How AI is redefining the marketing playbook

New Delhi: The 2024 edition of The Ad Club’s D: CODE, which started with funny banter by Mansha Tandon, Head of Apps Business Development, Google Play, for India, Southeast Asia, and AUNZ, ended with deep insights into the marketing industry. The theme of the event was centred around ‘How AI is revolutionising creative, media, and the user landscape in India’.

Kavita Nair, Strategic Advisor at Skewb Analytics, took to the stage to discuss how AI will redefine how we do things in the marketing landscape. She advised marketers to keep the ‘trimurti’ in mind. 

Expanding her thoughts and elaborating on the idea of a ‘trimurti’, Nair said. “The first pillar of the trimurti is measurement. I remember when I was a brand manager many years ago, I used to say that I should not be a cost centre but should build beautiful brands. However, measuring what marketing delivers was very difficult. Even as recently as 2020, it took about eight months to analyse all the variables that go into business, just to understand the state of things, and that was post-facto. 

Today, one of the companies I advise can do this in 15 days across numerous variables and countries, thanks to the power of real-time predictive models using AI and robotics. This means that for measurement, we now get actionable intelligence much faster.”

“Cost is another concern for businesses. It's not just about cutting expenses but managing costs effectively. By reducing repetitive tasks through AI models, businesses can strip costs and create new business, cost, and revenue models. This efficiency allows companies to hire new talent and pay them more. When machines handle 80% of repetitive tasks, it brings joy back to work, freeing up time for employees to focus on the tasks they enjoy. This shift not only enhances productivity but also fosters innovation and growth within the company. By leveraging AI and robotics, businesses can achieve greater efficiency and adaptability, ensuring they stay competitive in an ever-changing market,” said Nair, mentioning the second pillar of the 'trimurti'.

The third pillar of the 'trimurti' is reimagining storytelling. Best described in the words of Nair, “We're all storytellers, and the question is how to make storytelling more powerful. With real-time AI, personalisation and localisation at scale are possible. However, merely personalising text can be uninspiring. 

We need to reimagine not just the art of our work but the very essence of what we do. As tools become democratised, the opportunity lies in creating distinctive experiences for a competitive advantage. This is the true power of AI for our fraternity.”

Moving on, Shubhranshu Singh, Chief Marketing Officer, CVBU at Tata Motors, spoke about the challenge of implementing AI, where prioritising viable and commercially accessible use cases is difficult amidst the excitement.

Sharing his thoughts on the same, Singh said, “Businesses face challenges in implementing AI, especially generative AI. Prioritising viable and commercially accessible use cases is difficult amidst the excitement. Managing unstructured data and finding which applications to run is unclear. Then again, trust issues arise when sharing data with potential partners. Internal alignment and understanding of AI are often lacking. Training resources to effectively apply AI requires significant effort. 

Despite sorting data and identifying potential applications, prioritising the most important use cases remains challenging. 

Investing in AI is costly. OpenAI gets 75% of its revenue from individual subscribers, with less than 25% from businesses. In India, this percentage is likely even lower. Calculating the return on investment (ROI) for AI in services is challenging. While pilot projects succeed, scaling them often fails, making big investments risky. Junior employees usually face the consequences of these failures. To implement AI successfully, businesses need to prioritise practical use cases, ensure data security, and align internal understanding with external capabilities.”

Further ahead, Soumya Mohanty, Managing Director and Chief Client Officer at Kantar, spoke about humanising AI. Speaking of giving a human touch to AI, she mentioned the AI-led campaign by Beck's, where the brand came up with a beer called autonomous. What’s surprising here is that the beer was brewed based on ingredients identified by the AI itself and not just the brewing; the AI even led its own campaign to market itself.

So, the point here is that AI is a tool that finds more beauty in the hands of humans.

Sharing her thoughts on humanising AI, Mohanty said, “AI has significantly influenced the creation of popular franchises like Barbie and various sci-fi movies. While AI contributes to these stories, the human element remains crucial, making the narratives relatable and progressive. Barbie, for instance, has evolved into a more progressive character. As AI continues to advance, it will likely start creating stories independently. However, humans will always find ways to create new stories to maintain relevance. AI-infused advertising is becoming more common, but there is a risk of overusing it. Consumers may recognise AI ads more than marketers realise, with surveys showing that 50% of people can identify them.

Despite the advancements in AI, it's essential not to lose sight of the human touch. AI will create new codes and start coding, but human involvement will remain necessary. We need to reimagine our approach and bring back serendipity. Moving forward, we must embrace AI while ensuring that human creativity and intuition continue to play a vital role in storytelling and advertising.”

Diving deeper into the sessions at the event, Siddharth Srinivasan, Head of India at ElevenLabs, came on stage to talk about AI-generated voices.

Srinivasan said, “Let's focus on content and media creation technology, which I find particularly interesting. Outside of chatbots, this category has the best product-market fit. 50% of the highest-used consumer applications belong to this category, with India driving this trend. India is our number one user market, and Hindi is a top three language on our platform. As we launch more languages, we expect this trend to continue.

Our platform is used by creators, broadcast companies, YouTubers, and influencers. Marketers are already connecting with consumers at the intersection of AI and content. Education use cases are also significant, with teams using our technology to make life easier and achieve their goals. Our 30 million global users come from various industries, solving use cases like video workflows, ad creation, product explainers, and content marketing.”

“In e-commerce, you can reach numerous personas with ease. Overcoming availability barriers like time and language is now simpler. Technologies like ours enable you to curate a perfect brand voice and break through these barriers,” he further said.

To wrap it up, Jaspreet Bindra, Founder of AI&Beyond and Tech Whisperer showed up on the stage to give the last remarks and said, “The transformative impact of AI, particularly generative AI like GPT-3, on society and industries is profound. I see AI as a fundamental shift in human-machine interaction, akin to past revolutions like the agricultural and industrial revolutions. 

Generative AI's ability to process and generate language at scale has the potential to revolutionise marketing and advertising by making interactions more personalised and proactive. I also recognise concerns about AI's creativity and hallucinations, but I believe these can be harnessed for human creativity. Ethical considerations in AI development are crucial, and I acknowledge the progress made in addressing these issues.”