Content marketing and personalisation in the era of Generative AI

These are volatile and uncertain times today, and it has become all the more challenging to stay on top of one’s game, especially for marketing heads. CMOs today have to adopt numerous strategies to stay on top of the constant evolution in the marketing space.

The 2023 edition of CMOs’ Charcha – Delhi Chapter, held on February 10, 2023, reflected all the inflexion points facing marketing and marketing heads today. The 4^th edition of CMOS’ Charcha turned the spotlight on ‘Content Marketing in the era of Generative AI’. The panel discussion was moderated by Heeru Dingra, CEO, Dentsu Creative, and the panelists included:

Priyang Agarwal, Director – Growth, Marketing and Partnerships, Tata 1mg

Hemant Sajnani, Chief Technology Officer, TV9 Digital

Sumeet Singh, Chief Marketing Officer, Info Edge

Praveen Rao, Director, Marketing, SAP

Kunal Sharma, Head of Marketing and Business Head, KRBL Limited India

Heeru Dingra started the discussion by remarking, “We are in the age of AI. Literally I may not be present out there. My ‘avatar’ can be there and can use Chat GPT to kind of pull up the questions which can be asked to the panelists. I cannot replace you, but I can definitely be replaced by AI at this given point of time. So, keeping that context in mind, my first question is how do you think AI is impacting personalisation in Content Marketing?”

Kunal Sharma responded by saying, “One thing that stays true across decades and across ages in the fact that consumers love brands that show empathy to them. That was so different in the late 1990s, for example in the Surf detergent powder communication where Lalita Ji was what everybody in India could connect with. And move to today, as I was just browsing through a campaign while I was coming here, Listerine for example, which used something called dynamic creative optimisation, and they created thousands of creatives talking to very different personas – that’s the journey we have kind of made. At the same time consumers today want hyperpersonalisation and brands that do that connect better with the audiences, that’s the shift that we have seen over the last couple of decades and that’s the critical role that AI will play for us moving forward.”

Priyang Agarwal pointed out, “AI is revamping a lot of things in marketing. From a marketer’s perspective, AI is a boon. For instance, if any customer is visiting any website and if we know the behaviour of the customer from prior and there is a predictive engine behind them that this particular person can book whatever items he is looking for, I think those kind of customisations, those kind of UI/UX experience of the website can be customised as per the customer’s past behaviour. If a person is coming to the website of healthcare and he is looking for a protein powder and if I as a marketer can predict through the AI and data that this particular person is more expected to buy this particular protein powder of this much cost and this brand, I think it will be really good for me to personalise the nudges and personalise the communication at that point of time. I think AI can definitely help us in reducing the cost, acquiring the customer, and making the customer more loyal towards the brand.”

Summet Singh noted “There is a greater possibility of now actually dissecting your segment into thousands of cohorts and then actually having tools to serve them that hyperpersonalised content. For our businesses, for example, when you can cohort people that way, and go actually one on one rather than wisdom of the crowds, you can now actually give recommendations which are personalised and, therefore, the experience of both the business as well as the consumer, obviously enhances and increases. Most of the brands have adapted chatbots in whatever ways they want to. We have long form, so you have to register on a Naukri, you have to register on a Jeevan Saathi, and to serve you better we need information, these are structured forms, you need 17-18 fields from a person. Conversational AI has just made it so easy for me to get information from somebody, without that person even realising that he/she has actually given away so much of information. So, I think some of those things are also enabled only by AI, and getting better by the subset of ML, to serve your clients and customers better.”

These are edited excerpts, for the complete conversation, watch below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTmKlqYE2rI