For decades, marketing strategy has relied on personas.
Age. Income. Lifestyle. Assumptions frozen in time.
But AI is quietly changing what “understanding the customer” actually means. With Google’s new Personal Intelligence, AI can pull data from tools like Gmail, Photos, and Calendar to understand what matters to someone right now, not just who they were yesterday.
This challenges a core assumption in modern marketing that better targeting results from better segmentation.
As AI advances from prediction to real-time reasoning, personas begin to seem blunt, static, and outdated. Not wrong, just insufficient.
Marketing strategy is becoming situational:
– From demographics to context
– From planned campaigns to always-on responsiveness
– From who they are to what they need in this moment
Personas won’t disappear; they will turn into dynamic profiles that update constantly, shaped by intent, environment, and timing.
The competitive advantage isn’t about knowing your customer better than anyone else. It’s about understanding what matters to them right now.