A.I., Make It Simple

I had a boss who always started meetings with a big smile and the same phrase: "let's make it simple!" No matter how complex the topic, he insisted on simplicity.

I fully embraced this philosophy and admire those who do the same. So, a big shoutout to everyone sharing their thoughts on A.I. at the A.I. Marketing Innovation Summit for helping me grasp some new concepts on the topic through simple and clear explanations.

Also, as a member of the King Street Ventures mentorship and Advisory Board, I had my shot and shared some thoughts based on my learning about A.I., which, by the way, feels like just the tip of an iceberg since every morning, as I open my email, I find myself inundated with tons of A.I.-related news and insights.

Below, I outline what I believe are three starting points on how A.I. can truly help brands, businesses, and people grow and transform for the better.

It’s not a Gartner or McKinsey report, but I hope it's useful for someone out there and simple to follow and implement, as my old friend and boss always emphasized.

1. Finally, we can build massive brands while keeping it personal in an efficient way.

The first critical aspect is the challenge all marketers face today: maintaining personalization - at brand positioning & communications levels - while scaling up.

The marketing playbook says that once your brand gets past the test of “scalability”, it’s usually a good idea to start expanding it to a level where consistent strategies, messaging, branding executions, point-of-sale materials, etc., can be shared across customers and consumers to benefit from the acquired scale, and hopefully translate it into an edge over competitors.

However, as we all know, consumer preferences have evolved, with people (aka us) demanding more exclusivity and a sense of uniqueness on the stuff they eat, drink, wear, etc. This evolution has fueled the growth of many niche brands and breakthrough startups, taken a considerable share from incumbent players, and presents a significant challenge for large global brands, as achieving a personalized touch was/is/always to be proven difficult.

I have worked across different regions around the world, putting a lot of energy into finding ways to make global propositions more relevant locally, and often had clashes with umbrella strategies that conflicted with the messaging wizardry that was perfectly suitable for certain people.

Now A.I. provides a solution because it can work around the tough operationalization that is “localizing” , reducing conflicts that in most cases were caused by bias, and accelerating the process of cross-checking and adjusting the eventual lack of sync between a local and a global need.

This will be enabling marketers to make decisions and tailor communications on a massive scale while still maintaining individualized interactions with consumers.

A paradox figured out.

2. Now we can elevate marketing experimentation and prototyping to a whole new level.

The second benefit revolves around the speed of experimentation, failure, and innovation, a must have capability for any organization.

Historically, experimentation involved setting up scenarios, gathering data, and analyzing results - a process that could take a long time and was highly susceptible to error and unexpected change, despite all the benefit digitization has brought to us.

With A.I., we now can dramatically augment the ability to simulate consumer environments with multiple people profiles, competitors’ options, media reactions, and other black swan events that can act as harsh as we want against our ideas.

The tiresome quest to find “the perfect market” to experiment is over, replaced by a A.I.-provided environments, fed by all data we consider relevant, where we are able to test ideas, iterate quickly, and providing insights into potential market reactions much more accurately and efficiently.

This must speed up the pace of innovation, allowing marketers to adapt and refine products and strategies more rapidly than ever before.

It’s speed marrying effectiveness while keeping an (hot) affair with efficiency.

3. Let’s unleash the full potential of a new generation of marketers.

Lastly, A.I. can transform internal operations, especially in helping people keep up with industry developments and manage information overload, a vivid nightmare for all of us.

In this fast-paced marketing world, staying current with trends, news, and changes is overwhelming, with notes, articles, speeches, and other data floating around without a cohesive narrative applied to our specific needs.

A.I. can serve as a personalized assistant, sifting through information from various sources and delivering relevant updates tailored to us, whether you're the CMO needing concise updates to approve a new campaign, or the Analyst seeking detailed insights for a presentation.

The famous question we all face when receiving that +200 slides update on trends - "so what?" - can be easily answered, helping the CMO, the Analyst and everyone in between to translate knowledge into action, streamlining the process of staying (relevantly) updated, and enabling teams to make well-informed decisions in their daily challenges.

A.I. to be the “employee-of-the-month” for the years to come!

In summary, while there are endless benefits to integrating A.I. into marketing strategies – see above McKinsey and Gartner, or try your favorite partner, focusing the usage of A.I. on scaling with personalization, speeding up experimentation, and optimizing internal processes can provide significant advantages for brands, businesses, and people to grow.