Article 1. Voice-activated change: Marketing in the age of artificial intelligence and virtual
assistants
Consumer-orientation and individualization. The theme of “consumers” came up more often than
any other except “home”. While this is not shocking, it is still worth noting. In the advertising and
marketing world, the term “consumers” is virtually synonymous with “humans” or “audience”.
Historically, advertising and marketing focused on the brand, the product. Now the audience is
empowered, fuelled by vast amounts of information available at one’s fingertips, voices distributed
and amplified by the megaphone of social media. This shifts the focus for marketers from product to
audience.
Just as technology always promises something better to consumers (a way to improve life, perform a
task more efficiently, or get information more easily) it is also promised something better to brands
(better, smarter ways to use data and connect and integration from advertisers, and a better
understanding of audiences and data). These devices and experiences have the potential to enable
consumers to make smarter, better decisions, and to enable marketers to deliver better, smarter
content, but they also require that marketers do a better job of understanding consumers and the
data.
Conversations with the device create data, and data drives the experience. As “John” noted earlier,
the more inputs or conversations there are, the more data there is, and the better, more relevant the
experience can be. The theme of experience reflects a big shift from the traditional advertiser
perspective of distributing a “message” about the product or brand.
The world cloud (figure 1) was helpful, but it missed some important terms in the conversation that
were important to the meaning of the case. The immediacy, the convenience, the relevance, and the
learning /AI all contribute to the opportunity to create a deep, personal connection, something
marketers have always sought and rarely achieved.
With the rise of AI and an increasingly connected home, however, that user decision may be taken
out of the equation and replaced with devices that make decisions for us, provide curated answers,
talk to each other, and employ machine learning to become more and more personalized.
Implications:
1. The focus for brands must clearly be on the audience. This is something marketers should
already know, but is becomes essential in the case of voice activated assistants. A successful
conversation requires focusing on consumers, on people, at the individual level; being
relevant to them, tailoring and personalizing content, services and integration to better meet
an individual’s needs; and using that conversation to get smarter.
