Adverts in our dreams? Marketing is about to get decidedly futuristic

The other is advertising material from Richard F Mackay. Despite never actually buying anything from them, “the country’s largest family-run complete house furnisher” regularly send me letters detailing their amazing bargains. I’ve asked them to stop but they persist. Like the tardigrade, they seem to be oblivious to all force and pressure.

Part of me admires their perseverance. While the world switches to increasingly sophisticated forms to marketing to consumers, they continue with a Luddite approach. I’m pretty sure the letter is produced using a typewriter and a Gestetner stencil duplicator.

Bezos knows your shoe size

When the digital world was in its infancy, I knew someone who had a direct-mail business popping advertising leaflets through random letterboxes. Weren’t they worried about the potential of social media to change things I wondered? Nope, they said, that was just a fad. A few years later they’d gone out of business.

Nowadays you can’t search for summer plants online without being targeted for weeks by social media posts about petunias and cheery videos starring Monty Don. One of the great arguments against the introduction of ID cards in this country was the implications for our privacy. That seems laughable in an age when Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk know everything from your shoe size to your music preferences and the last time you ordered a pizza.

Artificial intelligence is about to change things even further and faster. Futurists reckon within five years we’ll only be getting advertising targeted specifically for us based on previous purchases and what we’ve been searching for and liking online. With visualisation tools that will allow our avatars to virtually try on clothes, the shopping experience is going to be radically different.

It makes sense. At the moment a TV car advert reaches potential buyers but also people who can’t drive, have just bought a vehicle or prefer public transport. Money spent on reaching those eyeballs is money wasted.

Brand ambassadors

Instead it’s far better to focus on those perusing YouTube videos or following motoring journalists who are more likely to make a positive purchase decision.

This is all happening quickly. Even the world of online influencers is changing. Where once brands were prepared to throw money at individuals for a breathless but inauthentic endorsement, now many are moving to brand ambassadors.

Instead of being plucked from “Love Island” or “The Only Way Is Essex”, these real consumers have a long-term relationship with the company or product and represent it in an authentic and relatable way. That’s what consumers want.

The next step will be to target our sleep. At the moment it’s only at bedtime when the relentless barrage of marketing ends. Imagine if our dreams could became the place where we experienced products and services before making purchase decisions after breakfast the next day?

That’s for the future. In the meantime, I’m going to offer my services to Richard F Mackay as a brand ambassador. Having never bought any of their products, I don’t know if they are any good but in the competitive world of home furnishings, for perseverance alone, they deserve to succeed.