You’ve spent years building your brand equity, proving your brand value, working on image, customer service, and maintaining an edge; you name it. And along comes artificial intelligence (AI).
Now what?
Are you ready to dip your toes into the artificial intelligence (AI) pool? Or are you already treading water, trying desperately to stay ahead of this ever-evolving technology?
Regardless of where you are in the AI journey, it’s important to move away from the hype and take a deep dive into understanding what AI can and cannot do to help innovate and elevate your brand in ‘real time.’
One of the most important perspectives on AI comes from a 2023 MIT Technology Survey conducted among chief information officers across the world’s best and most well-known companies:
Every industry and business will find its own custom applications of generative AI technology
Generative AI is a rapidly advancing subdomain that uses data and learned patterns to transform and generate new content, including text, images, music, audio, or videos.
Generative AI can help drive strategy, creativity, and execution by humans FOR humans. In other words, it can supercharge workflow and efficiency, freeing up your agency partners, creative team, and company leaders to focus on what matters most: your customers and your brand values.
Think of generative AI as your brand’s superpartner and superpower, another tool in the marketing toolbox, and a means toward understanding your customers faster and better. Here are a few ways that AI can positively affect your brand.
Both Chatbots and AI-powered surveys are invaluable tools that can be used to improve consumer experience while at the same time, providing unique customer insights to drive or shift strategy or help your Agency partner refresh messaging.
Consider AI Chatbots your customer service agents’ co-pilots and ‘ride or die’s.’ AI Chatbots can address basic questions, and handle common transactions such as returns and exchanges. The bonus being that you free up actual human customer service time for more urgent or complicated requests.
Case on Point: Meet Alex, Unilever’s Generative AI Assistant
Want to know how one of the world’s largest consumer goods companies separates the wheat from the chaff in its customer service department?
Alex (short for Alexander the Great) is Unilever’s ChatGPT savior, the Generative AI assistant that filters emails sent to the company’s Consumer Engagement Center and sorts out spam from real messages. Alex has been trained to recommend email responses. In turn, his human counterparts decide if the responses are personal enough, and it’s their decision whether to tweak or rewrite them entirely.
Survey Says…forget about static questions and answers. AI-powered surveys add a personal, interactive touch to customer interactions. They can be used to gather and analyze user feedback and gain insights into customer perceptions of your brand and what matters most (and least to them). They can illuminate how customers feel about the services you provide, and how deeply your company story resonates.
Advantages include:
Branding requires a human touch. But imagine what generative AI can do in the hands of a brilliant strategist to further your brand efforts (and resources). The opportunities are endless. Generative AI can help by:
Case on Point: Netflix Channels Viewer Preferences
Have you ever wondered how Netflix generates recommendations for your next title?
Netflix’s massive AI experiment started with its popular show House of Cards. In an effort to build viewership, the company used machine learning and AI to gain information on watch habits and behaviors and developed 10 different trailers based on this information. For example, one viewer was shown a trailer featuring their favorite actor, while another, a trailer demonstrating a specific plot. The experiment worked so well that House of Cards eventually garnered 7 Primetime Emmys, 2 Golden Globes, 2 Screen Actor Guild, and 1 Satellite Award.
Fast forward to today and the Company now boasts more than 260 million subscribers across the globe. Netflix uses AI algorithms to analyze viewer behavior and patterns and create recommendations that change regularly along with ratings, new preferences, or recent selections.
Your brand’s personality is key to your brand’s equity, your why, and how consumers feel about your brand. When leveraged effectively, generative AI can help you position how you want to be seen in the eyes of your customers based on how they want to be seen.
Historically, marketers have often attributed human traits to brands, e.g., rugged = REI, sincere = Dove brand soap, competent = Apple, etc. Generative AI allows brands to take this to the next level and make brands actually come alive for the consumer, with the consumer.
Generative AI provides a means for tapping into consumer interest and adoption of tools like DALL-E (an AI system that generates images and art from language prompts). Generative AI invites your customers to ride shotgun with your brand.
Not only does it help boost your brand’s personality, but it creates a means by which your brand becomes embedded into your customer’s brains. In turn, this helps both with brand equity and brand value.
Case on Point: Coca-Cola’s ‘Create Real Magic’
Coca-Cola’s brand personality is synonymous with traits like friendly, youthful, refreshing, happy, and exciting. The company’s brand team developed an AI-powered competition that invited consumers to remix a variety of the brand’s most iconic assets and create new Coke-inspired art. AI tools included DALL-E and Chat-GPT.
At its launch, this virtual creative sandbox garnered 120,000 consumer-driven images within 11 days without paid promotion. And it enabled the company to reinforce a unique brand attribute: ‘elevating every day into the extraordinary.’
In its Data + AI Predictions 2024 Report– Snowflake – a company that offers a single, fully-powered platform powering the AI data cloud – reinforced the need for humans to remain in the driver’s seat in terms of your brand’s innovation, equity, value, and personality:
“Deeper innovation requires a leap that’s contrary to the data. Give birth to a brand-new concept? AI’s just a tool in the creator’s hands.” Benoit Dageville, President of Product
Let’s chat about how Brand 3’s Strategists can help you harness your brand’s superpartner and keep the human at the helm of your efforts.
