Expert sees fusion between technologies, humans

PHD, a global communications planning and media buying firm, has launched its seventh publication, Merge, which dwells on how technology prepares marketers and advertisers for the future with regards to brands and audience engagement.

The Managing Director, PHD Johannesburg, Wayne Bishop, unveiled the book, titled, “MERGE: The Closing Gap Between Technology and Us,” at the 2018 Social Media Week (SMW) in Lagos. He said looking at path towards the future, there is likely to be a fusion between technology and humans which may free us up to live more creative, more efficient and better connected lives.

He noted that as technology advances, marketers and advertisers should look forward to how they adapt to changes in technology and its application to brands, consumers and people within their environment.

He said the five evolutionary stages in Merge include surfacing, organising, extracting, anticipating, and elevating. These stages illustrate our journey from putting information up on screens, to organising that information via search engines, to managing to make sense of all this information as it is extracted. Finally, we look to how AI helps anticipate our needs, which ends with us merging with technology, elevating us as a human race.

According to him, Merge is relevant to Nigeria because of the changes in the economy, the strong entrepreneurial culture and the growth in technological development over the years.

The Managing Director, PHD Nigeria, Dozie Okafor, said at this present stage of technological development, people interact more with brands online and other digital platforms as indicated in Merge.

He said the book will help marketers and advertisers understand the different evolutionary stages as well as their relevance to businesses. It also enables them to understand how they should perceive things and the evolving role they have to play if they want to remain competitive.

Okafor explained that Merge was launched at the SMW because PHD felt it was a platform for a diverse audience, not just marketers and advertisers, but the general public, to enable them understand what the future is all about.