A short tribute, thinking about change and luck, the rise of the marketing data platform and its accompanying AI elements, and how to think about hiring in marops for first time VPs.
Regarding MDP/CDP and everything in between, don’t you think we are ready to just change the way we do marketing all in all. I feel we are close to the state of stop creating rule based journeys and experiences and have AI create custom and personalized journeys for every person that meets their data/behavior and catered for them. Everything from their preferred channel, imagery, copy, time of day for engagement, their budget and interests?
Thanks for the condolences- tough week but moving through it.
RE: MDP CDP… We are totally ready to change the way we are doing marketing, but I don’t think anyone really knows how yet.
The idea of AI creating journeys and experiences is fractured: It either needs to live in a 3P or 1P platform where you have control (content, audience, executing the thing) or its distributed and that means your systems need to support platform APIs with MCP.
The former assumes that big vendors like Braze can build a sustainable, well articulated, and highly polished all in one solution. I’m skeptical of this. The road to the all in one marketing dream is littered with failed saas companies. Too big = solution compromises.
The latter assumes that vendor companies will build or offer APIs to take action outside the platform AND that those can be configured to MCP. Take an example, Hubspot lets you query CRM data in GPT, but they dont let you send a full fledged email marketing campaign via the MCP connection. Why? Because the email marketing send is a huge part of the value of the platform. If they pulled it off platform, it begs the question of whether you need the tool at all.
This isn’t new either - people have been promising orchestration and journey building (with and without AI) but the limitation has always been the underlying 3Ps and the availability of APIs to perform the action or not.
Many exist, but if just one API doesn’t exist for just one capability, you can’t have an omnipotent AI marketing decisioning platform, regardless of how you want to build it or buy it.
This was a very profound and philosophical read, thank you for sharing such personal experiences and insights. I also really enjoyed the Marketing Data Platform and how it may play out with the future of marketing work, looking forward to reading more!
Sorry about your loss….
Very sorry about the dawg…
Thanks James. Sucks. This contract we make with life when we get them is that we outlive them.
Sorry for your loss!
Regarding MDP/CDP and everything in between, don’t you think we are ready to just change the way we do marketing all in all. I feel we are close to the state of stop creating rule based journeys and experiences and have AI create custom and personalized journeys for every person that meets their data/behavior and catered for them. Everything from their preferred channel, imagery, copy, time of day for engagement, their budget and interests?
Thanks for the condolences- tough week but moving through it.
RE: MDP CDP… We are totally ready to change the way we are doing marketing, but I don’t think anyone really knows how yet.
The idea of AI creating journeys and experiences is fractured: It either needs to live in a 3P or 1P platform where you have control (content, audience, executing the thing) or its distributed and that means your systems need to support platform APIs with MCP.
The former assumes that big vendors like Braze can build a sustainable, well articulated, and highly polished all in one solution. I’m skeptical of this. The road to the all in one marketing dream is littered with failed saas companies. Too big = solution compromises.
The latter assumes that vendor companies will build or offer APIs to take action outside the platform AND that those can be configured to MCP. Take an example, Hubspot lets you query CRM data in GPT, but they dont let you send a full fledged email marketing campaign via the MCP connection. Why? Because the email marketing send is a huge part of the value of the platform. If they pulled it off platform, it begs the question of whether you need the tool at all.
This isn’t new either - people have been promising orchestration and journey building (with and without AI) but the limitation has always been the underlying 3Ps and the availability of APIs to perform the action or not.
Many exist, but if just one API doesn’t exist for just one capability, you can’t have an omnipotent AI marketing decisioning platform, regardless of how you want to build it or buy it.
Great food for thought here.
This was a very profound and philosophical read, thank you for sharing such personal experiences and insights. I also really enjoyed the Marketing Data Platform and how it may play out with the future of marketing work, looking forward to reading more!