Can Generative AI reshape the future of Retail Marketing?
From automating customer service, to enhancing product categorisation, generative AI is changing the retail scene on a level never witnessed before. It’s an opportunity retail leaders are stepping into, aiming to transform and redevelop multiple features of their operations and strategies.
As CEO of The Martech Weekly, Juan Mendoza is an expert in researching global media, marketing, data, and technology trends. As a media and research brand with subscribers in over 65 countries, TMW hosts the TMW 100, an industry-first awards program recognizing the most innovative marketing tech companies from 1st to 100th place globally and the Martech World Forum, an international gathering of world leaders in marketing technology.
In the marketing world, how far can the capabilities of Generative AI stretch? What’s the future of retail and their manpower strategy? Are we planning for a merger between robots and humans, or can one exist without the other? Lets check out what Juan has to say!
What’s the most gratifying thing about AI and where do you see the big wins coming?
I think Generative AI has a lot of value in the boring stuff of marketing and advertising, such as legal review automation, data management and integrations, and content regionalization and versioning. I say this because Generative AI, right now, is going through a huge hype cycle driven primarily by the flashy imagery, video, and audio that you can create very easily, which all looks great, yet is often just not quite right or good enough yet to fuel production.
Marketers want to spend less time on tools and more time on the stuff of marketing: strategy, analysis, talking to customers, and being creative. I think Generative AI is most powerful in abstracting away a lot of the repetitive, duplicative work in managing marketing platforms.
How can AI empower CX leaders to excel in their retail roles?
One thing we'll see with Generative AI is the ability to scale uniformity of messaging, content, and online experiences. Because tools like ChatGPT can ingest and 'remember' things about a brand, I can envision a world where guidelines are programmed into these tools, making them far superior to any person in reviewing the consistency of a campaign, AB test, or changes to brand or messaging.
Retail is notorious for inconsistency across experiences and channels, and I believe this is an excellent way to help CX leaders tame the beast and create greater alignment in their companies.
Creativity is often fickle, and can fizzle under pressure – how can retailers get creative with Generative AI?
Generative AI serves as a fantastic brainstorming tool. When asking marketers and digital professionals to unleash their creativity for the next campaign, product, or idea, it's often challenging to get started. Now, a variety of tools can kickstart this process.
Whether it's sketching images for a new campaign, generating photography ideas for products, or initiating the copy for an email campaign, Generative AI makes all of this possible.
This means that marketers in retail don't have to start from scratch, allowing them to shorten the time from initiating work on a new campaign or idea to bringing it to completion.
With every new technology, there's always this, fear that settles in around – will that mean there will be fewer jobs on content creation or branding? Any thoughts?
The common concern with any technology that automates a process is often the fear that it will take away jobs. However, Generative AI is likely to work in the opposite direction. The primary reason is that Generative AI frees up time for marketers, enabling them to engage more in marketing and create additional opportunities for their brands.
Marketers are frequently hindered by inefficient processes, internal politics, and external partnerships. Introducing more automation into the marketing process could be a significant catalyst for productivity.
Nevertheless, we are still a long way from marketers fully trusting Generative AI tools to perform their jobs entirely. After all, someone needs to own the marketing KPIs or OKRs, and it won't be sufficient to blame poor performance or a bad experience on an automated AI marketing system.
Moreover, in an era where technology enables almost anyone to create content instantly, having a strong, recognizable, and differentiated brand becomes crucial. I believe there will continue to be plenty of jobs for individuals creating content and branding. Most of these tools are not novel thinkers or unique pioneers; they are pattern matchers that aggregate what's already out there in the market.
In your opinion what are some strategic goals or visions for further advancing these AI capabilities within retail platforms?
A good goal is to view these tools as margin boosters more than anything else. If you can reduce the cost of marketing, including the manual work of managing tools, creating content, approving campaigns, and writing copy, then that's a worthy objective to strive for. Identify the aspects that are tedious, costly, and repetitive, and prioritize applying technologies to address those challenges first.
You are speaking at next year’s eTail Australia event. Can you share what the audience can expect to hear from you and what excites you about this event?
I'm really looking forward to it! Partnering with eTail over 2023 has been a blast. It's one of the best gatherings of retail and e-commerce professionals in Australia, and these individuals often serve as pioneers in making marketing technology work for their brands.
During my talk, I'll be delving into the consequences of Generative AI on customer experience. I'll explore all the new tools, from Midjourney to DALL E 3 to ChatGPT, to provide a landscape view of how it's transforming marketing in three ways: generative content, which automates creativity; generative software, offering non-technical people more opportunities to build and manage apps; and lastly, generative experience, a perspective on how consumers will use these AI tools for their own shopping journey.
Catch Juan Mendoza at on 14th February, 11:10AM "Keynote: Generative AI and its consequences on customer experience – How to leverage automation to amp up (and NOT dumb down) your customer engagement and personalisation journey". Find out more here!
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