| | August 20199CIOReviewMARKETING IN THE PERSONALIZATION ERA1. Customer intelligence, which focuses on a customer's propensity to buy something2. Content intelligence, which seeks tounderstand how to pair the right content with the right consumer3. Context intelligence, which focuses onother signals like location, time of day and where the ads are appearingWith this construct, Mr. Kamath said that personalized marketing can then be `turbocharged' with machine learning applications that can define higher fidelity consumer segments and make real-time data-derived decisions that simply could not be done before without this philosophy and technology. Kamath sees machine learning as `table stakes' in the personalization era of business and marketing and any business owner who remains `wary' of it probably needs to reassess their fears very quickly if they want to compete in the global marketplace.McKinsey calls this idea of a personalization platform powered by machine learning the "Customer Data Platform (CDP)--a data discovery and `decisioning' platform. The CDP makes it possible for marketers to scale data-driven customer interactions in real time." Fortunately, McKinsey also says, "unlike a wholesale IT transformation, deploying a CDP isn't a replacement of current customer-data systems, but rather an operational solution that can piggyback on existing systems. In our experience, many marketers already have a large part of the marketing-technology equation in house; they're just not using it properly."As Managing Director of AKQA's (a WPP company) Media and Data practice, I agree with both Mr. Kamath and McKinsey in their perspective on the competitive necessity of marketing personalization as deployed through a CDP. Our number one growth area in our practice is working with clients to help them use their marketing technology more effectively. This helps them to harness their first part data more efficiently, apply better business insights, and use programmatic media to deliver more targeted messaging. ConclusionFast moving businesses native to the 21st century have learned to create a virtuous circle, or flywheel effect, by using machine learning and personalization applied at scale and redirected back into their businesses to win in the marketplace.Marketers are now looking at this model and pushing similar technologies and approaches into the marketing suite to create `Customer Data Platforms' (CDPs) that drive more relevant customer experiences and more ROI for their companies.If mass production and mass media powered the economy of the 21st century through low cost distribution of lowest common denominator products, then the 21st century already looks like it will create a new model around consumer-centered personalization at scale and powered by data, machine learning, and the marketing technology that pulls it all together.If they haven't started already, smart c-suite decision makers should start monitoring these trends and make sure they have the right structures, people, partners, and technology to make sure they are prepared for success in he personalization era of the 21st century. If personalization is good business, maybe personalization can also be good marketing
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