Back to the Futile: Episode 2: from efficiency to empathy

Posted by Mike O'Brien on September 10, 2025 in Ai in Marketing, Postcards from the digital frontier | Leave a comment

Can AI ever understand our unique take on life?

Reality today: AI is already embedded in the everyday tools of marketing. Tesco is trialling predictive AI for supply chains and personalised Clubcard challenges. Unilever has built an in-house “Beauty AI Studio” producing creative assets at scale, cutting production costs by 27%. WPP has invested £250m annually into AI and built WPP Open, a proprietary platform. Publicis has launched CoreAI, integrating billions of consumer profiles into campaign planning.

Projection: By 2030, these early moves scale into transformation.

• Tesco could deploy predictive AI across all 3,000+ locations, launch shopping assistants that anticipate needs, and pioneer voice-activated, smart-home shopping.
• Unilever may expand AI content generation across all 400+ brands, run synthetic focus groups testing thousands of product ideas, and even create AI brand managers.
• WPP and Publicis are set to become orchestrators, running AI-powered campaign ecosystems for global clients and training tens of thousands of marketers in AI literacy.

That’s the what.

The why is more profound. This is about shifting marketing from transactions to relationships. From campaigns to conversations. From selling to serving.

In five years, the organisations that win won’t be those with the smartest algorithms. They’ll be those who ask better questions:

• Are we nudging people toward healthier, more sustainable choices?
• Are we creating intimacy at scale without eroding trust?
• Are we using automation to save money, or to create meaning?

Summary: Efficiency is inevitable. Empathy is optional. The choice will define the decade.