Good Bye Segmentation- Hello Individuals

The article “IBM’s CEO on data, the death of segmentation and the 18-month deadline” makes points that I think are critical for us to understand in order to predict challenges for marketing in the future. The main premise of the article points out the velocity, volume, and veracity of information means that we cannot group customers into neat segments; rather we must begin to look at them each as individuals. There were a few points in this article I had to read over twice to really sink in. Think about the points below and how their meaning changes our assumptions about marketing and communications:

- “Every two days the world creates as much data as it did through all of time until 2003. We’re used to data that fits nicely into rows and columns… but 80% of what is collected today is unstructured.”

- "By 2015, 80% of all data will be uncertain. CIOs can’t write enough programs to get through this data. Just in time a new generation of computers are coming out."

- "Today there are two xenobytes of data [created every day]… By 2015, it will be 40 times that amount."

It is difficult to comprehend how rapidly these changes will take place, but they are happening all around us. As the article points out, the clever marketers will try to be ahead of this curve and begin treating their customers the way they need to be treated in the near future.

While this is easy to say, I anticipate changing from the segmentation to the individual model will be very difficult. There will be challenges related to resources and well established mindsets. Customer segmentation allows for one employee to be able to manage a large amount of customers. If an employee is an expert on that one segment, then he or she can easily work with the dynamics within that segment and be effective. However, if that model of customer segmentation is no longer relevant and companies must look at customers as individuals, it begs the questions: how on earth can any company with limited resources and a large customer base be effective? Large corporations with millions of customers will likely have a harder time adjusting to this changing model. I believe these companies must expediently work to institute the infrastructure to allow for this marketing today so they can successfully implement it in the future.