We Forget That Marketing Is Inherently An Artistic Endeavour: Jay Kulkarni, Theorem

Established in 2002, global digital marketing solution provider Theorem offers scaled technology, media, operations, marketing, CRM, and creative solutions – all under a single roof. Over the course of its 20+ years in business, Theorem has continuously delivered quality digital marketing solutions to its clients through shifts in the market and several economic downturns.

BW Businessworld spoke with Jay Kulkarni, founder and CEO, Theorem Inc., to better understand the evolving landscape of marketing and the technologies surrounding the industry. Read on for the excerpts from the interview.

Could you explain how cloud has become an integral part of marketing today?

The adoption of cloud is pervasive across the marketing industry as it continues to reduce the barriers to entry and cost of ownership. Within marketing, there is a lot of mix-and-match between how marketers are adopting cloud based on the industry they are in.

Despite the ever-evolving expansion of available data, cloud has enabled marketers to both analyze large swaths of data thoroughly and store it cost-effectively. Cloud is being leveraged heavily across content networks and is essentially the driving factor for the innovations we are seeing in content engagement. Essentially, cloud utilization is enabling marketers to serve up enhanced user experiences across their omnichannel strategies, from social and video content to static news content and everything in-between.

How has the marketing sector taken to AI?

Of all the industries, marketing may be one of the earliest adopters of AI at multiple levels. Today, AI is becoming embedded across a variety of marketing touch points at various levels in the marketing strategy. At the base level, AI makes sense of the trends. At deeper levels, AI works to make sense of why that trend is happening and is programmed to analyze unique user data to target consumers with a personalized message on a per-person basis.

It is clear that marketers who aren’t adopting AI into their strategy will not thrive in the modern landscape.

But where does the human component in marketing comes in?

At the end of the day, marketing is part science and part art. AI and technology help drive the science element of marketing and the artistic elements are driven by humans. Today, the science part is getting a lot of attention, but the artistic, human driven element will always be necessary within marketing because humans cognizant to emotional elements that AI and Technology will never be capable of replicating. At its core, marketing is driven by emotion and emotional responses. That's why we love art and culture.

As AI evolves to become more and more automated, the science element of marketing will become more streamlined, requiring little to no human intervention. This will allow marketers to focus more on the artistic portion of marketing, creating deeper levels of personalization and engagement with their target audiences.

We tend to forget that marketing is inherently a very artistic endeavor, and the pendulum will swing back, to a place where we realized the true power of human storytelling.

As a follow up to the last question, how will human talent be utilised in marketing as automation becomes big in marketing?

One of the things that came out of the pandemic and the great resignation was that people now have choices. Prior to this period, there was a high chance that people would get burnt out due to the quality of marketing jobs. But now, in the endemic era, we are seeing a rise in the utilization of technology to automate once time consuming, repetitive tasks and streamline workflows across virtual teams. As a result, teams are able to dedicate more of their time to the creative elements of their roles which will enable innovation like we have never seen before.

If the boring stuff goes away, what kind of jobs will humans do in marketing? It would be artistic in nature. It would centre on creativity. This is where I think the industry at large will need to refocus.

There will be a premium on talent as the talent pool becomes smaller. Companies will want that talent, but the talent needs to be very good. Otherwise, we will let the machines do it at some point.

SMEs do not have a lot of capital to spend on marketing but how do you see data and insights and marketing solutions helping SMEs grow their business in India?

The cost of marketing, especially in terms of mobile commerce, has gone down and the barriers to entry are a lot less. It actually helps the small and medium enterprises (SMEs) who are typically mom-and-pop shops or family-run businesses. Underlying all mobile commerce is data and tech. And if they can transact inside of the platforms online – whether it is WhatsApp to enable mobile commerce, or social commerce, marketing can help. A number of small businesses are moving towards this and some already have payment gateways embedded inside of these platforms.

Additionally, technology has made it easier for SMEs to set up campaigns affordably. I predict we will see many SMEs tap into the power of campaigns and that is why a lot of large platforms are pushing into parts of the world where there are a lot of SMEs like in India and Africa. In fact, India and Africa are pioneers in mobile payments.

What marketing trends do you see surfacing in the near future?

Some of the platforms that dominate advertising will get more powerful. Even companies like Apple will make a big push into advertising because their changes to the iOS actually helps them. It might not help others, but it actually helps them.

It is also pretty clear that advertising will become more and more embedded. Advertising as a revenue model has already become popular and it will become more popular in the mainstream. There will come a time where nothing will be free. You may think it is free, but advertising will become more and more embedded inside of platforms with paywalls of some type, at every touchpoint. The birth of connected devices is paving the way for marketing to be embedded into our everyday lives. These devices are evolving to learn our behaviors and preferences, what types of content you consume and when, what you buy and where, which will further enhance personalization capabilities.

While the consumer opinion on data utilization and ownership varies by region, we are seeing a number of regulations surrounding data collection and utilization emerge. We are already seeing it with GDPR. It is more prevalent in the western regions because there is more sensitivity to it among western consumers, but it is setting the tone for the future of global standards. Advertising as a revenue model has already become popular and it will become more popular in the mainstream.