The era of the Mad Men is drawing to a close. The Math Men are in the ascendancy. Programmatic buying and marketing automation mean that the skills that matter today are the technical skills required to manipulate systems and software. And yet, in the rush to automate and optimize, we are increasingly overlooking the element that has traditionally been at the heart of our industry, the element that gives us purpose, that elevates our work from pragmatic to sublime, and that ultimately determines our success. That element is the human element.