Software has consumed every function it could reduce to a rule, but marketing was never a rule (Copy)
Evolution of software
Software and services are merging. Thus far, software has aimed for autonomy across functions, starting with sales, operations, accounting, bookkeeping, and back-office operations. The purpose of software wave 1.0 was to digitize manual operations across industries, starting with software delivery and services. Post-2010, we saw the emergence of products capable of driving outcomes in various industries with considerable success.
Emergence of marketing tools
Marketing is one function that saw a late emergence of tools. It started with Adobe Photoshop 1.0, which aimed to execute creatives better, followed by tools designed to find new audiences, identify cross-border lookalike impressions, and manage personalized targeting and retargeting.
Early performance marketing days
Surprisingly, this vertical was primarily innovated by large platforms like Meta, Google, and Amazon, which built deep networks of ad optimizations for merchants to sell products globally. 2024 stood out as one of the most important years for advertisers, as performance marketing was transformed by AI. Meta introduced "Andromeda," which shifted the focus from ad optimization to creatives as the next wave of retargeting.
Andromeda for consumer brands
The purpose of Andromeda was to build an internal targeting engine capable of finding audiences based purely on creatives. While this made AI for performance marketing excellent at delivery, it was terrible at explainability. Imagine two similar creatives performing completely differently across two distinct campaigns.
We knew something significant would be built in this space, and at Clevrr AI, we had the potential to build a fully autonomous tool. We started with design partnerships across brands to build a tool capable of autonomous execution. After these design partnerships and receiving early support from consumer brands, we focused on executing a memory, reasoning, and execution layer for performance marketing teams, turning signals into actions before revenue leakage compounded
It looked like a great definition for an AI company being built in San Francisco. We spent a lot of time enriching our proprietary context layer with over 11,000 data points - covering industry, sub-category, macroeconomic conditions, historical data, customer intent, forums, sales, and competitors only to realize that marketing, unlike other functions, was never a zero-sum game.
Software is eating the world
Marc Andreessen once said, "Software is eating the world." Honestly, software has consumed every function it could reduce to a rule, but marketing was never a rule.
Bill Bernbach, one of the pioneers of creative advertising, said that persuasion is not a science, but an art. It has always been about the patterns and instincts of marketers since the 1960s that made advertising great; optimization and reaching the audience were just the cherry on top.
Performance marketing will always require a skilled operator in the loop, paired with a great tool that complements their work. It has always been about culture, people, psychology, behavior, and the many human elements that current LLMs cannot synthesize.
Forward Deployed Marketers for performance marketing
That is exactly why we introduced "Forward Deployed Marketers" (FDMs). These are operators who have worked across categories and primarily bring a behavioral perspective across multiple geographies, supported by state-of-the-art "Klev," our AI agent that provides context, reasoning, and leverage to make better decisions in performance marketing. Klev spots revenue leaks and growth opportunities, while the FDM brings judgment and owns the outcome.
We believe that the best performance marketing teams will be run by orchestrating operators who can brainstorm, create assets, and execute on platforms, directly supported by tools that make owning outcomes easier than ever.
Ecommerce has become a stack: Shopify/Woo + Meta/Google Ads/Amazon/TikTok + Inventory + Fulfillment + Klaviyo, and so on. Soon, all tools built on top will become commodities, replicable internally and externally.
The real value lies in the "old-school" approach: shipping beautiful creatives supported by data and context to reach the right customers.
This has worked great for us at Clevrr AI; we have been able to work with consumer brands across the US, Brazil, UK, India, Australia, and EMEA. Our FDMs are experienced operators who live in the intersection of AI x performance x advertising, they ship at lightspeed, strategise as creative experts and execute real time making them Smooth Operators!
If you are running a consumer brand, work in it or know someone who’s been trying the find the perfect performance marketing set-up, I hope to see you soon on the other side of the call!
