Marketers shouldn’t be wary of their jobs being taken over by robots, says George John, but instead should learn to harness the power of artificial intelligence (AI).
Most people are probably surprised by the comment that their computer knows them better than their friends and family. But a recent study from Stanford and Cambridge Universities has revealed this to be true. In fact, researchers found that using Artificial Intelligence (AI) enabled them to predict and interpret a participant’s personality by analysing just ten Facebook likes.
Over the last year, we’ve seen AI appear in the news with increasing frequency. The Turing Test of a computer’s intelligence was met, AI start-ups were acquired by internet giants, Hollywood movies including CHAPPIE, Ex Machina and Her were based solely on AI storylines. But, despite these blockbusters showcasing the positive possibilities of AI, recently it has been the anticipated dangers that have hit the headlines. Highly regarded public figures, such as Bill Gates and Stephen Hawking, have warned us to be cautious of the rapid evolution of AI and that machines will eventually supersede humans, because they are faster and smarter than us. However, while there may be potential threat to some jobs we know today, I believe with the proper safeguards and procedures in place, the end of the world at the hands of robot armies is unlikely. Overall, AI will bring about more good than it will evil.
When it comes to marketing, AI will continue to impact the sector in two ways. Firstly, the types of jobs marketers will do and, secondly, the way campaigns are conceived, run and measured.
Firstly, if we take jobs in marketing, there is an existing fear that programmatic buying systems are threatening the jobs of media planners and media buyers. Technology and automation has been taking people out of factories and reducing the size of typing pools for years, but has also created new roles and opportunities. This has freed up the creative potential of humans and allowed them to spend their time developing all kinds of new ideas.
When we look at the marketing universe today, many of the jobs people have now didn’t even exist a decade or two ago: web designers, SEO consultants, social media experts and mobile and web app developers are all relatively young professions. In combination, the scale of the opportunity and volume of data these new marketing platforms are creating is also changing the role of the marketer and the skills marketing departments require.
Companies are now employing big data analysts and data scientists in marketing departments to uncover insights that will drive business decisions. There are also roles such as the marketing technologist, who can bridge the gap between the marketing function and IT and the SVPs of digital strategy, who understand the potential of harnessing all this data and technology to improve the effectiveness of marketing across every channel, and drive revenues. In fact, McKinsey estimates there will be 4 million big data-related positions in the US alone, so I think it’s fair to suggest that for every task AI will replace there will definitely be a new, more interesting and effective opportunity created. The role of the CMO has already been revolutionised by AI. The demands on the modern day CMO are quite extraordinary; although their central and long term objective of creating revenue and driving brand awareness remain the same, successful CMOs will only achieve growth by leveraging technology.
Technological developments mean there have never been more channels with which a marketer can reach their target market. The always-on, multi-device consumer now has greater involvement in company/customer interactions, and that’s a fundamental change. Also, CMOs have never had so much data available to them that they can use to make decisions and produce results. To thrive in this new environment, marketers must learn all they can about customer practices and preferences and the source of this knowledge is that data.
With the use of artificial intelligence in marketing, we’re actively talking about creating programmes to solve problems that are beyond human scale challenges and assisting CMOs in achieving their goals more effectively.
For example, look at a large advertiser such as Tesco: a brand like this has the potential to interact with millions of current and potential customers every day. Tesco has an extremely wide brand appeal and can serve products to a vast spectrum of society. If there are 60 million people in the UK and Tesco have 20 potential opportunities to interact with each individual a week, that means there are 1.2 billion possible interactions at stake. It is impossible for a human marketer or even a large team to perfectly calculate and place specific ads that appeal to those individuals’ specific wants based on their previous purchasing or browsing history. However, AI and machine learning does have the mechanical capacity to make this possible.
AI has the potential to take the decision over which channels will be most appropriate to reach the customer out of the hands of the CMO and their department, calculating those decisions for them in real-time and enabling agile marketing, with quick release cycles and an iterative approach based on these learnings. In the not too distant future, I believe marketers will be spending a lot more time working out exactly what goal it is they want to achieve and how they will measure success.
Moving to the second area where I believe AI will impact marketing, at the moment decisions over which products or services a business promotes are largely down to human choices. But in the future, systems in all kinds of businesses will be able to recognise where there is need and market appropriately without human intervention. For example, AI working for an airline can identify reductions in traffic through regional airports, such as Manchester, and can target online users in that area, or people who often book tickets via an alternative airport but would benefit financially to fly from Manchester. This targeting can happen offline or online, or a combination of both, depending on that users previous purchasing behaviour.
It’s not just when to initiate a campaign that will be changed, thanks to AI, machine learning has the potential to fundamentally change the way we market businesses, products and services. Currently, with the possible exception of social media, marketing is a one-way channel. Marketers conceive the message, deliver it to the consumer and hope it delivers a response or action.
As AI technology improves and evolves, we will see it progress beyond selecting the right message and design (crafted by humans) to deliver to the right person, over the right channel, at the most opportune time, to actually having a two-way conversation in real-time. To achieve this, machines will be able to use the behavioural intelligence they gather to deliver many convincing messages, replies and retorts in real-time. And marketers will need to learn to become experts in managing these machines and establishing the parameters to ensure they conduct these conversations in ways that are appropriate to the company and brand. After all, the one thing that robots lack that humans have is common sense.
One thing is certain, the emergence and continued development of artificial intelligence in the marketing sphere is revolutionising the sector. It will provide marketers with more time to identify their goals and achieve them with greater accuracy – whether this is generating awareness, attracting new customers or identifying new revenue streams. Most importantly, it will free-up human creative potential and create myriad new roles and opportunities that we can’t even begin to imagine.
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George John is co-founder and chairman of the board, Rocket Fuel.
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