Marketer’s New Power-How AI and VR Enhance Digital Marketing
By the development of technology, AI and VR have become the hottest trends in all industries, including the creative sector (e.g., advertising, marketing). Nowadays, companies increasingly utilize AI and VR technology as their digital marketing campaigns. As a digital marketer, we should always think a little further and more rooted in our field and industry. In this article, I will explore how AI and VR drive digital marketing and business in the next five years, which can make into the new stage of “machine-learning” and “user-driven” communication.
According to the Fourth Annual State of Marketing research report, 515 of marketing leaders are already using AI, which applications include expert systems, speech recognition, and machine vision. With more than a quarter planning to pilot it in the next two years, new AI solutions can help marketers, and communications teams effectively educate prospects and customers, separating the rumors from facts, by the process of machine-learning, reasoning, and self-correction1. At the same time, the future of marketing is customer experience, “VR is becoming more significant in the power of the statistics of proving video contents which can connect individuals emotionally and reaching the parts of the brain that other channels cannot,” according to Leigh Andrew2.
Interactive, Connected, User-driven Communication
Scholars call for transforming communication media from passive, closed, and producer-driven to interactive, connected, and user-driven3. In the marketing field, companies are changing from “sending and receiving” one-direction communication to multi-directional experiences, which AI and VR have the potential ability to improve customer engagements.
AI-driven sentiment analysis tools are helping marketing, sales, and customer support teams use image recognition technology to better connect with their customers, which can enable companies with this capability to scale exponentially while their competitors fumble with CRM data and struggle to understand their customers?. With the potential to use data at customer’s disposal to measure in real-time, AI can help marketer develop a customized relationship at the consumer level that would revolutionize branding?. Moreover, in other communication fields, AI can play a significant role in the revolutionary, which offers unprecedented opportunities to overcome historic communication weaknesses of and extend improved communication to many people at low cost, “by machine learning that allows computers to learn the same way people do without being explicitly programmed.” For instance, AI can improve health communication as a revolutionary: such as east-to-use human-computer interfaces, SMS text reminders customized for individual patients, sleep, exercise and blood glucose monitors, and avatars that act as health coaches.
In the past few years, virtual worlds have emerged as whole economies. “Virtual Diasporas,” as one forecast signal for the future, which results in new value creation in both the virtual and physical worlds. Hence, there are some possibilities that more people are migrating to virtual environments for employment or become consumers of virtual world? — the use of VR applications in digital marketing grown increasingly essential. We need to build content and brand stories that are immersive and engaging by the technology of immersive brand experiences, virtual shopping experiences, simulated customer engagement, analytics-driven VR in-store experience, which those pioneer brands such as Lipton, Mercedes, Jaguar, and Alibaba already usage them into their businesses, building ‘near real-life digital moments’ for brands?. Besides the VR strategies, for improving customer experiences and engagements, brands will increase their needs for digital or mobile devices which can make their assets VR-enabled. Thus, there could be more VR-related businesses into the markets, which can drive more creative machine-learning communication, as well as virtual citizenship organizations.
The Dangers and Moral Risks
Although the individual successes of specific AI and HCI (Human-Computer Interaction) approaches to communication, the integration of various levels of communication and connecting them with contexts and intentions is still an unsolved challenge?. At the same time, scholars argue that the application of AI methods can lead to devices and systems that are “untrustworthy and sometimes dangerous.” “As the trustworthy systems of machine-learning and ethical concerns, AI might refer to the data of doubtful provenance with unknown limitations,” David Parnas described it in his article ‘The Real Risks of Artificial Intelligence’ in 2017. Also, “AI would have a profoundly adverse impact on the labor market so that we have a moral imperative to develop and deploy automated driving,” according to Moshe Vandi’s ‘The Moral Imperative of Artificial Intelligence.’
On the other hand, VR faces a variety of challenges and concerns which relate to health and safety, privacy, and technical issues. As Dan Sung mentioned it in his article “VR and Vice: Are We Heading for Mass Addition to Virtual Reality Fantasies?” in 2015, “long-term effects on vision and neurological development are unknown; users might become disoriented in a purely virtual environment; computer latency might affect the simulation, providing a less-than-satisfactory end-user experience, etc..”
What Can We do?
Work with The Technology, Not Against Them
Progress in communication has been achieved by “extending the capabilities of perception and the interpretation of patterns.” In Web 2.0, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Virtual Reality (VR) help human to achieve their opportunities of extending the communication capabilities. According to ‘Institute for The Future, 2008’, in the next five years, open-source sites for productive media collaboration will leverage taste trails to make audiences among the social networks of the collaborators; some online users will likely manage their taste trails explicitly as a way of maintaining their identities in online spaces. Corporations will compete as cultural destinations attract workers in the experience economy as new “Corporate Diaspora.”
Therefore, the technology of AI and VR not only provide numerous opportunities to build up one interactive, connected, user-driven communication between brands and customers. It but also can drive some shifts for co-workers, corporations and media platforms, which also based on the engagements of digital experiences although there are still some moral risks and challenges for individuals or marketers, who are digging into the digital world. “Interacting by the artificial smartness is crucial for business,” as Kevin Kelly states in his speech ‘The Next 30 Digital Years’, “VR will be the most social of social media,” we need to “work with the machine, not against them.”
We never know what is going to happen in five years, but at least we can have some prepared mindset for our new 'business partners.' All the marketers, how do you think about the impact of AI and VR in the digital marketing field? Leave a comment, let me know what your opinions are.
Reference:
- Miller, Megan (2017). Say Yes to Robots: AI in Legal Marketing. Law Technology Today. September.13, 2017.
- Andrews, Leigh (2018). VR and Digital Video Storytelling as Top Marketing Tools for 2018. Bizcommunity.com; Cape Town. Cape Town: SyndiGate Media Inc. Apr. 19, 2018.
- Neuhauser, L.; Kreps, G.L.; Morrison, K.; Athanasoulis, M.; Kirienko, N.; Brunt, D.V. (2012). Using Design Science and Artificial Intelligence to Improve Health Communication: ChronologyMD Case Example. Patient Education and Counseling. Vol. 92, 2013. P211–217.
- Zhou, Cindy (2018). How Artificial Intelligence Can Help Transform Customer Engagement and Sales. Customer Relationship Management. March 2018. P10.
- Conick, Hal (2017). The Past, Present, and Future of AI in Marketing. Marketing News. Vol.51(1),2017. P26(10).
- Institute for the Future. 2008. 2008 Ten Year Forecast Perspectives & Signals. SR-1140.
- Swaminathan, S. (2017). Where Virtual Reality Could Take Digital Marketing. Thehindubusinessline.com. December 08, 2017.
- Richter, Michael; von Mammen, Sebastian (2011). Annals of Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence. 2011, Vol.61(1). P41–46.