Finally! Technology Becomes Human

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In the old days, conducting a marketing campaign was fairly simple. Driving results was based on influencing your prospective buyer through some form of media seen throughout her day. This media could have been the Internet, TV, radio, in-store, or even outdoor.

And then, along came the smartphone and the tablet and our world was changed forever. We became a world obsessed with marketing less to humans and more to the technology device they had with them. Marketing programs lost their personal edge and strived to become a mention on a device commercial for an app. For as much as technology helped boost accessibility for marketers, it also decreased the human touch we used to include. Had the word "technology marketing" actually meant that marketing to technology and about technology had really overtaken any human marketing we had been doing for so many years?

Yesterday, while doing some research I came across an article from Harvard Business Review that gave me back my hope in marketing to humans. You can see the preview here.

This article leveraged data from a "Seven Shades of Mobile" study, conducted by InsightsNow for AOL and BBDO in 2012 where 24 users completed a seven-day diary and in-depth interviews, 1,051 U.S. users ages 13 to 54 were surveyed, data on 3,010 mobile interactions were collected, and the mobile activities of two-thirds of those users were tracked for 30 days.

Finally! Technology becomes human. This article does a brilliant job of taking the seven reasons why someone uses technology and relating it to human activity. These seven reasons are:

• Self-expression
• Discovery
• Preparation
• Accomplishment of a task
• Shopping
• Socializing
• "Me" time

This insight could very well help change the way we have been marketing our magazine apps, digital content, and products in our tech-driven world forever. Now, we can better integrate with the behaviorally driven techniques, tactics, and funnels that have built industry empires. Once again we can connect with our consumers based on their personal motivation, rather than the device specifics and buttons they push.

I was very excited to see this article and am a huge fan of this approach. I hope you are as well.

Robots image on home page via Shutterstock.