Category: Artificial Intelligence
In May, OMD EMEA partnered with Google to test initial concepts in a fast-paced environment, assessing their possibilities and pitfalls for further development with feedback from a consumer focus group.
Four teams participated in the two-day event, gaining knowledge around implementing Google Assistant solutions for brands. Google provided teams with guidance around their current capabilities and conversational AI design. Each team explored a unique use case which they brought to life in a prototype, taking advantage of additional integration opportunities and planning for common failure states.
Taking a people-first approach, we conducted a consumer focus group to test the teams’ ideas with six participants selected based on a number of factors including age, family and technology adoption. The consumer workshop focused on unearthing opinions on the formation and potential of the ideas and innovations, rather than their final form functionality. The users were surprised and excited by the variety of use cases and new experiences they offered.
Brief Overview of the Concepts Explored
Meet Sasha, your own personal hair stylist assistant. No more bad hair days – get customised hairstyle recommendations and step by step guidance, so you can be your BEST you!
- Provides personalised suggestion based on uploaded photos
- Enjoyed the pause after each instruction, waiting to be told to go to the next step
- The time estimates and items needed is unique and a great addition
Meet Indi, a trendsetter and expert that will help you find your own self expression through clothing customisation. Get access to limited edition items, discounts and exclusive experiences. She also collects ideas and experiences from all the social platforms to help you form the best ideas.
- Fun, strong personality
- The customisation aspect is unique and stands out
- Great way to feel closer to the brand and augment in-store visits
Meet the Configurator, your personalised car configuration assistant making the process of finding the perfect vehicle easier. Get the most relevant information and advice to customise your perfect vehicle.
- Different personality options for different types of consumers
- Provides adds an extra way to get information
- A configuration summary to enhance the dealership experience
Meet Dino Adventures, the learning and development action for kids making reading more fun and exciting.
- Built around busy moments that could become additional family time
- Alternative to an iPad, enjoyed that it isn’t screen based
- Open to being recorded to add increased interactivity with the experience
Key Consumer Themes
Consumers are Open to AI interactions
All of the consumers in the focus group had used a smart speaker, but they didn’t all own a device. They felt comfortable with smart speakers recording interactions as long as they were clear on when and how the interaction adds value or functionality in return. They also wanted control functionality to change features and turn settings on and off.
Set Expectations Early
It is important to set expectations early, as consumers are very excited about these new interactions. As a result, they are finding many current activations underwhelming because they can’t do as much as expected. Consider starting with a narrow-focus and building out from there. Be very specific about what it can and can’t do.
The group also talked about how assistants are becoming very realistic. One consumer referred to a recent experience stating:
“I was dealing with a bot recently and it was scarily real. For a second, I forgot I was talking to a bot. It was weird. It was like he was almost interacting with me – the way I asked questions and stuff. I felt comfortable, but it was just that moment where I remembered I was talking to a robot.”
Sharing Data has Become the Norm
Consumers are more accepting of sharing their data in order to sign-up for a product or service. However, a consumer described the situations as a catch-22 saying:
“I just have come to accept it. I think there is lots changing with GDPR now and who is holding your data. There is a trust element, you would like to think they are not sharing your data.”
Child-Friendly AI
The consumers didn’t like the idea of having a smart speaker in a child’s room. They discussed how it was an expensive device to have in a child’s room. However, they enjoyed how experiences could evolve with the child.
Parental-controls was an important feature discussed. They thought it was an immense amount of freedom to give to a child on their own. The group also wanted to be able to set time limits on the amount of time a child could spend with experiences.
Want to know more about OMD Hackathons? Email [email protected] or [email protected]
As marketers, in particular digital specialists, we are often guilty of focusing on the immediate gains we can realise from technology. This is true of all emerging technologies which can make our lives easier and our campaigns more efficient. However, it can be detrimental to its eventual potential, so it’s important to think bigger than ourselves and our area of expertise. This is potentially truer now than ever, with the emergence of AI.
AI is a huge all-encompassing term for many technologies, essentially covering everything which involves machine learning. This can be from the simplest output, such as a macro in an excel, to something incredibly advanced such as voice assistants booking our haircuts! With so many applications, it’s easy to focus on the now and not the future.
So how can we break down the applications further to make them accessible for now and open for the future? As we see it there are three types of AI in varying stages of development;
- Optimising; Goal orientated AI designed to deliver a measurable outcome
- Recognising; Categorisation orientated, leaning on human understanding to group at scale
- Creating; Output orientated, asking an open question and using machine learning to answer
These areas feed our understanding of AI as marketers, leaving open questions which can be answered by user understanding and human uptake for the technology, this then translates into three distinct areas of focus:
- Marketing with AI; Could be algorithmic gains within programmatic
- Marketing of AI; Could be the use of chatbots as a landing point for consumers
- Marketing to AI; Could be brands marketing to voice assistants to gain market advantage
Of these three areas of focus, marketing with AI is obviously developing fastest and is the most tangible outcome at this stage. Marketing of AI is a market challenge for us, we are looking at AI as an extension of brands, how they have bridged the gap between brand and consumer and add additional value to both. Finally marketing to AI is the opportunity, the ambition of brand interaction, communicating with technologies developed to aid consumers, not marketers. This could be brands marketing to personal AI agents which are designed to pull back two product options for their owner.
Regardless of the role of AI in marketing, we at OMD believe in creativity aligned with technology, fundamentally delivering creative and innovative campaigns. AI to us is ‘Artful Intelligence’, without creativity we believe Marketing ‘with’, ‘of’ and most of all ‘to’ AI will have limited market cut-through and brands will fall below their potential.
To come to this conclusion, we need to know that there is a strong consumer desire for AI technologies. This led us to conduct a piece of research with Goldsmiths university, across 13 markets, 19 retail sectors and 18 technologies. The market leading piece of research included hands on testing alongside qualitative and quantitative methods, as well as a hackathon. The output therefore was substantial enough to generate a wider understanding of consumer use of AI. Some of the headlines were:
- 22% of Europeans are already using AI technologies
- A further 41% are open to using the technologies
- Trust is a big blocker, especially in the UK and Scandinavia
- The Spanish and Polish are most open to using the technologies
The research identified 5 core groups of consumers we need to consider when looking at AI adoption. Whilst 12% were firmly in the uninterested category, 88% are open to AI technologies and of this group 22% would be early adopters. Two thirds of consumers are therefore wanting to accept and use AI but are unsure of the current consumer output. We need to educate these consumers and develop AI outside of our expertise, thinking bigger than our current day to day, our current P&L and the current outputs of AI.
To that end we are focusing on the retail applications and uses of AI within marketing. We’ll be going into more detail in our next AI blog!
In the utilities industry, disruption will mean a change of roles and control between those that produce, distribute and consume energy. Yet, this does have to be at the detriment of the industry’s established brands. The use of emerging technologies to enhance the consumer experience and expand choice will have a huge impact in deciding the pioneers, and victims, of the industry’s impending disruption.
“The energy sector is about to undergo a fundamental disruption.” This was the opening statement at the inaugural WIRED Energy conference, where an array of speakers and attendees from the energy and utilities industry came together to discuss the imminent advances in the sector last week.
This opening remark set the tone of the day’s talks, all of which explored what our future might look like from an energy perspective. How will the increasing desirability of electric cars affect the industry? Will energy eventually be shared on a peer-to-peer basis? How will artificial intelligence play a role?
The event certainly raised more questions than it answered. Yet, there was a clear consensus that the way in which we produce, consume and distribute energy is due for a significant overhaul.
Representing OMD EMEA, I was there for two reasons. The first was to better understand how brands in the utilities industry should behave and react in the face of inevitable change. And, the second was to inquire how brands can help to shape and influence the coming disruption.
Giving power back to the consumer
The balance of power between providers and consumers was a major theme throughout the conference. Developments in solar generation and storage are shaping a future in which consumers can produce, sell and buy energy within their own communities through the installation of microgrids. Lawrence Orsini, Founder of the Brooklyn Microgrid, discussed the consumer appeal of a local peer-to-peer energy marketplace. He stressed the appeal lies in the transparency and consumer control that this new means of energy production provides.
Going one step further, Joanna Hubbard from the start-up Electron laid out a future in which the peer-to-peer exchange of energy becomes completely disintermediated through the integration of blockchain technologies. These visions of the future for energy show how technological innovation is a real threat to the dominance of the established energy giants, as agile and innovative start-ups such as these are, quite literally, putting the power back in the hands of the consumers.
The importance of trust in the age of automation
The point at which technologies such as these are implemented at scale is still a way off. However, Nina Bhatia from the Hive was there to talk about a technology that has seen rapid consumer adoption over the past years: the connected home. Even though some believe automation and the rise in AI signal a shift of control away from the individual in favour of machines. Bhatia emphasised that ultimately the integration of AI and machine learning in homes should be regarded as an increase in consumer choice.
These technologies allow us to understand behaviours, enabling brands to tailor their services to increase the efficiency and ease of living. But allowing technologies to do this depends on trust, which the brands introducing such technologies must earn. Currently 33% of consumers do not trust AI, according to OMD EMEA’s Retail Revolution study surveying over 15,000 consumers across 13 European countries. Consumer trust and the guarantee of safety are even more important for utility brands, who are integrated into people’s homes.
How to harness technological developments to define disruption
So, how do brands balance individual control and trust into the process of technological innovation? A topic that was returned to several times throughout the day. For utilities brands, it is clear that their future offerings and services must be both tech-led and consumer-first. OMD EMEA’s AI consumer research takes an audience-first approach, taking into account different consumer perceptions and behaviours, to help brands integrate AI solutions that add value to their overall consumer experience.
Want to learn more about the implications of artificial intelligence for your company or the Retail Revolution study? Please contact us at [email protected]
In the utilities industry, disruption will mean a change of roles and control between those that produce, distribute and consume energy. Yet, this does have to be at the detriment of the industry’s established brands. The use of emerging technologies to enhance the consumer experience and expand choice will have a huge impact in deciding the pioneers, and victims, of the industry’s impending disruption.
“The energy sector is about to undergo a fundamental disruption.” This was the opening statement at the inaugural WIRED Energy conference, where an array of speakers and attendees from the energy and utilities industry came together to discuss the imminent advances in the sector last week.
This opening remark set the tone of the day’s talks, all of which explored what our future might look like from an energy perspective. How will the increasing desirability of electric cars affect the industry? Will energy eventually be shared on a peer-to-peer basis? How will artificial intelligence play a role?
The event certainly raised more questions than it answered. Yet, there was a clear consensus that the way in which we produce, consume and distribute energy is due for a significant overhaul.
Representing OMD EMEA, I was there for two reasons. The first was to better understand how brands in the utilities industry should behave and react in the face of inevitable change. And, the second was to inquire how brands can help to shape and influence the coming disruption.
Giving power back to the consumer
The balance of power between providers and consumers was a major theme throughout the conference. Developments in solar generation and storage are shaping a future in which consumers can produce, sell and buy energy within their own communities through the installation of microgrids. Lawrence Orsini, Founder of the Brooklyn Microgrid, discussed the consumer appeal of a local peer-to-peer energy marketplace. He stressed the appeal lies in the transparency and consumer control that this new means of energy production provides.
Going one step further, Joanna Hubbard from the start-up Electron laid out a future in which the peer-to-peer exchange of energy becomes completely disintermediated through the integration of blockchain technologies. These visions of the future for energy show how technological innovation is a real threat to the dominance of the established energy giants, as agile and innovative start-ups such as these are, quite literally, putting the power back in the hands of the consumers.
The importance of trust in the age of automation
The point at which technologies such as these are implemented at scale is still a way off. However, Nina Bhatia from the Hive was there to talk about a technology that has seen rapid consumer adoption over the past years: the connected home. Even though some believe automation and the rise in AI signal a shift of control away from the individual in favour of machines. Bhatia emphasised that ultimately the integration of AI and machine learning in homes should be regarded as an increase in consumer choice.
These technologies allow us to understand behaviours, enabling brands to tailor their services to increase the efficiency and ease of living. But allowing technologies to do this depends on trust, which the brands introducing such technologies must earn. Currently 33% of consumers do not trust AI, according to OMD EMEA’s Retail Revolution study surveying over 15,000 consumers across 13 European countries. Consumer trust and the guarantee of safety are even more important for utility brands, who are integrated into people’s homes.
How to harness technological developments to define disruption
So, how do brands balance individual control and trust into the process of technological innovation? A topic that was returned to several times throughout the day. For utilities brands, it is clear that their future offerings and services must be both tech-led and consumer-first. OMD EMEA’s AI consumer research takes an audience-first approach, taking into account different consumer perceptions and behaviours, to help brands integrate AI solutions that add value to their overall consumer experience.
Want to learn more about the implications of artificial intelligence for your company or the Retail Revolution study? Please contact us at [email protected]
The world of artificial intelligence (AI) is evolving rapidly, fulled by tech giant investment and disruptive entrants. However, the risk, as with so many earlier technologies, is that companies will focus on what the machines are capable of rather than what customers want. To keep you informed, we will be curating regular AI updates from our proprietary Retail Revolution study, news sources and industry statistics.
#retailrevolutionfact
- 22% of Europeans surveyed are already using AI and another 41% would like to get an AI device or app[ctt_hbox link=”fRLdl” via=”no” ][/ctt_hbox]
- Half of Europeans have used a digital assistant. Although Amazon Echo is not the most used to date across our research panel, it is the most liked [ctt_hbox link=”vG6we” via=”no” ][/ctt_hbox]
- Those who are willing to share data are over 60% more likely to use mobile AI assistants including Google Home, Amazon Echo and Microsoft Cortana [ctt_hbox link=”1Ue_W” via=”no” ] https://ctt.ec/1Ue_W+[/ctt_hbox]
#inthenews
#ready
- According to McKinsey’s, tech giants spent an estimated $20 billion to $30 billion on AI in 2016 globally
- In 2015, messaging apps surpassed social networks as reported by Business Insider
- Gartner forecasts that by 2019 AI platform services will cannibalise revenues for 30% of marketing-leading companies
AI has the ability to drastically change the way brands can interact with people. The question for brands is how best to employ AI to create these experiences of the future. Embracing a consumer-focused planning approach ensures that you will consider the lives and routines of one or several of your target audiences, as well as the rights and role of the brand in these moments.
Want to explore the implications of AI for your brand’s business? Click here and get in touch