Issue #50: No Touch. No Choice I am obsessed these days with AI, and it's not even because of all the things AI can do, which, even for people who are building AI tools, is impossible to keep up with. I am obsessed because I see the future of the industry I've worked in for the past 20+ years on the cusp of a change that will have a massive impact on a lot of people. I have spoken about the concept of no touch operations in different pieces I've written. Without rehashing all of it, the central principle is simple:
There are pieces of this at work all over the industry:
About the only thing that hasn’t been touched yet (to my knowledge) is fieldwork, but that is easy. Unless they spend a significant amount of money on external sample, the biggest cost most companies will bear is labor. You see where I am going with this. I am convinced that, in the next year or two, the industry (led by its biggest companies) will begin pursuing large-scale transformation programs to implement “no touch operations”—not because they WANT to, but because they cannot afford NOT to. When that first domino falls:
There are companies today that—given a few months and some integrations—could replicate the operational engine of a Kantar or Ipsos and certainly smaller MRAs. That’s tens of thousands of jobs. Let that sink in. I’m not saying it will be easy. In fact, experience tells me that it will be hard, which is why I think firms might try to avoid it initially. Executives don’t like large-scale transformations because they are hard and consume attention and resource from the day-to-day business. They will therefore do everything in their power to avoid them—until they can’t afford to avoid them any more. Now what?Now is the time to begin to pivot. Seriously. What can you do?
You will probably have a couple years before these transformations come to fruition. But it is a matter of WHEN not IF, for there is too much money at stake for them not to. (Incidentally, if you have an engineering background and you are reading this, I would be interested in talking about building such a system. Just respond to the email to get in touch.) People, stuff, travel, reading, and more(h/t to Dan Entrup for the idea)
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On the convergence of execution and leadership. Where doing beats dreaming and integrity drives impact.
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