thanks for the introduction and hello to everyone on the webinar my name is Charles head and I am a strategic managing consultant here at IBM Im speaking to you today on the exciting topic of artificial intelligence and specifically how a I powered marketing will transform your marketing strategy now artificial intelligence has been proven to boost marketing performance we.
all know this however for companies like yourself who want to maximize the impact of AI we need to understand how to successfully implement it so today Im going to talk you through the history and context of AI how it will affect your marketing strategy and we will finish on some much-needed realistic and practical actions you can take away as a to do list so lets start a I will touch every part of your existing marketing strategy from the foundations of your data to the bespoke content that your customers experience whatever you can do as a.
marketer AI can do or at least that is the idea machine learning a AI is a way of solving marketing problems by creating marketing problem solving systems but how do these systems work well the answer is pattern recognition and let me explain here is a picture of four similar objects what object do you see a table right but lets imagine you are a machine to machine you these are just pixels but human you can recognize the table you understand the concept of.
table nuts that the table normally has four legs and a flat surface on the top but think about it these tables are at different angles with different backgrounds and table colors in fact one of the tables you cannot see all the four legs ai pattern recognition helps computers understand what a table is by showing an AI hundreds if not thousands of table pictures it can build up an algorithm that knows how to recognize a table so what you put in you get out and.
thats an important point you need a foundation of data to base the artificial intelligence on just like a baby learns by experience ai learns from your data now AI might be called overhyped at the moment but its foundations in history go back a long way and its only really the last decade that has brought it into the modern marketers conscience artificial intelligence began in history as the myths and legends of artificial beings with intelligence and consciousness granted by a craftsman Master in ancient.
texts AI was a way to make humans into gods creating a form of life to call their own the most famous is probably the ancient tale of Gollum a clay man brought to life more recently in the 1950s the curent s was created a way of operationally a test of human intelligent behavior now this was a simple concept if a machine could carry on a conversation in written form that.
was indistinguishable from a conversation with a human being then it was reasonable to say that the machine was thinking in the 1960s basic robots could demonstrate perception and problem-solving artificial intelligence computer programming was invented in the 1970s based on semantic nets as the representation of knowledge these nets grew into neural networks in the 1980s and into the 1990s there were major advances advances in machine learning uncertainty reasoning data mining natural language understanding and.
translation and even virtual reality by the year 2000 a AI becomes commonplace as the first robot toy pets were sold in 2018 AI now covers a wide spectrum speech processing image processing machine learning robotics and mechanical instruments intelligent computer aided instruction intelligent information retrieval analysis and summarization data mining and prediction and forecasting systems so let us now turn our attentions to the world of marketing and how AI applies there you could say that AI has become a necessity to modern marketing why well as.
marketers we are all drowning in data big data haunts CRM systems and exposes shortcomings in technological and processing capabilities business intelligence and real-time reactions in practice standard CRM systems were not designed and undebatable not able to effectively store and analyze massive data sets AI to the rescue artificial intelligence marketing leverages database marketing techniques and models such as pattern recognition and machine learning therefore AI is a positive entity an assistant of sorts to free you up from the more mundane tasks and concentrate on the creative elements and delivery of your marketing campaigns the main.
difference is the reasoning part which is performed by the computer and algorithm instead of the human being so AI can live or die depending on access to big data you just cant have true AI without big data just like you cant have human intelligence without oxygen but what are the practical applications of AI for your role well AI will help you achieve relevance at scale or to paraphrase AI will help you find the right message at the right time for the right person thats a problem weve been talking about in marketing since the.
1980s with AI we will be getting to a point where campaigns and customer behavior will be relevant from the start of the relationship to the point of purchase and beyond now lets look at some examples chat BOTS fueled by IBM conversation now chat bot bots are a viable alternative to customer service departments and these deliver a customer experience where your website visitors cannot tell if they are communicating with a human being or IBM and conversation chat pots create tremendous opportunities for your business to increase operational.
efficiencies and reduce costs content curation and generation IBM Watson curator is a system that provides management and insights into marketing content like the copy images videos within your campaigns at its basic level content is all just data and AI is faster at handling thousands if not millions of pieces of information than us humans are for example IBM Watson curator applies metadata that allows the classification of content assets into collections it will even recognize assets and apply previously known relevant metadata to a new asset.
enabling that asset to be quickly served as a dynamic content block to the relevant segment of your target audience dynamic pricing now many retailers are using AI based dynamic pricing which uses customer data behaviors to predict what they might be willing to pay this is very relevant to say the travel or hotel market where price points fluctuate often an optimization of the best price to the best person can dramatically increase your ROI speech.
recognition IBM speech recognition technology has achieved industry standard records in conversational speech recognition statistics more and more we will see a plura freshen of the Internet of Things devices within our pockets and homes that we can talk to even converse with and most importantly purchase items from and this has an important effect on consume the behavior that you should be aware of when it becomes as easy as saying order some toothpaste where does your brand live in the heart and minds of your customer data analysis and forecasting traditionally a business would use context based clues to build a persona.
of a particular customer group with IBM Watson you can focus on the true predictors of a customers behavior giving decision-making insight within minutes for example the Mears group who provide housing and maintenance services across the United Kingdom they use Watson analytics to plan and target housing conservation and upgrades across 1 million homes beforehand they would have used the traditional methods a complicated spreadsheet where trends.
would have to be identified by analysts and validated over weeks in the field this optimisation resulted in 15 times more engagement with the content published in marketing campaigns so in brief artificial intelligence should be considered as an intelligent assistant a new smart best friend that helps you make sense of the data you hold and makes recommendations on available courses of action as 90% of the data in the world has been created in the last 12 months you need AI to help make sense of it all these huge data sets are invariably unstructured and your.
intelligent assistant can wade through workloads with ease this intelligent insistent is not just your assistant but it will help your entire marketing team with an endless energy and an objective outlook so people talk about AI being alive taking over the world I for one am not convinced of that at all however even the late great physicist Stephen.
Hawking warned that AI could destroy civilization as we know it however that was mainly due to his belief that artificial intelligence can exceed our own intelligence becoming a new form of life his criticism was that AI could bring about huge social and economic changes that could affect the fabric of social communities and we are already seeing huge changes to the retail high street with Toys R Us and Matlins folding in the last fortnight and arguably that is simply because of the convenience of online shopping but what.
happens when AI gets involved we stand on the edge of a technological revolution that will change the way marketers work more in the next two years than in the last 20 years so what would the future of AI look like well one of the most difficult elements to replicate of humanity is creativity how far could a I go in the creative process.
of marketing well at IBM we are using AI in the creative process already in 2016 the IBM Watson cognitive platform was used for the first ever a I created movie trailer Watson analyzed the visuals sound and composition of hundreds of existing horror film trailers Watson then selected scenes from the movie for editors to patch together into the AI inspired trailer this ultimately reduced what would be a week-long process into just one day and.
made a very spooky movie trailer of the film Morgan in the future this could be applied to other creative marketing decisions even branding perhaps in the future AI will be able to build the very creative style and tonal treatment for your brand that works with a particular customer for example you know when you meet somebody new that you want to impress you modify your conversation and behavior seeking to predict what that person enjoys talking about you are still the same person but you have.
adjusted the brand of you to suit the recipient AI could give us truly individual branding now a I will free you up to duce much more of the kind of job that you want to do creating strategy and being the conductor of an AI Orchestra calling the shots and making the big decisions that only a human being can do so please remember AI is not a substitute for thinking in its.
own right so lets talk actions what do you need to do today that will start you on your AI journey now your customers have high expectations and with competitors creating even more powerful AI based personalized marketing communications you could find yourself falling behind especially as AI takes time and resources to do right now you might remember the old budget triangle of scope schedule and resources if you want something done fast and right it will need more resources and if you want it done quickly with less resources it will likely be a low quality you will.
need to balance your companys budget requirement and timescales whilst there will be many exciting and speedy quick wins in AI your long term view is just that long term to get the AI components working in unison takes time to mature even though there will be an immediate value and it will be obvious to you building real life AI products is a large undertaking in most companies think of it as a as a CRM project on steroids AI products need technical engineers to build the systems marketers to define the strategies and best.
practices and data scientists to make those dreams a reality teaching the system to achieve the huge expectations put on it and even after its set up and running there will still be testing and optimization work to be done now here are your five steps to AI success so get ready with the Print Screen button on your keyboard forward thinking get familiar with the basics of AI from a fundamental level now you.
dont need to know the granular detail of how an egg I system specifically works but you need to know what the inputs and the outputs are and the most important is the foundation of data that powers AI you most likely will want to adopt a blend of AI applications into your marketing mix so having a holistic view of all of them is the best way to.
go also please as an aside dont forget this years hot topic of GDP are the general data protection regulation and ensure again that any data collected gdpr compliant and has legitimate usage now planning and strategy you should start by automating anything that is not creative your AI strategy should start where your data is strongest so if you collect a lot of information on your website and via transactions then start with an AI led segmentation and pricing.
strategy perhaps if you have the time create a swim lane diagram of a customers journey and identified the touch points that will benefit from AI try and make sure there is a balance focus of AI across the lifecycle of a customers journey from awareness interest desire to action project management start a long-term plan with short-term goals they will need clear detailed and specific outcomes for the AI applications you will be using the machine learning data you will need and the propensity models that you will need.
to power that data organize sprints using the specific AI tools that give you quick returns and build evidence that AI is a success and use this to justify and optimize the next sprint change management manage the change within your organization and seek to combine AI and human teams as often as you can organize your AI teams for the unforeseen and be prepared to be flexible and adaptable with your outcomes take a long-term approach to training and ensure that members of your team are up to speed with the new AI.
tech optimization and continuous improvement the prototyping and proving stages are kind of built within the AI systems but improving is a long-term continuous project make sure you were monitoring the AI systems and tracking sample customer journeys to ensure the AI is being as accurate as you designed also you will need to track trends between your AI systems and find new opportunities as your AI strategic journey evolves possibly adopting new AI software building on the foundations of your existing efforts now here at IBM we are really excited to see how a AI and.machine learning evolves and shapes the future of marketing strategy and I want to end on a quote from Isaac Asimovs robot series of books you cant differentiate between a robot and the very best of humans ai will be the best of us it will free you from the many mundane tasks of your job and give you the freedom to start new endeavors thank you for listening I hope you have enjoyed the webinar and I look forward to answering your questions in a few moments.
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