Are marketers ready for the AI wave?

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the buzzword we keep hearing everywhere we look. Marketers are also susceptible to the infectious AI wave. It is the future of data-driven marketing that is poised to push efficiencies, effectiveness and redefine outcomes beyond what was humanly possible earlier. It will also test the technological boundary that marketers are willing to expand to gain the first-mover advantage. 

Here are some of the top AI-related attributes that marketers should consider as part of their AI checklist. 

Being clear about the role of AI:

Although AI seems to offer a world of newfound opportunities for brands and marketers, most companies are doing just fine without it. However AI promises more; it empowers brands to demonstrate better and faster results, including the ability to provide superior customer experience.

Being responsible:

Marketers will invest in AI with the inherent goal of improving customer experience. The implementation of AI will be either through a stand-alone AI-supported platform or latching it to the existing systems and services. Before the real pilot is run, the marketers need to ask themselves how to make AI responsible and how to make it effective. After all, the role of AI is to improve upon existing systems, processes, and services.

Ethics in building and running AI:

Building and running AI ethically should always be on top of the mind of marketers. Biased data that is fed into AI will always result in biased outcomes. Oversight is required to check that the outcome of AI remains consistent with our and customers' values and expectations. A contingency framework should be in place in case of AI going rogue.

Harvesting data from AI:

The primary application of AI for marketers will be in the realm of human science. They will gain immensely by extracting data on customer activities to get insights into what they are saying, feeling, and wanting and feed that information back into machine learning. This will help marketers to plan for tomorrow, draw prediction models well and create ideas, making sense of information in real-time.

Preventing AI failures:

Nothing comes easy and perfect. Failure in AI can easily be prevented if the right team of people comes together to fine tune it. Many times, one may link AI with technologists. However, the solution to AI problems are often non-technical ones and very simple. A team of marketers, psychologists, ethicists, customer-care reps, etc., need to reflect on the implications of AI since all of these areas are relevant to customers. In other words, brands are dealing with fully-grown adults with a sophisticated understanding of the world with emotional and social needs. It is not merely the transactions that they seek.

Conclusion:

Marketers need to reflect upon both non-technical and technical aspects before making AI mainstream. Piloting AI isn't as simple as sitting on a chair and pushing a launch button, but plenty of thoughts need to be put by many stakeholders from a variety of fields to make AI truly meaningful and to reap long-term benefits. AI is not just another technology platform that can be bought and simply implemented. To ensure AI doesn't fall short of expectations, the above-mentioned concerns, especially around governance, need to be thought through marketers to ride the AI wave.

The write is operations head-North India, Rediffusion Brand Solutions