"Ego Automate, Ergo Sum" : How automation makes Marketing more human — by Yagiz Yigit

Ego automate, ergo sum (I automate, therefore I am). Descartes might not approve, but bear with me. Let me be clear about this: I am not suggesting that our existence depends on automation. Quite the opposite. I am arguing that automation empowers us to be more human. How?

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Let me explain.

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The Shallow Work Trap

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Have you ever spent your mornings copying and pasting data between platforms? How many times have you found yourself devoting your afternoons to manually adding information to spreadsheets? You know what I am talking about, right? Of course you do. I am talking about the work that produces nothing of value. Cal Newport calls this "shallow work" (Wharton Work/Life Integration Project, 2016). Let's be honest: we all go into unnecessary meetings, hop on redundant calls, and prepare routine presentations. We kind of have to. But do not fool yourself - this is not "deep work." Newport defines deep work as focused, undistracted attention on cognitively demanding tasks (Wharton Work/Life Integration Project, 2016). Cognitively demanding! That is the key phrase. The work that requires your full reasoning and capacity for insight.

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Take marketing. What do you call sending individual follow-up emails, one by one, checking if each person opened the last message before composing the next? Shallow work, right? Marketing automation is what liberates us from such mundane tasks. Let's call it what it really is: we spend our human intelligence on tasks that do not require it. So is it not time we turned around the narrative that automation removes the "human touch"? In fact, it gives us back time to focus on deep work. It allows us to be more present. Newport argues that deep work creates massive amounts of value that cannot be automated, cannot be outsourced (Wharton Work/Life Integration Project, 2016). So every hour you spend on dull tasks is an hour stolen from work that actually matters. An hour stolen from your praxis.

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Reclaiming Praxis: What Makes Us Human

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Have you heard of "vita activa"? It is Hannah Arendt's theory that three fundamental activities define our being-in-the-world: labor, work, and action (d'Entrèves, 2024). Action - or praxis - is the meaningful human activity. It represents our creativity, our genuine connections. Arendt argued that we are most fully human when engaged in action: when we think, create, connect, speak (d'Entrèves, 2024). This is what defines us as human. In marketing, it means building authentic relationships. It means crafting emotional stories. It means understanding what moves people and why they make the decisions they make.

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Labor, on the other hand, represents the repetitive tasks. It is cyclical, but it leaves nothing lasting behind. You do it, then you must do it again. Data entry does not transform you. Customer conversations do. So ask yourself: would you rather perform manual lead scoring or interview your customers? What feels more rewarding: managing lead forms or crafting brand messaging? Do I have your attention? By refusing to automate, you are making your marketing less human, not more.

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The Data Speaks: Automation's Real Impact

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Let's get into the specifics: 74% of marketers report time savings as a result of automating repetitive tasks, which translates into 6+ hours of savings per week on routine tasks (Firework, 2024). The takeaway: marketing automation is a prerequisite for deep work.

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Here is the most compelling evidence: 78% of successful marketers say marketing automation is the key to their success, allowing marketers to focus on strategy and creativity rather than manual tasks (WinSavvy, 2024). The takeaway: marketing automation frees you for action.

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Wait, what "action" are we talking about? We are talking about taking a step back to identify patterns and designing thoughtful and intentional experiences. Remember this: automation can execute tactics by collecting and organizing data, but it is humans who set the direction by interpreting the data and finding meaning. Knowing what not to automate is as important as knowing what to. Automate the mechanical to create capacity for the personal. Not the other way around.

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This brings us to perhaps the most misunderstood aspect of automation: the personalization paradox.

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The Personalization Paradox

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If we get a marketing campaign with no personalization, as customers we get disappointed. It is something we have come to expect (McKinsey, 2021). Automation can be harnessed as a powerful tool to allow us to personalize our customers' experiences and drive engagement.

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Here is the problem though - we have all had that moment where we have been talking to a friend about a specific product, and suddenly you get ads on every platform for that product. It feels creepy, right? Or when you look at a product once for ten seconds, and for the next month you see ads everywhere for it, as if it is stalking you. Personalization can become so specific it feels intrusive.  

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We have discussed how the lack of automation constricts us so we miss out on valuable insights. Automation leads to personalization, but we must discuss the other side: if you over-automate and over-personalize, you will miss out on valuable insights.

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Wait, but that is the same result! Indeed, both extremes lead here. If you automate the personal connection, you become less adaptable to a customer's needs, similar to over-fitting a regression model. It is easy to miss collective patterns when you fixate on putting customers in small, tidy boxes. I mentioned how ads can feel invasive, but there is a risk of missing entirely as well. If it is inaccurate, it feels like it was meant for someone else.

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This is the paradox with over-personalizing: too much and it feels less personal. Not only do you risk your customer feeling like a data point, but you begin to see your customer as a data point. Notice how I keep mentioning how personalization makes a customer feel. If we automate labor we can focus on the emotion, but if we automate the praxis, what is there to focus on?

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There is no universal rule to optimize the level of personalization, so we must use context to creatively strategize. In other words, there is no way to effectively automate this!

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Therefore, I Am

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"Ego automate, ergo sum" - I automate, therefore I am. This is not about celebrating automation over humans. It is about recognizing that automation allows us to be more fully human in our work. When we automate the mundane, we create space for creativity. When we automate data processing, we create capacity for insight. When we automate repetition, we create room for genuine personalization.

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The marketers who embrace automation are not becoming less human. They are reclaiming their humanity from the mechanical tasks that were draining it. In an age of automation, the most human thing you can do is recognize which tasks do not require your humanity. Free yourself to focus on those that do. You automate not to replace yourself, but to become more fully yourself.

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That is not a contradiction. That is the future of marketing.

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Acknowledgments

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Special thanks to Julia Greene, a first-year master's student based in Madrid, for developing "The Personalization Paradox" section of this article.

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References

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d'Entrèves, M. P. (2024). Hannah Arendt. In E. N. Zalta & U. Nodelman (Eds.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2024 Edition). https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2024/entries/arendt/

Firework. (2024). 80 must-know marketing automation statistics to supercharge your campaigns in 2024. https://firework.com/blog/marketing-automation-statistics

McKinsey & Company. (2021). Next in Personalization 2021 Report. https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/growth-marketing-and-sales/our-insights/the-value-of-getting-personalization-right-or-wrong-is-multiplying

Wharton Work/Life Integration Project. (2016). Cal Newport on deep work. University of Pennsylvania.

WinSavvy. (2024). Marketing automation statistics for 2024: Efficiency and growth. https://www.winsavvy.com/marketing-automation-statistics-for-2024-efficiency-and-growth/

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About the author: This article was written by Yagiz Yigit, an expert in digital transformation and innovation management with over a decade of experience leading transformative initiatives at Fortune 500 companies. He holds a BSc and MBA from Bentley University and is currently pursuing a PhD in Innovation Management. Yagiz is a certified instructor in Lean Six Sigma, Design Thinking, and Agile methodologies, and he teaches in the International MSc in Data & AI for Strategic Management on Albert School’s Madrid campus.