How AI can become more ‘human’ in doing marketing
Will marketing and the use of artificial intelligence (AI) compatibly mix? One is involved with understanding the human heart and mind and crafting the most powerful messages that can build a relationship with the target publics in the long run. On the other hand, rightly or wrongly, the other conjures up images of highly efficient, extremely smart, but emotionally sterile tools that can perform optimally, but miss out on the critical human nuances that can make or break a deal.
The more apprehensive professionals might relax a little if they recognize that AI and machine learning have been helping them significantly in reaching out to their customers with more precision. Search engines and the personalized product recommendations that pop out in sites like Amazon, Spotify, and Netflix are the most common examples. Software that constantly analyzes user information and the results of marketing campaigns are another. A third is content generation — and it answers in the positive questions as to whether AI can communicate with a more personal or ‘human’ touch. AI is beginning to generate or write sports and finance news which appear to be written by “ human” journalists.
That development is just the beginning and can open more doors that can facilitate more interaction between humans and a more humanized-sounding-and-looking AI. It starts with content that is communicated to the consumer or reader. John Mullins, director of Watson Customer Engagement, IBM, explains how this particular development can be a turning point. In presenting before a crowd of his marketing colleagues in Digicon 2018 weeks ago, he said, “AI can not just understand content, but it can extract ideas from it, draw correlations, and then create new connections. Its interaction with humans through text or the spoken word will be natural, and not contrived.”
Neither do creative teams have to worry about AI diluting the tone of their campaign or removing its more emotional and social aspects. One of the elements in marketing that will not be changed is the kind of story that will work on the consumer. Mullins said,“It has to have a consistent narrative that remains in the reader’s memory, it is unique to him, and drives an emotional response.” And instead of transforming a moving visual story about a happy couple about to get wed to dry statistics on a product line, new AI tools might even enhance the ‘human’ presence in the campaign.
Memorable storytelling will not disappear, insisted Mullins, but will be augmented. He described the coming new revolution in AI-influenced marketing: “AI can read the intent of the words and the tone in the message through a tone analyzer and linguistic analytics. In reading the tone, the text can appear to be totally different. It can also sift through mountains of data to conduct social listening of your brand. There can be a lot of huge surprises. The analysis can answer these questions: What tone are you expected to generate? Are you sending the right emotional messages to clients with that tone?”
One other marketing device that AI can improve on is the agility, vocabulary, and ultimately the human inflection in the chat boxes that are now sprouting all over websites. These little squares where a machine does some pre-formatted Q and A may be quick and present 24/7, but may not necessarily have the complexity of language that will allow it to conduct a lengthier, comprehensive, and friendlier conversation with the human customer. Mullins said AI will be changing all that.
He elaborated, “The chat box will have to be integrated deeper with customer engagement. The alleged or so-called scripts used by the chat box now will not get the customer very far. They have very specific limitations.” But with tone analysis and natural language usage being incorporated into these tools, the human customer may be able to ask more difficult questions that tackle various aspects of the problem — and the AI will answer them as effectively and as thoroughly as a warm-blooded customer service representative might. In time, it might even send an emoji or two.
The AI revolution is far from over, but its interfaces are acquiring a more familiar, homegrown, and warmer look. That can only come as a relief — if not as an advantage — to the humans it is dealing with, marketer and market base alike.
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