BRK Limits with Strategy: Data Can Identify People. Relationships Help Us Understand them.

Personalization has become one of the biggest opportunities in marketing, but I think we’ve sometimes overcomplicated what personalization really means. It isn’t simply putting someone’s first name in an email; it’s understanding the person behind the data. What are they trying to accomplish? What frustrates them? What matters to them? Why would they choose your company over someone else?

Technology can help us identify patterns. AI can help us analyze behavior. Analytics can tell us what people are doing. But someone still needs to ask why. That’s where conversations, relationships and experience become so important.

Over the years, I’ve learned that some of the best marketing insights don’t come from a dashboard. They come from listening to a customer talk about their business. They come from a salesperson who has been in the field for 20 years. They come from a client explaining something that no algorithm could have known. That’s what makes marketing human.

The opportunity with AI isn’t to automate every interaction. It’s to help us understand people better so we can create more relevant experiences. Data tells you what people do; human insight helps you understand why. When those two things come together, personalization becomes much more powerful.