The era of Quantum Marketing

We have taken a quick look at the first four paradigms. Now let’s look at the fifth paradigm of marketing that we are just entering. The fifth paradigm of marketing is what I call quantum marketing. This paradigm is being driven by exponential disruptions in consumer’s lives caused by a deluge of emerging technologies. Just imagine. The preceding paradigms, each one of them, was driven by a couple of technological revolutions, but now we’ll be seeing literally more than two dozen new technologies, each with a humongous disruptive potential, coming at us like a torrent. We will get into these in a short while, but the question is, why do I call it quantum marketing?

Well, in general terms, quantum, the word quantum, it describes an unmeasurable jump in speed or volume. It is a dimensional leap forward, i.e. a quantum leap. Let me give you an example to make it clear. Physics, as we all know, is the science which helps us understand how things around us work in the physical world. We have laws of gravity, electricity, magnetism and so on to help us understand those various phenomena so that we can effectively use that knowledge to take advantage of them. However, with the overall advancement of technologies, mankind could now peer into outer space, or they could look inside of atoms or be able to really observe objects that are traveling almost at the speed of light.

In all these cases, classical physics simply broke down. It just couldn’t explain this phenomena, so quantum physics was born, and it addressed each one of these very, very effectively. So where classical physics failed quantum physics came in. In much the same way, classical marketing is already breaking down and will simply not be able to handle the fifth paradigm. Enter quantum marketing. What quantum physics is to physics, quantum marketing is to marketing. Now let’s take a look at the emerging landscape that you will need to operate in, in the fifth paradigm. While my book, “Quantum Marketing,” has many examples, I’ve just picked up a few to illustrate this paradigm for you here. The first one, I would say, is infinite data.

There are now sensors in every single device

that you can imagine that touches every part of our lives: washing machines, dishwashers, thermostats, home thermostats for temperature control, smart watches, smart rings, fitness trackers. Think about the Apple Watch and how it gathers health data or the Oura Ring, which can track your sleep, Google Nest smart home thermometers that learn how warm you like your home. These sensors collect unprecedented levels of data from every single action at every single moment. If marketers can use this quantum-data explosion, they can gain incredible insights that will really propel the effectiveness of their campaigns to extraordinary levels and also increase the relevance of those offerings to consumers in an unprecedented fashion. Let’s take a second area, artificial intelligence.

AI is important because it can look at endless droves of data from a multitude of sources and make sense out of them. The best part is that AI can make these insights available to us in almost real time if not real time so that we are able to act on those insights in real time immediately. That will be very disruptive. AI will disrupt everything in the world of marketing. Let’s look at another area, blockchain. Now blockchain is a little bit of a scary term for many people, but in very simple terms if you see, this is just a shared book or a ledger that allows you to record transactions and track the assets in a business network.

Why is this important for marketers? It seems more like accounting because today there are a ton of middlemen across every part of the marketing industry, and there is no adequate transparency. A marketer who runs a digital ad, for example, needs to know if the ad was properly served. Was it properly viewed and actually viewed by a human being and not by a bot? And they need to have a confirmation that they’re only paying for what they should be paying. Right now, this requires a variety of companies to verify this, but blockchain offers a chance to create a new way of working.

Blockchain gives advertisers real knowledge over which part of marketing and what aspects of marketing are working or not working. It can be game-changing, and already there are many pilots happening around. Another area of the fifth paradigm is augmented reality. Augmented reality will enable marketers to add an additional layer or many layers of information onto the physical or virtual experience. Say for example I’m walking down a street.

I can look at my phone, and on my screen, I can see what are the shops up ahead, which I cannot see physically, but I can see it on my phone in a way that the additional layer of information is overlayed on top of the physical view that I have right in front of me. For example, if I’m looking for a coffee shop, it shows me you go 10 shops ahead. There is a coffee shop on your right or where there is some special offer or where my Mastercard offers me priceless experiences. From a marketer’s perspective, augmented reality can take consumer engagement to an entirely different level.

Another important technology that’s going to be widely prevalent in the fifth paradigm is virtual reality. Now apparently the virtual-reality-enabled headsets are a little bulky and unwieldy to some extent, but when they become more compact and more user-friendly, they will become mainstream. So for example, if a travel company’s trying to market a destination, now they can write about it, which is the very, very old way of doing it. They can put a picture of it, which makes it more impressive because they say a picture is worth 1,000 words, and on top of it, if you put a video, it’ll be even more compelling.

Around this trajectory, if you add a VR, the entire impact because of the immersive experience that the consumer goes through will be at a completely different level. Right now, you can really roam the whole world using these VR headsets, but once they become much more sleek, much more compact, much more user-friendly, you will see that they will take a deep root in the culture, and they will play a humongous role for marketing.

Another area is 3D printing. This is at a relatively early stage, but 3D printers are becoming more widespread and much more versatile. 3D printing will allow things to be printed on-site where they are needed as opposed to being shipped from somewhere else, and it could transform global supply chains and businesses significantly, so the next area is Internet of things. Almost every appliance today is connected to the Internet. Mastercard famously said, “Every connected device is a commerce device.” I will go a step further and say that every connected device is a marketing device. Consumers can talk to an increasing range of objects in their everyday lives and have them talk back.

This would be a new media and a new area for marketers to use and for consumers to enjoy. And then there are a ton of other new technologies like robotics, drone deliveries, autonomous vehicles, smart speakers, wearables. All these developments and many more are coming at us in a torrent. The era of quantum marketing is one of disruption. You need to develop a mind-set to make the most of this incredibly exciting time as a marketer. You can find a lot more detail on each one of these areas in my book, “Quantum Marketing.”