025 has increased significantly.

Three lectures, three thoughts

1. In fact, the current Western workforce does not care much about its internal energy. So he doesn't have it. And without energy, we are unable to change things. We're on autopilot. We have tremendous inertia and we don't look around much. The further west, the more extreme it gets. And a lot of people are under the impression that nothing can be done about it and it just is.
2. Upcoming Gen Z and Alpha are screwed. Isolated, alone, unable to communicate, without friends and partners in the eternal dopamine hell of social networking and online gaming. Yeah, those social networks that we've created for them in the last 20 years and that we, as marketers, support significantly financially. At the same time, younger generations will find it normal to deal with things with physical violence.
3. Marketing as a field will be taken over by AI. We will be in a perfectly optimized world where big brands with big budgets will run AI research, AIstrategy and AI campaigns in total interplay and learn from their mistakes orders of magnitude faster than any person or group of people can. Small brands with small budgets will come under enormous pressure. At the same time, even a generic AI strategy will work better than a human one.

Mark Ritson has access to better tools than us normal marketers. At the same time, he is not an AI specialist, so his prediction that AI will dominate marketing by 2027, I take with a margin. Let's say we have a decade.

Coup?

It's one thing to promote products, another ideas. Political marketing will be dominated by billionaires with access to expensive AI marketing tools. And through the radicalization of the young and the burnout of the old... they are simply rebuilding democracy into their new dictatorship. And they start playing soldiers. With people who lost their jobs and hope for a better tomorrow.

Our brain responds about 3 times more to negative stimuli than to positive ones. So you probably understand that Marketing Festival has quite shaken me up.

No one will tell you what will happen. At the same time, recent signals show that billionaires have the potential and appetite to be dictators. Enough good and expensive Marketing tools will make it even easier than today.

Let's say we have a decade.

What can we little ones do?

1. Take care of ourselves so that we have energy. Let's put that energy into supporting community projects for younger generations.
2. Let's use the next 5-15 years to make the best progress of our organizations. For this we need strategic perspective. The strategy was important, and there was no rush. Now he's in a hurry. Not just the marketing.
3. We can use AI. That the Cutter tells you this is one thing. Even Mark Ritson made this clear to the festival attendees. Deep orientation in AI Tools and competencies, monitoring the situation in AI and continuous change is probably the safest thing marketers can do today.

What can a democratic world do?

1. We can support open-source AI. If progress is to be made, let it be there for everyone and not just a closed group of wealthy organizations. The democratization of AI reduces the likelihood of a third world.
2. We can create an international alliance of states that will systematically regulate large AI labs. Specifically EU-China-US. Will this slow down the development of AI? Unequivocally. Is it wrong? Well... for the owners of those AI companies yes. Not for the rest of us. It just depends on whether you want love or companionship.
3. We can care for the next generation and heal their wounds. Let's build and support local communities. Let's elect politicians who are interested in society, not individuals, especially themselves. (This is going to be challenging in our individualistic Western society... and at the same time it goes.)

I keep my fingers crossed

“The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy. “
-- Elon Musk

(if you don't understand this quote, go back to that part of the newsletter about billionaires and dictatorship)

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Reading for the weekend

Why Techdirt Is Now A Democracy Blog

What's happening in the U.S. and why it's worth watching from a broader context than just “Trump said this today. “