Home | Perspectives | Advertising in an AI driven world – The Challenges
These are exciting days for the Advertising profession. Marshalls McLuhan’s statement of the medium being the message made way back in 1964, is proven so effectively in the current scenario, which just a few years ago got the label “the digital media”. Who would have envisaged even as early as 5 years ago that Twitter would dominate the advertising media and be able to get away with the drastic and expensive changes made by its new, maverick Owner?
The Medium now, as Twitter has proved, is certainly an integral part of the Message. In the plethora of media options, the AI tool is a huge aid as well as a ‘disruptor” of the ways advertising is/was traditionally handled. Its impact is across all the three Critical Success Factors for a successful campaign.
Back in 1966, when the Ad guru Sylvester Da Cunha created the Amul Girl, his target market segment had to be addressed perhaps through three media-hoardings, print and the Vividha Bharati, the government operated radio. Over the years, Mr Cunha could witness the impact of digital media. With AI, the Target customer is now a click away. With every purchase of an Amul product that data base is getting richer by the day, providing ever deeper, finer segmentation. The “Hit rate” is increasing closing on 100%.
Over the years, the Mumbai faithful would wait for the new Amul message to appear on a particular hoarding site. The next day it would appear in the dailies. With digital marketing, Mr Da Cunha, could have regaled us more frequently. But all good things need to be savoured and too much of it would dilute the brand. Sadly, we will now miss his creative inputs, though his team would surely continue the tradition of excellence.
AI now could in a small way make up for the loss of the genius. Trolling through the Net, many a one liner may appear aligned to the Maestros thinking and creativity. Whether that’s good or bad is for the debaters. In the world of commerce there is now a powerful aid to creativity. And this AI is not any one entity’s property. Therein lies the challenge in the marketplace.
Whilst earlier we would wait for the Amul Girl to come up with her one liner, in today’s information cluttered world, time is the biggest casualty and mind span nowadays lasts only for a few seconds
Consistency, brevity and frequency are new buzz words. Recently when the Ashes test (between Australia and England) was being broadcast a Bus aggregator got great mileage through a 10 second (or less?) ad repeated after every over. The ad may have irritated a number of non-Target Customers, but for the Target class it was a brilliant selection of media, content and message
Perhaps this third dimension of an advertising campaign is witnessing the most exciting development. From the print, hoarding, radio start in the 60’s, the AMUL ad can today place itself at the right time, in the right type of content, of the right size, to the right customer. Mass customisation as a concept was conceived in in the late eighties. It gained traction in the early years of this century. Its actual usage is only now seen in the world of advertising and promotion. Nowadays it is common to receive a very personalised message at the bottom of an invoice that churns off a credit card reader. At one level we may bristle at the invasion of one’s privacy. At the other one may see the benefit of information that would otherwise never been seen by me.
The existential question that seems to hang in the air. “Could AI tools take over a substantial role of Advertisement Agencies?”
The link between a Producer of a product/offering, and a Promoter of that Product/offering is far more than what a vast database or an intelligent AI can deliver. The Promoter (the Agency) is a sounding board to the Producer and their dialogue forms the basis of a strategy. AI and the databases are tools to implement the strategy.
The Agencies need to rethink their Human Resource skills, augment them with data analysts, giving them a front facing role with the Client Manager. As s/he participates in the strategy sessions, her/his knowledge of the data points and much more importantly the metrics required becomes clearer. The Copywriter than adds value to the extracted data and assists the Analyst design a suitable customer centric IT tool.
These are truly exciting days for the future oriented Agencies.
20JUL23
