Chris Lawer has started blogging and today's entry is worth a read; here's an extract:

Why do many brands still appear to forget the importance and role of the real relationships that should exist between themselves, consumers and society? Why do we live in a socio-economic vacuum of decaying trust? Why are most brands just wrapped in a surface veneer of humanity and “relationship gloss” that when consumers come into contact with them can be easily scratched off to see the awful reality that lurks inside?

I think this conundrum can be summed up with the present day marketer’s and CRMer’s obsession with what I call, “cleverness over relevance” and here is my humble attempt to explain why….

....The problem is that when the brain is taken out of marketing and put into a machine, the consumer simply becomes an object, a recipient of a predefined targeted piece of predefined communication and a passive set of bytes in a database waiting for an automated event to trigger an automated response through an automated script delivered by an unempowered and bored call centre operative

I agree with Chris that marketing has largely been taken over by a mechanistic approach. A set of latter-day Thomas Gradgrinds ("give me metrics, hard metrics") have taken over as Marketing Directors. Actually, that's unfair on Gradgrind, who at least was consistent in his denial of humanity. These guys are far more hypocritcal: in their advertising and promotion they peddle cuddly, warm, human fantasies, whilst behind the scenes in their secret family chapel they worship the deities of metrics and money.