Organizations must walk a tightrope between using gen AI to seize competitive advantage and protecting their brand. In this article, we’ll explore the opportunities and pitfalls involved in using gen AI for marketing, helping companies about to embark on their transformation journey find the right path.
Generative AI (gen AI) is on everyone’s lips right now. For marketeers, the technology represents a world of opportunity. From personalization to automation, gen AI can help companies get closer to customers than ever while cutting costs dramatically.
But—and this is a big but—enterprises must tread carefully when it comes to gen AI. That’s because it also has the potential to destroy hard-won customer trust. And what is more precious than your customers’ trust in your brand?
First — the good
Through gen AI, companies can customize marketing campaigns, personalize marketing messages at scale, and simplify the compliance process
Within IBM, we’re seeing gen AI make its mark on marketing. One of the biggest challenges as a global organization is tailoring marketing campaigns to local markets. Gen AI helps us to not only translate content into different languages, but also adapt it to local nuances and cultural norms. Our central gen AI-powered marketing engine automates digital asset management and includes built-in guardrails to reflect our brand values. This has helped us reduce the time and cost involved by as much as 80% while driving up to 26 times more engagement with the content we produce.
Outside of our internal work, we’ve also supported other businesses across industries in utilizing gen AI to improve their targeted engagement. In the oil and gas industry, MOL Group, is transforming the service station experience with data-driven customer engagement. MOL used gen AI to create highly targeted marketing campaigns based on each customer’s previous interactions with the company. The move has encouraged uptake of MOL’s new app, which in turn is boosting gas station revenues for app users between 15% and 30%. Moreover, satisfaction levels related to digital solutions and loyalty programs are more than 20% higher for MOL versus its closest competitors.
We’ve also supported businesses in regulated industries to use gen AI to simplify compliance. It can help to analyze the images and content of customer email campaigns—helping to ensure that messages are compliant from both a regulatory and brand perspective. As well as saving huge amounts of time and risk, this approach enables the company to generate high-quality marketing content at greater scale.
Ensuring AI is secure and compliant
Ask a layperson how they feel about gen AI and the responses will range from giddy excitement to concerns. And the skeptics’ worries are not unfounded: unfettered use of gen AI can result in challenging situations.
As gen AI blurs the boundaries between what’s real and what’s constructed, more of us could be taken in by deepfakes or bots designed to manipulate our behavior. Customers need to trust that companies will be transparent about their use of gen AI, and the authenticity of any third-party endorsement of their products or services.
As with all AI solutions, companies must take proactive measures to avoid embedding bias in their gen AI models. AI-powered systems also offer a tempting target for threat actors, making it crucial to have powerful cyber-defenses for your models, data sets and content.
For customers wary of gen AI, learning that a company is using the technology can be off-putting. At the same time, the demand for convenience from consumers is at an all-time high, and this ‘expectation inflation’ shows no signs of abating. To provide the kinds of personalized experiences that customers want at scale, gen AI is often the only cost-effective option.
Where to go from here?
By allying yourself with the right partners, businesses can embrace the opportunities of gen AI to transform marketing efforts while safeguarding reputation.
At IBM, we’re continuing to spearhead robust ethical guidelines around the use of AI. Ultimately, our goal is to harness the technology for good and nurture customer trust. It’s about building the future of marketing with gen AI and bringing your customers on the journey with you.
John Sullivan
John Sullivan is EMEA Managing Partner at IBM iX. A passionate advocate of continuous reinvention, John has spent his career helping clients deliver a step-change in business results by leveraging new and emerging technologies.
