I really like this article. Digital has the potential to be one-to-one in real-time, but so many marketers use it as a commercial. I have been working with Adobe and their marketing cloud for a couple of years now and their vision is very compelling. Right now it is just that, a vision, but it is getting closer to reality.

To make such a vision a reality, marketers have to push companies with great visions. The tools can't push the vision, they have to enable the vision. If marketers continue to use these tools to push brands and not relationships, the vision will be wasted.

It’s easy to win “clicks” by titillating people with Kim Kardashian’s naked behind or a list of the world’s cutest human-cat baby unicorn fairies. And it might lend a dreary day a moment of relieved escapism. But it won’t help anyone. To do that, you must educate. Not in the awful, misused corporate sense of the term: dully lecturing them about “product benefits.” But helping them develop the capabilities and skills they’re going to need to live better lives. What will your “digital strategy” help them become better at? Does it have a point? Skiing, dating, cooking, coding, creating, building? If the answer is no, you don’t have a strategy. You have a vaudeville show.