Marketing Experts Will Be Without Work if They Do Not Learn New Technologies
By 2025, a significant number of marketing experts will lose their jobs to computer programmes that can perform their jobs for them. But those who learn to work with big data and use neurosemantic and social techonology will be able to survive, says Tatyana Komissarova, Dean of HSE’s Higher School of Marketing and Business Development.
Tatyana Komissarova
Within the past two or three years, marketing has seen changes much more consequential than those from the last 20 years combined.
The main reason for this is that artificial intelligence is gradually replacing people in routine marketing operations. AI now performs analytical work, formulates briefs for advertising campaigns, writes texts, and forms advertising modules. Soon it will be formulating marketing tasks and participating in creative problem solving. I-Robots and i-Journalists will soon replace analysts and PR managers, b2b sellers will be out of work, and trading platforms will soon be selling each other standard products without intermediaries.
A discussion forum held at HSE as part of the project ‘Marketing 2020: New Realities in Marketing’ ascertained what new knowledge and skills marketing experts will need to in order to maintain their positions in the work force.
Neurosemantic Marketing
A new trend in marketing, neurosemantic marketing is a fusion of cognitive psychology, neuro-semantics and artificial intelligence. Neurosemantic marketing is aimed at the formation of new customer needs based upon a particular person’s authentic micro-scenarios of behavior in a ‘mosaic of realities’, where the physical world, the ‘fantasy world’ of social media, and the virtual worlds of AR and VR intersect.
By using this software, and not just marketing research methods alone, marketing experts are able to track the path of their customer (the ‘customer journey’) in real time. And it turns out, for example, that the use of a product can be connected to certain moods or situations for the client, so the methods of presenting the product to the client in the morning or in the evening, both in the real world and the virtual world, can be different. And it is neurosemantic marketing that helps us tell a story with every point of contact, create content that is tailored to the time and place of viewing it, or the time of day that the client uses the product.
This marketing model makes it possible to create a composite profile for the likely consumption of a new project and develop new approaches to influencing the consumer under new circumstances.
Working with big data
It is not the first year that the need to form a personalized offer for each consumer has been discussed, but now with artificial intelligence it is possible.
Personification in marketing refers to the process of reaching a specific person in a specific place at a specific time with a specific contextual offer on a convenient device based on flexible data and for a particular channel. It is not possible for a marketing expert to take all of these factors into account at once. This is where artificial intelligence comes to the rescue.
By collecting and analyzing gigantic databases, companies identify new consumer niches and new segments of customers for whom they then create a personalized offer. This is called Data-Driven Marketing. Large companies have already created corresponding special divisions in which new products are created based on big data analysis.
Social technology
Today, working with social networks (social technology) is very common—it helps detect consumer insight in the development of new products, marketing communication and attracting customers, generating and maintaining leads, social commerce and customer service, and developing strategies.
Everybody knows Cambridge Analytica, a private English company that uses data mining technologies (in particular, social networks) in order to develop strategic online communication for election campaigns. It is believed that the company participated in the Trump presidential campaign and helped lead him to victory.
What do we have to do?
Whether we like it or not, new technologies—cognitive, digital, social, and AI—are coming into the marketing sphere and seriously transforming company marketing functions. According to our estimates, traditional marketing experts will encounter real problems in finding jobs as early as 2020. In order to remain competitive on the job market, one needs to master these new technologies.
Universities and business schools are already looking for ways to ensure that their graduates meet the demands of the market. Thus, at the Higher School of Marketing and Business Development, neurosemantic marketing is studied in the Programme ‘Master in Marketing’, and data-driven marketing is studied in almost all programmes, including ‘Brand Management’ and ‘Product Management’. The School is also preparing to launch new modules on social technology. In addition, in the near future we will be opening a programme with an emphasis on the newest marketing technologies that play into all three of these new marketing trends.
Tatyana A. Komissarova
Dean of HSE’s Higher School of Marketing and Business Development
See also:
‘I Admire HSE Students’ Eagerness to Learn, to Discuss, to Broaden Their Perspectives’
Robert Romanowski was a ‘Digital Professor’ at HSE University in November 2021. In his interview for the HSE News Service, he talked about the specifics of online teaching, his course on Strategic Branding, and the skills that are essential for marketing professionals today.
Instagram Micro-celebrities: What Factors Contribute to Online Endorser Credibility and Influence Consumer Behaviour?
Physical attractiveness, high-quality photos, interesting content, engagement with the audience, and subject competence are the key contributing factors to Instagram micro-celebrities' success, according to a study which examines the influence of online celebrity endorsers on consumer purchase intentions.
Imitation Drives Innovation
Creating totally new and exclusive products, business models and technology solutions is not always necessary in today's innovative economy; it is often sufficient to use the knowledge and inventions already available worldwide, according to professor Mikhail Shushkin and associate professor Sergey Alexandrovskiy, researchers at the Department of Marketing, Faculty of Management, HSE Branch in Nizhny Novgorod.
Number of Foreign Professors at HSE Perm Increases
In the new academic year, Aron Spencer (PhD in Management) and Sara Busse Spencer (PhD in Sociology) will teach several courses for Management undergraduates and for students taking the Masters in Marketing. The university has signed international academic contracts with them.
Joint Symposium Seeks to Build Bridges between Russian and Asian Marketing and Management
As part of the XVI April International Academic Conference, HSE hosted a joint symposium of the Global Alliance of Marketing & Management Associations (GAMMA) co-organized with Korean Scholars of Marketing Science. Themed ‘Bridging Asia and Russia in Global Marketing & Management’, the event aimed to promote academic cooperation between scholars working in the fields of marketing and management in Russia and Asia. Professor Olga Tretyak (HSE), Professor Vera Rebiazina (HSE) and Professor Jaihak Chung (Sogang University) co-chaired this joint symposium. The Center for Sustainable Culture & Service of Yonsei University and Korea Economy & Management Development Institute were partners.
‘During a Crisis or Economic Downturn, Marketing Becomes More Important’
Professor Wesley J. Johnston from Georgia State University, College of Business is a keynote speaker at the April Conference seminar Contemporary Management Research in Emerging Markets. He is a Member of the HSE Council and has been collaborating on projects since 2011 with Olga Tretyak, Academic Supervisor at the Faculty of Management Research and Study Group for Russian Marketing Studies 'Modern Marketing Practices'. During a break at the conference Professor Johnston talked to HSE English News service about the benefits for PhD students of participating in conferences, about the functions of marketing and marketing in Russia and about his fruitful cooperation with HSE.
Strategies of Marketing
From November 6th – 26th the HSE Faculty of Management again welcomed Wesley Johnston, Professor at Georgia State University (USA) who this time came to Moscow funded by the Fulbright Senior Specialist programme. What did he and his colleague Olga Tretyak, Head of the HSE Department of Strategic Marketing, manage to achieve during this time?