New Delhi: The Ad Club’s 2024 edition of D:CODE, which started with some fun banter from Mansha Tandon, Head of App Business Development, Google Play, India, South East Asia and AUNZ, concluded with an in-depth look at the marketing industry. The theme of the event centered on “How AI is revolutionizing the creative, media and user landscape in India”.
Kavita Nair, Strategic Advisor at Skewb Analytics, took the stage to discuss how AI will redefine the way we do things in the marketing landscape. She advised marketers to keep ‘trimurti’ in mind.
Expanding his thoughts and developing the idea of a ‘trimurti’, Nair said. “The first pillar of trimurti is measurement. I remember when I was a brand manager many years ago, I said that I should not be a cost center but that I should create great brands. However, it was very difficult to measure marketing results. As recently as 2020, it took about eight months to analyze all the variables that come into play in business, just to understand the state of things, and that was post-facto.
Today, one of the companies I advise can do this in 15 days in many variables and in many countries, thanks to the power of real-time predictive models using AI and robotics. This means that when it comes to measurement, we now get actionable insights much faster.
“Cost is another concern for businesses. It’s not just about reducing expenses, but also about managing costs effectively. By reducing repetitive tasks with AI models, businesses can reduce costs and create new business, cost and revenue models. This efficiency allows companies to hire new talent and pay them more. When machines handle 80% of repetitive tasks, it brings joy back to work, freeing up time for employees to focus on the tasks they love. This change not only improves productivity but also promotes innovation and growth within the company. By leveraging AI and robotics, businesses can achieve greater efficiency and adaptability, thereby ensuring their competitiveness in an ever-changing market,” Nair said, mentioning the second pillar of ‘trimurti’.
The third pillar of “trimurti” consists of reinventing the narrative. Nair best describes it: “We are all storytellers, and the question is how to make storytelling more powerful. With real-time AI, personalization and localization at scale are possible. However, simply customizing the text may not be of any benefit.
We must reinvent not only the art of our work, but also the very essence of what we do. As tools become more democratized, the opportunity lies in creating distinctive experiences for competitive advantage. This is the true power of AI for our brotherhood.
Shubhranshu Singh, CVBU Marketing Director at Tata Motors, then spoke about the challenge of implementing AI, where it is difficult to prioritize viable and commercially accessible use cases amidst the enthusiasm.
Sharing his thoughts on this, Singh said, “Businesses are facing challenges in implementing AI, especially generative AI. Amidst the excitement, it is difficult to prioritize viable, commercially accessible use cases. Managing unstructured data and finding which applications to run is unclear. Again, trust issues arise when sharing data with potential partners. Internal alignment and understanding of AI is often lacking. The training resources needed to effectively apply AI require significant effort.
Despite sorting through data and identifying potential applications, prioritizing the most important use cases remains a challenge.
Investing in AI is expensive. OpenAI derives 75% of its revenue from individual subscribers, and less than 25% from businesses. In India, this percentage is probably even lower. Calculating the return on investment (ROI) of AI in services is a real challenge. Even if pilot projects are successful, they often fail to scale, making large investments risky. Junior employees usually face the consequences of these failures. To successfully implement AI, companies must prioritize practical use cases, ensure data security, and align internal understanding with external capabilities.
Further, Soumya Mohanty, Managing Director and Chief Client Officer at Kantar, spoke about the humanization of AI. Talking about giving a human touch to AI, she mentioned the campaign run by Beck’s, where the brand came up with a beer called autonomous. What’s surprising here is that the beer was brewed using ingredients identified by the AI itself and not just by brewing; AI has even led its own campaign to commercialize itself.
So the point here is that AI is a tool that finds more beauty in the hands of humans.
Sharing his thoughts on humanizing AI, Mohanty said, “AI has significantly influenced the creation of popular franchises like Barbie and various sci-fi films. Even though AI contributes to these stories, the human element remains crucial, making the narratives accessible and progressive. Barbie, for example, has become a more progressive character. As AI continues to advance, it will likely begin to create stories independently. However, humans will always find ways to create new stories to maintain relevance. AI-based advertising is becoming more common, but there is a risk of overusing it. Consumers may recognize AI ads more than marketers think, with surveys showing 50% of people can identify them.
Despite advances in AI, it is essential not to lose sight of the human touch. AI will create new codes and start coding, but human involvement will still be necessary. We need to reinvent our approach and bring back chance. Moving forward, we must embrace AI while ensuring that human creativity and intuition continue to play a vital role in storytelling and advertising.
Diving deeper into the sessions of the event, Siddharth Srinivasan, Head of India at ElevenLabs, took the stage to talk about AI-generated voices.
Srinivasan said, “Let’s focus on content and media creation technology, which I find particularly interesting. Outside of chatbots, this category has the best product-market fit. 50% of the most used consumer apps fall into this category, with India leading this trend. India is our largest user market and Hindi is one of the three main languages on our platform. As we release more languages, we expect this trend to continue.
Our platform is used by creators, streaming companies, YouTubers and influencers. Marketers are already connecting with consumers at the intersection of AI and content. Use cases in education are also important, with teams using our technology to make their lives easier and achieve their goals. Our 30 million global users come from diverse industries and solve use cases like video workflows, ad creation, product explainers, and content marketing.
“In e-commerce, you can easily reach many profiles. Overcoming availability barriers such as time and language is now easier. Technologies like ours allow you to create a perfect brand voice and break these barriers,” he added.
Concluding, Jaspreet Bindra, Founder of AI&Beyond and Tech Whisperer, took the stage to deliver closing remarks and said, “The transformative impact of AI, especially generative AI like GPT-3, on society and industries is profound. I see AI as a fundamental change in human-machine interaction, similar to past revolutions like the agricultural and industrial revolutions.
Generative AI’s ability to process and generate language at scale has the potential to revolutionize marketing and advertising by making interactions more personalized and proactive. I also recognize concerns about AI creativity and hallucinations, but I believe these can be harnessed for human creativity. Ethical considerations in AI development are crucial, and I recognize the progress being made to address these issues.
