By Janani Kandaswamy

Marketers get accused of being fascinated by shiny digital tools. But unlike some of the novel technologies that seem like a ‘solution seeking a problem’, AI has always been a relevant enabler. Being in the backstage all these years, it has taken centrestage, thanks to the likes of ChatGPT and Bard, which have become the face of all digital transformation efforts. Such efforts can set opposing flywheels into motion — A ‘virtuous’ one that could transform a firm from ‘good to great’, or a ‘vicious’ one that might decelerate its growth momentum.

Productivity, creativity and innovation is where AI will make a dramatic impact across the entire marketing value chain and this cannot be achieved without human intervention. AI can generate different positioning statements for a launch – however, this outcome will be a mash-up of information already available online. To create something that is truly unique, consumer-relevant and customised to business objectives, we have to apply discretion.

So while fear of AI replacing jobs is mostly unfounded, what it is forcing us to do is to upskill and become experts at:

  1. Eliciting right inputs to feed as prompts
  2. Sifting and selecting the most relevant output from a list
  3. Seamlessly building on the choice by integrating upstream and downstream activities

The inevitable use – cases that will fuel the virtuous cycle are:

  • Transformation in the field of ‘creativity’ with content becoming super-personalised. Organisations will benefit from hiring in-house content strategists.
  • Segmentation and targeting will go beyond Kotler’s way of marketing. Choosing three segments will become passé and scaling to 300 segments common.
  • The brand funnel will constrict. Awareness through conversations rather than only traditional TV broadcasting along with direct click-to-conversion will prevail.
  • Insight mining will speed up with turnaround of 30+ days becoming instantaneous. Imagine AI consolidating all transcripts from group discussions and interviews and presenting the top themes within a day! Brands can become more research-centric.
  • R&D lead time can be shortened by predicting clinical trial outcomes of formulations.

But if all of this is done haphazardly, it could lead to the vicious cycle. There is so much content out in the open internet that if considered blindly could lead to misrepresentation of beliefs, exaggeration or an extrapolation of vested interests. Ideas could stem out of biases. There are other risks like IP violation and confidentiality infringement, but they are easier to solve with few thumb rules:

  • Don’t share anything that you consider confidential
  • Constantly track the regulatory landscape and evolve continuously with it
  • Treat AI as a co-pilot and not as a backseat driver

Hence, it’s up to us marketers to join the unconnected dots and use the technology wisely for doing 10X more and 10X faster.

The author is senior category lead, brand marketing, ITC