Conversations at Adobe Summit Think Tank: Prediction is passé

In the last five years, personalisation went from interesting, to a ubiquitous “we have to do this to remain competitive”, said Jeriad Zoghby, global personalisation lead and Southwest agency lead from Accenture Interactive, at a recent Adobe Summit Think Tank event.Marketing communications, which used to be one dimensional from an advertising point of view, has shifted to a digital two-directional conversation and changing framework. Today, brands need to move away from using the data they have on consumers to predict their customers’ choices.“Nobody wants an Uber outside their house even before they have called for it. That’s creepy. What you want is for Uber to be there quickly, on your own terms when you call for it,” Zoghby said.Prediction might be paired with creepy, anticipation on the other hand, is seen as empowering.If a brand predicts the customer’s choices, it still shows that at the end of the day, the brand is in control of the customer journey. But when a brand anticipates, there is more flexibility for the customer, and it hands the power over to the customer. At the end of the day, consumers want to feel like they are in charge.An even more empowered customerFor Leland Maschmeyer, chief creative officer of Chobani, moving forward, more people are going to find a way to monetise themselves and see themselves as an “economic value” for a company.When this happens, consumers will flip the current model of how companies reach out to consumers and control the vendor-relationship model (VRM). This will see consumers being in charge and knowing the lifetime value he/she brings to the company. In the future, “gigantic apparatuses” currently allowing companies to reach out to the consumers will be simplified so the individual shopper can dictate how they can connect with their favourite brands.T-Mobile’s VP of digital journeys, Giles Richardson, added that in the future, artificial intelligence (AI) and personal bots could potentially be used to create a better, more “controlled” versions of the consumers’ self to help them get better deals and become influencers.“In fact, we could reach a point where many people would have preconfigured bots to manage their image and execute their wishes,” he said.And of course, in all of this, listening will have to remain key, said Kelly Soligon, GM of digital stores at Microsoft. “If you want to be a good brand and have a value exchange with customers, you have to have a listening mechanism to catch up with the customer as well,” she said.Where AI can come in That being said, listening by no means is an easy task, given the influx of information out there. Penny Wilson, CMO of Hootsuite added that AI could help in areas such as these to maximise the human performance. She added that by 2020, AI will be a must and a “tablestake” for marketers as it will be used across a lot of emerging technologies.It’s a fallacy to think that AI will replace people."AI is going to get customers to a human who can respond faster and help us learn quicker and be more educated on what we can provide," Wilson said.In addition, AI is going to co-exist with humans to improve production and output value, she added. At the end of the day, AI will augment reality rather than replace.Meanwhile, Wendy Steinle, head of digital experience, web strategy, Adobe, explained that if an AI is sensing, synthesising and coaching a service person before they interact with a consumer, it will ultimately be good for both parties.“It is really a combination of AI plus human execution that will raise the bar for what businesses should be providing and what people would be expecting,” she said.“If you can bring AI, voice and application together, it will really change what a work day means for a ‘knowledge worker’,” she said. It will automate the jobs that is not adding value to your employee’s learning or the employer, and it will not slow down the learning process.Adobe paid for the journalist’s trip to Adobe Summit 2018, held in Las Vegas.