what marketing looks like for the new year • Marketing • Forbes México

In a world marked by the abundance of data and the advancement of artificial intelligence, marketing professionals face an unprecedented challenge and opportunity. The paradox is that never before have we had so many signals about what consumers do, say and want, but the real challenge is not in generating more information, but in interpreting it with strategic and human criteria.

As Seth Godin, acclaimed American author, recalls, “Our job as marketers is not to find customers for products, but products for customers.” This phrase summarizes the transition from transactional marketing to marketing as a discipline of value creation. But it also confronts us with a more demanding role: it is not enough to follow what the data suggests. This is where strategic creativity comes into play: the famous example attributed to Henry Ford, founder of the company that still bears his name: “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have told me faster horses.”illustrates how the raw data, complaints about the slowness of quadrupeds, would have led not to the automobile, but to an incremental improvement of the the state in which. Innovation requires seeing beyond what the user expresses.

In this sense, marketers have a triple responsibility:

1. Filter with market criteria. Not everything that the data suggests can be transformed into a viable product: the conditions of demand, infrastructure or economic sustainability may be lacking.
2. Add creative vision. The observed insights must be combined with intuition, imagination and strategic design. AI can help us discover patterns, but translating them into valuable experiences requires sensitivity and vision.
3. Assume ethical responsibility. At a time when technology allows us to design almost anything, we also have an obligation not to create products that, even if they sell, are harmful or morally unacceptable. In fact, business decisions are at the same time social decisions in a world as interconnected as today’s: business is never a zero-sum game.

Sensitive intelligence: what marketing looks like for the new year

Ultimately, the role of the marketer is not to blindly follow the data, but to be a strategic and ethical curator: someone who selects which signals are worthwhile, creatively transforms them into ideas, and filters them with a sense of responsibility towards customers and towards society.

Uber is a paradigmatic example of how this philosophy can materialize when the behavior of customers and users is carefully observed. Many of its most innovative services were not born from brainstorming in an office, but from listening to its clients interacting with the platform and their partners (the drivers).

The company has been able to convert customer service and active listening into a lever for innovation. As Belén Romero, General Manager of Uber for the Andean, Caribbean and Central America region, mentions, “it is not just about analyzing quantitative metrics, but about observing patterns in the needs of users and in the daily lives of driver partners. We think about ways to resolve latent demands, we collect qualitative insights about the mobility patterns of cities and that data, together, allows us to create high-impact services for regions such as Latin America and the Caribbean.”

In this way, the company transformed data into actionable intelligence, and intelligence into high-impact services. In this sense, some of the most popular services in Latin America have been developed precisely following this ‘bottom-up’ innovation process.

Shipping on motorcycles. Analyzing support conversations they discovered that users were already using Uber to send packages. They saw that doing it by motorcycle was more efficient and formally launched the service.

Uber Moto. They detected that people were not only sending packages, but also getting on the motorcycles themselves. The result: a product designed for cities with high traffic and a need for cheaper options.

Uber Pet. It arose because users requested authorization via chat to travel with their pets. Today it is a visible and direct option in the app, without friction.

Also at a global level, Uber has ‘discovered’ insights that have activated the internal innovation process and which have then led to launching innovative services such as the following:

Uber Teens. They observed that teenagers used their parents’ accounts. The solution: profiles for minors, with security and traceability.

Experience for Seniors. They identified that many interface functions were superfluous for older adults. They simplified the UX to increase usability in this segment.

Group Trip and Uber Share. Trip analysis showed that friends were sharing Uber, making stops and then having to pay each other back. The product made this behavior official: costs are now shared from the application itself. Additionally, at peak times, they observed similar trajectory patterns that inspired more efficient ride-sharing solutions.

And Uber is not the only company that is embracing this model in a systematic and structured way. There are several examples of how close observation of customer behavior translated into powerful innovations:

Netflix and the “Skip Enter” button. In 2017, Netflix detected a recurring behavior on a global scale: users were manually advancing the opening credits to go directly to the content. From that observation he launched the “Skip Enter” button, which today is pressed more than 100 million times a day. A simple experience (UX) design tweak that demonstrates how active listening and real-time usage data can drive exponential impact on satisfaction and retention.

Coca-Cola and Freestyle machines. In 2009, Coca-Cola launched its Freestyle machines, an innovative digital dispenser that allows you to choose from more than 100 drink combinations. Behind its apparent simplicity, the project introduced mass customization at the point of sale and, above all, a new source of consumer data: each selection reveals preferences and patterns that the company analyzes to develop flavors and products that then reach the shelf. More than a marketing exercise, Freestyle is an example of how to use technology to learn directly from customer behavior.

Nike y la plataforma Nike By You. When Nike launched NIKEiD in 1999 (today evolved into Nike By You) it transformed a niche phenomenon into a global personalization model. What was born as a digital tool to design unique sneakers became a hybrid system that combines online and physical store customization, expanding the emotional relationship between brand and consumer. In a decade marked by the search for exclusivity, Nike understood before anyone else that true luxury is co-creation.

The strategic lesson:

All of these examples remind us of something fundamental, that the best marketing and product innovations are born from careful observation of what is already happening in the market. In the era of AI and abundant data, the challenge is not to accumulate information, but to interpret it with human sensitivity to translate insights into value propositions.

Uber has proven that listening and observing is worth more than guessing. And for us, marketers, the task is: stop obsessing about selling what we have and start designing what people really need: from making people want things to making things that people want.

The author has served as CEO of three international marketing firms, collaborating with more than 300 companies globally. In addition, he is a Marketing Professor, lecturer and advisor on Corporate Innovation, Leadership and Marketing. Recognized by Thinkers50 as one of the world’s leading thought leaders, he has co-written three business books with Philip Kotler.