Scott Brinker and Frans Riemersma have an excellent new report out focusing on major trends in marketing technology. I always think that if you really want to understand how the focus of marketing practice is changing then looking at how technology is deployed in the function is a good place to start.
There was a really useful concept in the report that is particularly useful beyond the domain of marketing technology. The Gartner Hype Cycle has long been famous for plotting the upcoming trajectory of new technologies across the renowned curve featuring an peak of inflated expectation, trough of disillusionment, slope of enlightenment, and plateau of productivity.
The cycle reflects the initial excitement and hype with which the invention of new technologies are met (despite a lack of initial good use cases), the challenging period when value and application is not yet entirely obvious, and eventually the period when the real use cases do emerge, and the true application and value of the technology can be appreciated. The cycle can easily fall foul of bias, over-enthusiasm, being overly specific or too general, or it can misjudge the timing or velocity with which new technologies emerge, but nonetheless the shape of it is a useful way of viewing technology adoption and emergence.
Scott and Frans talk about how the hype cycle is becoming more compressed as technologies and new capabilities emerge into usefulness faster than ever. The obvious example here is ChatGPT which was launched in November 2022 and a year later had around 100 million weekly active users. But they also describe how easy it is to get carried away in the early stages of the hype cycle (we see this a lot in how new tech is often talked about on social media) and consequently to over invest. And then to pull back too far or under invest when the technology hits the inevitable trough of disillusionment.
The risk here is a two-edged sword – invest too much too soon and a company could well waste resources on unproven use cases. Invest too little or wait too long and a business could easily find itself outmanoeuvred by competitors or with notable gaps in its capabilities.
The authors describe a ‘goldilocks zone’ of technology adoption and investment which flattens the curve and means that a company is much less likely to over invest too soon, or miss the boat and end up playing catch up. This has the additional benefit of helping to bring stakeholders on the journey in a way that avoids them hitting the panic button. As always the need is for experimentation and ongoing testing around use cases and applications which can help the business to really understand where the value is and to scale the application of technology in a way that is measured but beneficial. I’ll definitely be using the ‘goldilocks zone’ concept.
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