Everyone is looking at AI as the silver bullet to find shortcuts for building business relationships and closing deals. Good luck. I can tell you this: I’ve been working in the supply chain industry for over twenty years, and the notion of quick success is not only dead, but never existed.
The next successful billion-dollar business in supply chain won’t be marketed by software code but built on human interactions.
Nobody wants the hard stuff…
Nobody wants the hard stuff anymore. No one wants to do the hard work of connecting with people, investing in relationships, and creating shared values. Except you can not run the supply chain on an Amazon server or have an online checkout on Stripe. That is the hard stuff.
Many marketers want to build their internal technological capabilities or work with marketing and PR agencies to fully automate content creation, lead generation, customer engagement, public relations, and closing deals without putting in the hard work.
Let’s face it. Technologies will never outdo human connections. We’ve been connecting with other humans for millions of years. It’s our basic instinct. Our tool for survival. It’s hard-wired in our brains, and we can do it better than anything else out there. Technologies are great to enable us to do more and be more, but they will never replace the depth of human connections.
What is the key decision a marketer must make regarding technology?
As a marketer, you have to pick where you can use technologies, including AI, and where you want to rely on human interactions. If you want to do it right, you build relationships and prosper; if you want shortcuts where it matters the most, you don’t.
AI just doesn’t have the “experience” in the complex nature of human connections. But instead, people have feelings, great stories, great products, and great services. And when you combine these, you are in a position to take over any industry.
What key human elements contribute to success in marketing and PR, and how are they compromised by digitalization and automation?
I’m not here to sell PR or marketing or any services. I’m here because customers and providers rely on each other. We build trust, empathy, and a profound sense of belonging, create and share values, which often require vulnerability and an authentic exchange of feelings and ideas to thrive. And when you digitize and automate all or most of the communication, there is no way in hell you gonna get positive results. We are hard-wired to communicate, and when we communicate, we persuade.
You’re working your tail off to build the next great company where generations can work for decades, long after we are all gone. For sure, you want to show everyone in the next generations that you can outscience, outsmart, outtechnology, and outAI anyone on earth. The world has changed a lot in the last few years and decades. In fact, it wasn’t until the 1960s that indoor plumbing—including hot running water—had become common in most urban and suburban homes in developed countries. What hasn’t changed is our biologically rooted need for human interactions.
Who controls the future of businesses and the global supply chain?
Let’s be honest: In high-profile business deal negotiations, people make decisions, not lines of code or businesses. That gives us lots of responsibility and deep satisfaction in creating value in the global supply chain.
In-person industry events are thriving for a reason: The more hands you shake, the more money you make. Let Pesti help you get to those hands at Manifest, reach out to us today.