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Fortune

Heather Clancy

Why stories, not software still rule marketing

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(Credit: Rebecca Greenfield © Rebecca Greenfield 2014)

Ever searched for a product online, only to be bombarded soon thereafter with a flood of related suggestions in your Facebook news feed or Google search results? Now imagine the dinner conversation in Google marketing exec Lorraine Twohill's household several days after she used her husband's computer to order "Dora the Explorer" underpants for their three-year-old daughter—subjecting him to at least a month's worth of misdirected ads for products meant especially for toddlers. Welcome to the Cro-Magnon era of digital marketing, one that Google (GOOG) ironically helped invent. "It can be a blunt instrument. Some of my most favorite brands, I see them kind of stalking me now," Twohill said during a panel discussion about emerging marketing technologies at a Fortune

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