Leading with Soul: the Future of Marketing

With the rise of technology, a great amount of wealth was being created by big tech companies like Facebook, Apple, and Amazon. Companies have been focusing on math, calculating numbers in spreadsheets. “the data tell us our customers prefer this…” It seems easier for us marketers to figure out what’s in consumers’ minds. However, with all this data swirling around us, have we lost the human?

This week I attended a webinar “Restoring The Soul Of Business”, featuring Rishad Tobaccowala, former chief growth officer at Publicis Groupe and member of the Management Committee of Publicis Groupe. The Chicago-based advertising veteran spoke about the inspiration behind the book, the importance of balance between creativity and data, and the direction business should go amid the pandemic.

Spreadsheet-only doesn’t work

Data is essential, but in addition, you need culture, people, and storytelling.

“Data-driven” is not a new trend, it is a new common. “Best numbers, best qualities” is the rule of every industry. This is how most companies work now. It’s backed by a board of members who want to see the profits rise and stock value increase. Without data, it’s all fictitious and intangible.

When it comes to marketing, especially online, there are many variables. Data helps us understand why certain content is under or over-performed. Data empowers us to explore and understand the unknown. We start to learn about consumer behavior just by tracking their experience on Amazon.

However, when you start focusing on the numbers, you become very short-term oriented. When everything is number, you lack humanity. A successful company has to combine data, technology, and emotion.

Creativity is the king

“Marketing should be automated in the next 10 years. I don’t doubt it.”

Now we can easily develop A/B testing to find out whether it’s the copy or the artwork that brings the flow. Building on previous data, the program can even predict and choose the best idea for your campaign. This changes the whole game for marketers. Sometimes I choose one idea over others simply because I like it and my colleagues like it too.

The good news is programming can pick the best idea but it cannot generate the idea itself. The success of many great companies has been built on similar factors. First of all, they were innovators. They are ideas-driven companies and not data-driven companies. iPhone is an idea. A social network on Facebook is an idea. The next step is building business models on a combination of data and networks.

Stay human amid the chaos

Tobaccowala also talked about the profound effect coronavirus will have, predicting “a time of amazing anxiety”:

It’s much more than a one-time systematic shock… It’s a broader and deeper thing than anything that has gone before. In the new world, he says, business people are going to have to “lead with soul”.

We are now in the first pandemic of the digital age. It’s a global crisis. In Mandarin, the word for “crisis” is represented by two characters: one meaning danger and another meaning opportunity. There is an opportunity for businesses to show up more human than ever. Juice Press, as I wrote in my previous blog, works with FounderGive to support local communities nationwide. Corona Beer’s response, as another example, was genuine, empathetic, and human. Suddenly, Corona wasn’t a punchline to a bad joke. It fostered a deeper connection between the brand and customers.

In these uncertain times, brands can be either destroyed or elevated. It’s time for humanity, in all its forms. Leading with and leaning into humanity, the intangibles that connect us all are the soul of business and marketing.