WATCH: AI objectives increasingly involve marketing

Of all a company’s functions, marketing has perhaps the most to gain from artificial intelligence (AI). Marketing’s core activities are understanding customer needs, matching them to products and services, and persuading people to buy — capabilities that AI can dramatically enhance.

And globally it appears chief marketing officers are increasingly embracing the technology: an August 2019 survey by the American Marketing Association showed that implementation of AI had jumped 27% in the previous year-and-a-half.

And a 2020 Deloitte global survey of early AI adopters showed that three of the top five AI objectives were marketing-orientated: enhancing existing products and services; creating new products and services; and enhancing relationships with customers.

If these are the bots marketers are looking for, how are they applying their Jedi powers of persuasion and selling using these new tools?

To talk about this Michael Avery is joined by Thabang Skwambane, CEO of the Nahana Group, previously group MD of FCB Joburg; Alan Buck, chief marketing officer at L’Oréal SA; and Dashni Vilikazi, MD of the Mediashop