2018 Dx3 Conference Take-Aways
I attended the Dx3 Conference in Toronto a couple days ago. Dx3 bills itself as Canada's largest conference for marketers. It's a big event for retailers, digital marketing strategists, and sales executives. Why did I go? Because retail and marketing is a big playground for AI.
Here are three takeaways
First, AI continues to be the most over-used word in just about every industry right now, and retail is not immune to this. By my entirely unscientific count, more than 50% of booths I visited featured some link to AI. Some of merit, but not all of them do. Many do it overtly (as in "AI-marketing platform" and "AI advert placement"). You really have to spend the time to dig underneath the hype to see what's really of substance, and what's not.
Second, I also believe that many of these companies prove that AI is not just fairy dust. The applications using AI are for real, and many work as advertised (no pun intended). The most obvious example is of course Amazon, which key-noted the conference and discussed extensively how retail is being transformed by its advanced retail analytics capabilities. Interestingly, Tamir Bar-Haim, Amazon’s Country Manager for Canada never mentioned the phrase AI overtly during his hour-long keynote speech (not that I can recall anyway). Instead, he focused on the value added through the use of advanced analytics (e.g. the accuracy of the recommendation, the speed of the forecast, the convenience of the purchase).
Third, this avoidance of the term "AI" resonated with me. In my own conversations clients, I find that it is wise to avoid using the phrase "AI" too much and instead focus on the value in solving a particular business problem. For example, talking about how to reduce your customer churn is a much more interesting conversation than preaching about how AI can model customer drop-out patterns. AI is just the tool that happens to be good at solving a whole class of business problems that are hot these days.
The most fun I had that day?
One company called Tahzoo demoed a product called Looking Glass - which is billed as an in-store intelligent digital ad platform that delivers personalized ads. They have a set-up that I was able to look at. And behind the glass, a camera dynamically scanned my face and used AI facial recognition to instantly determine my age and gender.
So was it accurate? Surprisingly so. Gender is probably not difficult to determine, but age has always been tricky for bots. As an Asian guy I am routinely estimated to be 20 years younger than I actually am. So when the bot scanned me and predicted my age accurately and instantly, I was charmed.
I was even more charmed when it then served up a Jack Daniel's Have it Frank's way advert. V-e-r-y nice try. I don't drink whisky personally, but hey, I'll give you credit for trying so hard, Bot.
Cheers!
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The post "2018 Dx3 Conference Take-Aways" first appeared in https://aiartisan.wordpress.com on March 9, 2018