Episode 2222: David Edelman on the dangers and opportunities of personalized technology in our AI age

As a longtime Harvard Business School professor and the former chief marketing officer at Aetna, David C. Edelman is all too familiar with both the dangers and opportunities of personalized technology. In Personalization, his new book, co-authored with Boston Consulting Group managing director Mark Abraham, Edelman focuses on customer strategy in our age of AI. While Edelman acknowledges that there have been dangers with Web 2.0 style products that enables personalization, he is nonetheless cautiously optimist that AI will enable companies to provide hyper-personalized services and products that will ultimately benefit consumers. Rather than the age of surveillance capitalism, then, Edelman believes that AI represents the age of the empowered and happy consumer. Fighting talk from one of the world’s leading marketing mavens.

David C. Edelman has a long history of Personalization work stretching back more than three decades. In 1989, he wrote the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) classic article, “Segment-of-One Marketing,” in which he predicted the possibilities of Personalization. Since then, he has chronicled the evolution of the field, offering the visionary ideas he’s developed as a practitioner and a consultant. David has worked with dozens of companies on Personalization, AI, and Agile marketing at BCG and Digitas before transforming Aetna’s approach to customer experience while serving as the company’s Chief Marketing Officer. His six articles in the Harvard Business Review cover the evolving Customer Decision Journey, the Future of Customer Experience, and the Implications of AI for Management Leaders and Boards. Today, he is an executive advisor and board member to brands and technology providers, is an advisor to BCG, and teaches at Harvard Business School. Forbes has repeatedly named him one of the Top 20 Most Influential Voices in Marketing, and Ad Age has named him a Top 20 Chief Marketing and Technology Officer. A music fanatic and avid tenor sax player, David lives in Cambridge, MA with his wife Miriam and their two labradoodles, where they periodically host their three grown children.

Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.

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