4A’s Accelerate: Part Two
The Blackbelt team recently touched down in Miami for the 4A’s Accelerate conference, during which we took away a multitude of learnings — check out our first 4A’s recap post for more on that — and also hit the stage ourselves. The learning track, which our Co-Founder and CEO Grant McDougall participated in, was focused on how marketing professionals can implement AI today and what the future holds for our industry, as well as practical definitions and current-day use cases. Let’s dive in!
What exactly is AI and how does it work?
AI provides machines with the ability to understand, reason, learn and interact. It is powered through skills including sentiment and tone analysis, personality insights, visual recognition and natural language understanding, to name a few. These skills are then put to use in various ways, including future-forward items like autonomous driving and everyday-use items like chatbots, recommendations engines, and mobile check deposits.
So what does this mean for the marketing industry?
Agencies are being driven to a fundamentally different model as we speak. A favorite quote of our CEO highlights these market forces: “the big consultancies are underestimating the value of creativity [and] the agencies are under-exploiting the value of business analytics,” said Ivan Pollard, senior VP-strategic marketing at Coca-Cola Co. “Someone’s going to crack that soon because data plus creativity is the future.”
These changing tides are exactly why Blackbelt was formed and why AI is at the forefront of our thinking and offerings — and we’re putting our money where our mouth is. We invested in Nucleal, a platform that is going to drive AI in the marketing world, and also work closely with End Cue, who’s creating movies with AI.
What can AI do for agencies and brands today?
Let’s take Nucleal for example. Its platform is enabling agencies and brands to understand the brand — and its competitors — on day one of a pitch or project. Using AI, the tool identifies any brand’s archetype immediately, benchmarks the brand against competitors and then offers expert strategic advice. This in turn allows you to better diagnose risks and opportunities, recommend strategies and tactics, and initiate actions on a brand’s behalf.
These insights are being produced today and offer an objective perspective on the degree to which a brand’s messaging is familiar, consistent, relevant, unique and revered. This presents the opportunity to understand, in an unbiased manner, what a brand’s existing identity is today and an evidence-based point of view on how to capitalize on its identity.
This is just one example but shows how truly powerful AI is and the potential it has to free up creative time, more effectively utilize marketing budgets and allow companies to be more on-brand than ever before.
How does a company know if it’s ready to implement AI?
When assessing our clients’ AI readiness, Blackbelt likes to evaluate elements such as governance, data maturity, product management, program delivery, marketing motion, implementation approach and cultural change to ensure AI will be implemented with ease and able to perform at its highest power within a company. If you’re curious where your company falls, get in touch at info@blackbelt.ai.
Accelerate was full of great ideas and thought-provoking topics impacting our industry today. We thoroughly enjoyed being apart of the conversation and look forward to partnering with agencies and brands alike to unlock the power of AI.
