CANNES — Marketers should start preparing for an age in which their independent intelligent brand assistants are at consumers’ beck and call to answer pre-purchase questions using artificial intelligence, according to one leading ad agency executive.
At Cannes Lions, AI – perhaps surprisingly – emerged as one of the key trends and opportunities facing modern marketers.
Publicis Groupe chief growth officer Rishad Tobaccowala, in this video interview with Beet.TV, says the opportunities are big.
He says AI is marked out by three characteristics – large datasets, a large amount of computing power and a natural, childlike learning ability.
“Put those together and you can predict and make decisions better than ever before,” he says.
“Human plus AI helper can do amazing things.”
In fact, Tobaccowala likens it to Her, the sci-fi movie in which a man who interacts daily with his AI powered operating system assistant and, ultimately, falls in love with it.
“For a marketer, how do you ensure that when someone calls your name or asks for help, your brand can ask for help?,” he says.
And Tobaccowala has more grand thinking.
“We are at the beginning of the third connected age,” he says.
“The first connected age was around mid-90s with the Netscape browser… In 2007 was the second connected age – the rise of social networks and the rise of smartphones… 2017, we’re now in the third connected age – data connecting to data, things connecting to things, and people connecting in new ways including voice.”
This video is part of Beet.TV’s AI Series from Cannes Lions 2017, presented by The Weather Company, an IBM Business. For more from the series, please visit this page.
