Building a Brand Bridge to Consumers with AI

It has been a minute since we published our eTip on 6 Ways To Boost Creative With AI, and we can assure you our experimentation with AI is on the rise as we find new ways to harness it as a conduit for creativity — and connection.

So, without further ado, here are several ways you can use AI to build stronger connections with customers:

Customer Service and Personalization

While AI chatbots and virtual assistants have been around for some time, we’ve seen an evolution with their ability to analyze customer feedback and understand human sentiment. Incorporating an AI chatbot on your site can give your customers an instant, always-on customer service channel – an effective way to drive them further down your purchase funnel or helping to retain existing customers with useful answers when and where they’re needed. Take a closer look at your customer journey map to find an opportunity where an actionable AI assistant can revolutionize your CX strategy – from recruiting students to enrolling patients to onboarding cruise passengers.

Case in point. Wavemaker UK and Voxly Digital launched an AI virtual guide for The Royal Navy to help candidates discover their most suitable role and to assist them throughout their application process. Royal Navy candidates were able to self-select one of six guides and then ask open-ended questions using real language. The language model was able to then provide custom recommendations in real-time. By tailoring the recruitment process to the individual, the UK government began attracting a more diverse audience while also increasing conversions.

Predictive Analytics

AI can be used to predict customer churn by identifying at-risk customers so that you can then woo them through retention strategies. The flip side of this coin is predicting demand. AI can also analyze historical data to project future customer behaviors.

According to ADWEEK, Hershey’s deployed custom algorithms to optimize ad placements for their Halloween campaign to ensure maximum engagement and ROI. Using AI, they were able to serve more ads to markets where candy sales were lackluster and fewer ads where Hershey’s was already selling like crazy. All in real time. Not only did they sell more candy, the approach gave them the upper hand in negotiating their retail media spend. How’s that for sweet success?

Content Creation

These days, it takes a lot more than display advertising to convert prospects and bring new people into the funnel. That’s where content comes into play. AI can be used as part of a powerful content strategy to build brand engagement beyond the typical digital ad campaign. Marketers can tap into a host of tools to deliver content at the speed of life, from video, blogs, social media updates, A/B testing and more.

Red Lobster dropped some “freshly-baked beats” to unite their biscuit lovers through music with their Cheddar Bay-I campaign. Superfans of Cheddar Bay Biscuits^® posted enough social content, where an AI model could be trained to generate “cheesy” love songs across multiple music genres. The 30 mixes, all composed and performed using AI, played over images of biscuits. The full list of pop, jazz and rock tracks were featured on Red Lobster’s YouTube channel and served up as a countdown to National Biscuit Day. This kind of engagement would not have been possible by running traditional ads alone.

Customer Insights

Identifying consumer behavior patterns is a great use case for AI because analyzing data sets is one of its core strengths. Simply put, AI can help you define which customers you want more of – and those you do not. And once you have this knowledge, you can begin segmenting your audiences based on their behaviors versus less valuable data, such as demographics.

Enhanced Customer Experience

AI is fertile ground for dialing up the guest experience. From voice recognition to image recognition to virtual reality, with imagination and ingenuity, AI can be your catalyst for creating immersive brand interactions.

St. Pete-Clearwater’s Dalí Museum and its agency Goodby Silverstein & Partners created
Ask Dalí using a large learning model (LLM) to recreate Salvador Dalí’s voice so that visitors can actually chat with the artist. Imagine asking about the most intimate details of his work and being answered in the voice of the great master himself. That’s a pretty powerful experience — especially when the AI experience is being delivered through a “lobster phone” replica from one of his surrealist works of art.

Social Media Monitoring

So many platforms, so little time. AI can be used to help marketers stay on the pulse of social trends. Let’s say you’re working on an enrollment campaign for a college and you’re looking for emerging trends to better resonate with young hopefuls. AI can provide a snapshot of your Gen Z audience, along with shifts you may want to consider for your marketing efforts (i.e. engage in their DM’s, run longer videos, utilize TikTok and Insta for search; and play up 90’s nostalgia.) AI can even identify key influencers to collaborate with to amplify your campaigns.

Your AI Adventure Awaits

At the end of the day, regardless of the industry or vertical, we are all looking for ways to entice consumers to spend their much sought-after time with our beloved brands. If your marketing strategy could use a little lift, consider an AI component at the roadmap stage. When used in novel ways, AI can be that springboard for creating brand experiences that build deeper loyalty.

If you’d like to learn more about AI or run an AI experiment to help achieve your goals, get in touch.