"There's a parasite called toxoplasmosis that rewires the behaviour of cats (and even humans) so they act in ways that help the parasite spread. The cat doesn't know it's infected. It goes about what it thinks, is its business. But often, it is going about the parasite's business instead. Marketing, I suspect, is suffering from something eerily similar."
"The seduction of measurability Technology doesn't just give us new tools; it changes what we see as important. Once dashboards and click-through rates exist, they begin to dictate the questions we ask and the answers we accept. If it can't be measured by the platform, it starts to look irrelevant. If it can, it begins to feel like truth. That is the first symptom of technoplasmosis: a slow shift in our evaluative criteria. We stop asking "Does this build a lasting brand?" and start asking "Will this improve our campaign dashboard next week?""
Big tech platforms and their measurable metrics have reshaped marketing priorities, privileging dashboard performance over creativity and brand meaning. Metrics, dashboards and so-called best practices carry an invisible influence that steers professional judgement toward optimising for platform benefits rather than brand outcomes. Measurability changes what teams see as important, dictating the questions asked and answers accepted, and making what cannot be measured feel irrelevant. The resulting shift feels rational because dashboards appear objective, yet it risks short-term optimisation at the cost of long-term brand building and meaningful creative work.
Read at The Drum
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]