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26th August 2023 | 10 Minute Read | Rajhev Rajkumar

Software ate the world. Almost. Now AI is eating software.

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The authors, Paul Kedrosky &amp; Eric Norlin, also illustrate, through a practical example, why “it’s possible to write almost every sort of code with such technologies, from microservices joining together various web services (a task for which you might previously have paid a developer $10,000 on Upwork) to an entire mobile app (a task that might cost you $20,000 to $50,000 or more).”&nbsp;They conclude that “for the first time in decades, the technology industry could return to its roots, and, by unleashing a wave of software production, truly create more value than its captures.”

Cheaper, faster, better: software that delivers value

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20th February 2023 | 5 Minute Read | Written by Alice De Souza

Our Top 5 Marketing Campaigns of Chinese New Year: Year of the Rabbit 

This year, Asahi made a creative statement on modern Japanese society with their limited edition packaging. At first glance, the classic bottle is instantly recognisable – but look closer and you'll find an intricate origami rabbit that speaks to both progress and tradition in proud harmony.

5. Asahi

Nike always delivers the goods when it comes to cultural moments and this year is no exception, with the release of their limited edition 'Dunk Low' trainer. From its fluffy swish to the intricately designed soles, it's a fitting tribute that celebrates both nostalgia and progression - from 2011’s Year of the Rabbit-themed design to what we see now. Not only is it aesthetically pleasing but also symbolic of what many are hoping for in this new year; big leaps and boundless potential.

4. Nike

TikTok has done it again - this Chinese New Year, they've proved to be a source of education for young people through their collaboration with actor Andy Lau. The film features an endearing tribute to traditional red envelope giving (Hongbao) but re-centered it around well wishes rather than money. The film demonstrated how communication is valued over commercialism and concluded with a clever reveal of the TikTok logo – reinforcing that in modern times there's no better way to reach the youth than via video platforms like theirs.

3. TikTok

Here we have a brand that was set to take all the success last year, the Year of the Tiger. &nbsp;But instead of endless pursuits for 2023, it seems that Tiger Beer celebrated the achievements of 2022 - a momentous one at that! With an inspiring message they encouraged us to take time out and recognise our achievements so far; each step forward made up their clever connection to the future ahead; The Year of the Rabbit.

2. Tiger Beer

BMW made a huge splash this year with an engaging and unexpected campaign that cleverly took advantage of AI translator mishaps. In particular, the Chinese word Bao Ma - meaning 'precious horse' in English - is often mistranslated as "BMW". This basis for their film revolved around a printing house boss whose new years greeting cards were mistakenly translated to ‘Lucky money into BMW to success’ creating wonderful comedic chaos. Through an ingenious use of accidental language hacking, BMW were able hone in on joy and how it is capable bringing people together during special occasions.&nbsp;

1. BMW

As the dust settles on Chinese New Year it has, yet again, proven to be an opportune moment for brands to showcase their creativity. From eye-catching product packaging to captivating ad campaigns honouring the spirit of celebration, companies were able to leverage Chinese culture in remarkable ways. Here are some shining examples from this year – let these inspiring works serve as an early testament regarding successful marketing strategies during festive periods throughout 2023.

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7th March 2022 | 5 Minute Read 

International Women's Day: Inspirational Women in Tech

Jane Lu’s transformation from corporate accountant to retail technology mogul is a true testament to the power of self-belief. Armed with nothing but her first laptop and some clothing tucked away in her parent's garage, she took an entrepreneurial leap into unchartered territory - online fashion retailing. Her audacity paid off when Showpo became one of Australia's leading internet retailers – shipping affordable fashion worldwide and boasting 1.6 million social media followers! As a CEO and role model to aspiring entrepreneurs, Jane has always advocated for the importance of having fun whilst working hard and persevering.&nbsp;For more information about Jane, head to her <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/janelu2012/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">LinkedIn</a>. She also runs an extremely engaging and insightful youtube channel called <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@thelazyceo" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">The Lazy CEO</a>.

Jane Lu, CEO and Founder at Showpo

At 27, Ella Podmore has already made a huge impact in a male-dominated industry. &nbsp;At university, Ella had an undeniable talent for materials technology which led her to a work placement and a subsequent career at McLaren Automotive. Her innovative work improved the overall performance of their cars by creating lightweight material solutions as the industry moves towards electrification. In addition, Ella dedicates her spare time to changing the status quo by encouraging young women into tech-related careers through STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) initiatives - continuing to be a beacon of light within these sectors. It’s no wonder that she has recently been awarded an MBE (Member of the British Empire) for her services to engineering, innovation and diversity. This goes alongside a multitude of awards that are a testament to Ella's hard work and dedication to changing the norm.&nbsp;Keep up to date with Ella's achievements over on her <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/epodmore/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">LinkedIn</a> and take a look at what she has achieved for McLaren <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rk-qBKHnfa4" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">here</a>.

Ella Podmore MBE, Senior Materials Engineer at McLaren

Melanie Perkins' relentless drive and creativity have propelled Canva to become a $26 billion tech success. Her mission? To provide simpler design solutions for people everywhere - an admirable goal that persevered despite overcoming the odds of 100+ rejections from venture capitalists. It’s inspiring how Melanie’s tenacity has made ground-breaking achievements possible and secured her place as one of the most influential forces within technology today. She is a shining example of never giving up and believing in your ideas.&nbsp;For Canva updates head to her <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/melanieperkins/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">LinkedIn</a>.&nbsp;Watch this keynote <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yn0LNYt25PM" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">video</a> to get a full insight into her journey.&nbsp;

Melanie Perkins, CEO & Co-Founder at Canva

Tamina Pitt is a trailblazer in tech who since joining Google as an engineer several years ago, has been inspiring individuals of all gender and cultural backgrounds to reach for the stars. As an Indigenous Australian herself, she established the country's chapter of the esteemed Google Aboriginal and Indigenous Network - thus opening up incredible opportunities within STEM fields that were once out of reach.&nbsp;Check out Tamina's <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/tamina-pitt-b39b71127/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">LinkedIn</a>.

Tamina Pitt, Software Engineer at Google

Teena Wooldridge is a business powerhouse and skilled leader who works as part of LinkedIn's team to connect businesses around the world with top-notch talent. Not only does she take customer relations very seriously, she also employs innovative ideas in her international pursuits, utilising diversity to drive creativity. With knowledge of marketing, communication &amp; engagement garnered from working at giants like American Express and Telstra, it’s no wonder why Teena has become such an inspiring role model for women across the globe.&nbsp;For updates on Teena's work, visit her <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/teenawooldridge/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">LinkedIn</a> page.

Teena Wooldridge, Director of Marketing, APAC Talent Solutions at LinkedIn

Jacqueline Boyle is the passion, drive, encouragement and enthusiasm behind the APAC partner marketing ecosystem for Salesforce. Within less than 2 years in her role at Salesforce, her impact can be felt and definitely seen (just search #selfieswithpartners to see for yourself!). With the goal of amplifying the voice of her partners, Jacqueline has brought with her an extensive amount of experience from the technology industry - approaching her space with a collaboration-first mindset. She truly brings the community values of the ecosystem to life within all of her partner campaigns.&nbsp;Find out more about Jacqueline's marketing escapades via her <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacsboyle/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">LinkedIn</a>.

Jacqueline Boyle - Director, APAC Partner Marketing at Salesforce 

Sustainable Occasion eGuide

This is not just a how-to book for planning sustainable events. It’s also designed to be a thought-provoker - a conversation starter.

International Women's Day provides the perfect opportunity for us to recognise and honour some of tech’s most inspiring female pioneers. These remarkable women are setting new standards in our industry, embracing equality and paving paths towards a brighter future.

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AI will disrupt software development by decreasing dev costs and increasing dev output. This will radically disrupt software businesses as well as companies supporting the development and sale of software talent. Furthermore, changes to the nature and speed of software product development will affect the way marketers support product research, positioning, marcomms, pricing and so on. I’d love to know how you think it will affect you.&nbsp;A good friend’s son recently completed his Masters degree in Cyber Security. If you’d asked me a year ago about his chances of gainful employment on reaching this milestone I would have bet my house, my car and my private plane that he would be knocking back job offers left, right and centre. Show him the money, money, money.&nbsp;The reality couldn’t be more starkly different. He can’t get even the faintest sniff at a role for love or money. The word on the street is that there’s a whole layer of entry-level software development roles that can be filled by AI at a lower cost and with less training, etc, etc. Remember STEM? Ha ha ha. If only little Johnny had left school at grade 10 and become a plumber. He’d be more likely to own that private plane that I can only dream about.&nbsp;

Hold the phone. What does the future of programming have to do with B2B marketing? Actually quite a lot, in my mind. You know, a butterfly flapping its wings and causing cyclones kinda theory. But stick with me and disagree if you must when we get there.&nbsp;Emad Mostaque, the CEO of Stability AI, who comes across as smart enough to literally have an LLM in his head, said in this interview that there will be no programmers in the next five years. While Emad is thought to be prone to exaggeration by some, this excellent piece by SK Ventures isn’t far off in predicting a world where the cost of software drops to approximately zero.&nbsp; It’s worth reading just for the reminder it provides of the range of factors to be considered in making such a hot take: why software hasn’t eaten the world; software supply and demand and technical debt; technology’s declining cost curves for CPUs, storage and bandwidth; the effect of cost-disease on selected goods and services; the impact of LLM’s on jobs in terms of how Predictable they are (does the same cause lead to the same effect) versus how Grammatical (rules-based) they are; and so on.&nbsp; &nbsp;

The future of programming

Wow. Some nice words there. Roots. Unleashing. Wave. Value. Nice VC-type talk.&nbsp;But is there an implied reckoning of sorts for tech talent and related industries?&nbsp;<ul><li>Entire businesses supporting the development and employment of tech talent could disappear or be severely impacted, from universities to online courses to publishers to online talent matching platforms to recruiters</li><li>Countries like the Philippines and India with huge pools of offshore talent supporting software development, customer services and other grammatical + predictable types of work will need to consider and deliver major reskilling and retooling of their workforce to keep large swathes of the population from becoming unemployed</li><li>While this is a great feel-good list of benefits of AI for Saas products, I think existing software companies will face unprecedented disruption in terms of market dynamics such as competition (new, more capable and agile AI-powered companies coming out of nowhere with better pricing or features, or an offering serving certain customer segments far more effectively and so on), and major shifts to customer landscapes (entire segments going out of business or requiring far fewer seats or not requiring professional services support)</li><li>Additionally, companies will have to cope with the changes to how they manage rapidly evolving product roadmaps and much faster product and dev lifecycles, ever-changing dev resourcing pools, be that AI and/or some form of human oversight, IP, which LLM’ they align with, quality control, security, product/feature launch velocity as well as related impacts to marketing, sales, and other functions. &nbsp;</li></ul>

The software giveth, and the software taketh

While there have been countless articles written about the positive transformational impact of AI on marketing (personalisation, analytics, predictability, etc.), how will these significant changes to how software is developed impact marketers? As a light touch (rather than a deep dive) some areas would include:&nbsp;<ul><li>Managing how your ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) is changing especially where your customers have a skew toward being techie themselves</li><li>Effectively managing your product positioning and communicating/differentiating your USP and value prop in an ever-changing competitive space</li><li>Aligning your product marketing to much faster launch velocity and changing dev lifecycles</li><li>Communicating value and managing pricing in a “zero-cost” world Building effective marketing research practices to suit faster dev cycles</li><li>Communicating “black box” value where a significant part of the benefits your product can deliver is because of hard-to-explain AI&nbsp; Having the skills to manage martech with fewer if any tech resources &nbsp;</li></ul>

And what exactly does all of this have to do with marketing?

How will it affect the market context in which you work (suppliers, customers, partners, etc.) as well as how you work better with other departments and functions and how will it impact the practice of marketing in general? DM’s are open ;-)

What are the other ways in which marketing will be impacted by low-cost, high-speed software development? I’d love to hear your thoughts on this specific factor.

Despite the gloomy take above, this article makes a case for why humans will continue to surpass AI when it comes to some of those good old soft skills, like creativity and innovation and collaboration and communication and so on.&nbsp;It's worth a read for more info on the crucial skills software developers will need as well as a more detailed overview on how AI has impacted software development and some of the popular tools that have been disintermediating developers.&nbsp;It also references a new software dev process for the age of AI by the Director of AI at Tesla, Andrej Karpathy, called Software 2.0. On a more positive note, this article ends with the following call to arms.&nbsp;“Artificial intelligence will radically reshape software development and force software developers to acquire new skills in order to stay relevant. Those who will adapt most successfully to the coming era will get to enjoy an abundance of work opportunities, but the process will require a different mindset than many software developers have today.”&nbsp;&nbsp;