Theory + Practice in Marketing Key 2024 Conference Insights

Every year, 120+ professors from around the world meet at a leading university to think through the future of marketing, both from an academic and private sector perspective.

This year, The University of Texas at Austin is the host of Theory + Practice in Marketing in partnership with The International Journal on Research in Marketing and incoming editor, Koen Pauwels.

I was asked to participate in a? panel discussion on the future of AI and marketing led by moderator and professor Doug Chung and fellow panelists Francisco Garcia of Dell and Ravi Kanniganti of HEB.?

Between our panel and discussions in the hallway, here are four key insights that resonated.

Academia, AI, and Future Curriculums – a professor from Notre Dame asked how curriculums should evolve in the future related to AI. My answer was that every aspect of today’s curriculum should be re-evaluated related to how it will evolve. Here are examples:

a) media buying and planning – we will shift from channel/pub/outlet focused to audience-driven media planning. This is a major shift.

b) advertising – we will be able to build ads that allow an image to unveil a complete narrative and collapse the marketing funnel. Imagine a deeper experience without a click and an experience that is based on what we know about the customer.

c) research – synthetic research panels will become the norm as we think of ways to expand primary research. Why not let a bot developed in our own persona do some of the work for us?

This list continues. It is time to think through how every aspect of marketing will evolve and what that means related to what we teach the next generation of students.

Learning How to Ask Critical Questions – we need to all learn how to ask critical questions that can uncover unmet needs, identify new opportunities, and help us drive the future of AI. We all play a role in shaping the future use of AI, even if we are not a technologist, if we can understand enough to frame the right questions. ??Important to think of this as a critical skill we can learn/teach.

Now, on to technologists. Francisco Garcia described the readiness of companies for AI, and it made me think of one of the things that Dell is known for being the best in…….supply chains.

Build the AI Supply Chain in Your Company – as we think of new uses of generative AI, we need to ensure it aligns with the right datasets, we have our governance in place, we are thinking through privacy and unique industry regulations, we know how to gain the right insights so we can pivot and much more. Basically, we need to build out a supply chain of actions and related next steps to build the infrastructure we need to scale AI within an organization. That is what real readiness will consist of.

Preparing to Protect our Brands and Organizations – it is easy to get excited about what we can achieve with AI. The only problem is bad actors are also just as excited. How we prepare for a future where it is very easy to disinform at scale, for example, should become part of what we teach future students.? If we think of this as an extension of crisis management, we are on the right track. We can teach ourselves (professors and students) and prepare future leaders on how to protect brands and organizations.

The concept of this summit is to share new insights and stimulate ideas. Mission accomplished from my perspective.

Best, Bob ?