| Good morning, Marketer, AI can’t compete with human inspirations. With all the data Amazon has at its disposal, you would think they’d have an advantage when it came to selling their own products on their own site. You’d be wrong. At least that’s how I read the company’s decision to get rid of almost all of its house brands, as reported by The Wall Street Journal. In 2020 the big A had more than 45 different brands offering 243,000 different products in scores of different categories. Now it’s getting rid of dozens of them. There are other possible explanations for this move. One, regulatory pressure from the DoJ, which is investigating whether or not the company is a monopoly. Two, who the heck can successfully run 45+ brands? If anyone could, though, it would be Amazon. They have all the computing power, automation and customer data any marketer could hope for. But, as we all know, marketing is a lot more than numbers — even when you have AI. It still takes a human with a feel for the audience, a gut instinct, a flash of inspiration to make the magic happen. Marketing needs you. Constantine von Hoffman,
Managing Editor | 