AYOYE, AI.

For those of you who know me by now, I am currently profoundly passionate about AI marketing communications, which is in its earliest infancy. I'm talking about the marketing of AI, not the tech.

• I am NOT a data scientist
• I am not a coder
• I AM a student of AI technology
• and I am someone who can communicate complicated concepts, strategies, tactics, best practices and trends in a simple way to decision makers, often via analogies.

Anal about Analogies

So who doesn't appreciate an analogy to emphasize and help mentally visualize a key point being made? So here goes.

For me, AI in many ways is like electricity. In its simplest form, electricity is the backbone that enables the use of millions of different objects and services, that provide us daily utility eg TVs, microwaves, PVRs, computers, lights and services too etc etc.

But the AI industry is largely wrapped up in explanations of how the 'electricity' works - of course neural networks, machine and computer vision & deep learning are at the heart of the power, but let's shift the discussion playing field if you want to sell your services, and talk about the TVs and Microwaves & end services please, or else AI will get lost in the white noise, as an undigestable buzzword.

Let's get concrete.

Here is an actual anonymous example of AI online communication I have seen in the last few days. FYI - my RobservAItions on this matter here are intended to help, not hinder. They're coming from a good place ;)

Example #1 (Bad and typical AI example )

'' .... leverages the best of AI, machine learning, natural language processing and enterprise domain expertise to deliver real time cognitive automation at cloud scale''

This is a meaningless sentence to the vast majority of senior business decision makers to whom you are selling. That entire AI sentence is simply the electricity in my previous analogy, but there is no mention of the end product, in concrete terms, other than cognitive automation perhaps? But that's meaningless too.

Example #2 (Good example)

Now that is a great overarching statement for a sports analytics company, propelled by AI. Notice how the AI electricity is really in the background in this copy. Their electricity will help your team 'win more games and will allow broadcasters to engage fans with better story telling.'

Now that is a powerful, clean language that I understand and really like as a businessman and marketer.

Conclusion

Come on, AI industry. Up your game. Market better. Change up your language. Serve your communications up on a plate that will be buyer palatable, so that more of them say Ayoye in admirative surprise at your AI copy, instead of Ayoye as an expression of pain :)