Are Brand Consultants Safe From Robot Replacements?

Right off the bat I am telling you the conclusion of this article is that we cannot know for sure whether brand consultants are safe from robot replacement or from automation. This conclusion comes from part factual observation, part science-fiction imagination of what a robotic future would look like.

Robot replacing humans in workplace has long become a comic book and science-fiction movie premise that captivates audience. Look at Wall-E movie, where human becomes lazy and their body overweight due to robots taking care of everything for them in the spaceship, even for the simplest task of walking. Now life begins imitating art as one can read in Martin Ford’s analytical book of “Rise of The Robots: Technology and The Threat of A Jobless Future”.

Although if you look at history of car manufacturing industry, robots replacing human in workplace is nothing new. We all know the concept of assembly line put forward by Henry Ford which revolutionized car industry competition, with a simple machine operated belt and structured work process.

Nowadays the analysis is about Artificial Intelligence (AI) and what type of work will they be able to replace human in. From self-calculation, building, or every task deemed possible to be automated based on a pre-determined fix workflow. Thus, come the fear of several experts on the future of human in workplace. With more humans expected to be born in the future, we start to wonder what will happen if there is no more work for them. Will a Terminator movie scenario be in the horizon?

One optimistic research from ManpowerGroup says that more robots are going to change employment but they will also create more jobs too. They key for them is in the mantra “upskills” of human workers. Where companies, and people themselves, need to invest in this “upskills”, such as creativity, emotional intelligence, and cognitive flexibility. More concrete examples, Manpower mentioned IT, HR, or Frontline positions are likely to have bright (secure from robots) future. Implying high demand in work employment.

Surely brand consulting fits into the creativity, emotional intelligence, and cognitive flexibility spectrum. We are after all part of Richard Florida’s Creative Class, as what he defines as people obtaining income using their brain and not brawn or muscle work. Therefore, brand consultants should not be worried robots will take away their jobs. We can even confidently say that robots will only help us in performing tasks in our work. But for the core creativity and analysis, and even bright idea, the world will still need brand consultants.

However, let us not forget one of the fundamentals of science such as automation, that we should not confidently say that somethings are impossible to be replace by robot. After all, some say magic is just science not yet being understood.  Simple example is the internet. Putting aside the legendary Nikola Tesla, when Alexander Graham Bell made the first telephone call, I doubt at that time many thought the internet, or connecting to data stored digitally, would be possible. Another example is airplane, or the concept of human flying. Leonardo Da Vinci in his days was not without critic or being ridiculed for imagining a machine which can help human fly. Now airplane industry has become a major industry which boost global economy.

So again, brand consultants should not be too over confident facing an automated world. It is true that if we talked about the present, we can think that robot or AI could only replace work that can be automated. Or work which involve a specific flow of tasks, which can then be translated into a coding and be automated in a program of a machine such as computer. However, when we learn about the history of technology, the question is not about what machine cannot do? Rather what machine will be able to do in the future? Go online and you will find people developing robots to play soccer, and their goal one day is to make robots able to defeat a world cup human team in soccer. Impossible you say? Do you think many people said the same thing to Bill Gates, back then when he made that blinking box before he developed it into Microsoft?

So, what to do? How can brand consultants survive or thrive in an age full of robots? To be honest I’m still figuring that out. Although we can probably pay more attention of basic service economy, which is there is always someone who is willing to pay to be satisfied with a service. After all brand consultant is in the service business. So as long the one who is paying is satisfied with the work from human brand consultants, perhaps robot brand consultants will not be able to take over our jobs? Or perhaps the answer lies in the very basic of making a human connection, rapport with clients? Something that many of us already doing so well right now.

Whatever the answers will be, one thing is for sure for brand consultants. Keep innovating or you will perish.