One of the startups we work with in the WTE Startups Incubator asked how I thought OpenAI's fantastic chatbot ChatGPT, generative AI, machine learning, deep learning, and natural language processing would impact his marketing strategy and the development of his nascent brands.
That's a big question with a long journey, so I organized the AI and Branding expedition into small steps.
Branding Basics, I begin explaining some brand basics, such as discussing what a brand is.
AI & Branding & Unique Experiences Next, I project the artificial intelligence work we've been doing for several years. We work with startups like PropTrax to create minimal viable products (MVPs) and unique customer experiences online.
Automation & SEO Since automation is one of the most significant benefits we gain from AI, I review how automation and SEO will impact branding.
Martin Interview Finally, I interviewed Martin Wescott Smith, our Content Marketing Director. Martin was an executive for Procter and Gamble and M&M/Mars, so I ask you to Use the links below to learn how to use AI tools to create and market your brands.
Use the links below to explore how AI will impact your brands, branding, marketing, and life sooner than you think and bigger than we realize.
A brand is a name, term, design, symbol, or any feature that distinguishes one product from another, but it is more than the sum of its parts. Brands create emotional shortcuts by blending their messaging and marketing campaigns with a customer's personal experiences. Brands live on four simultaneous planes: corporate, personal, collective consciousness, and human deep learning. Our minds blend Nike's "Just Do It" messaging (corporate messaging) with shoes we've owned (personal experiences and memories), reviews we've read (collective consciousness), and experiences or memories of times we ran, raced, or used Nike's gear (or human deep learning).
You can see why brands and branding extend beyond algorithms. Creating a brand is a human endeavor designed to create a positive image, build trust, establish credibility, and encourage customer loyalty. A strong brand drives customer engagement, differentiates your product or service in a crowded market, and becomes a tent pole for business success. Elements of a brand may include a logo, color, typography, taglines, and messaging that consistently convey the company's values, personality, and positioning. As Martin shared in Start with Why, people buy who you are more than what you do, so sharing your company and brand creation stories, values, ethics, and journey creates connections by sharing your "why."
We've used and helped customers deploy various AI tools, including ChatGPT, Microsoft Azure, Clearscope, Ubersuggest, and GitHub Copilot X. Read on to learn how to use AI tools to create and market your brands
Artificial intelligence (AI) is already significantly impacting branding, and its influence will grow further and faster soon. Here are some ways AI can affect branding:
Personalization AI sees patterns, preferences, and behaviors in the big data of consumer preferences and behaviors, creating targeted marketing campaigns that feel personal and relevant. Personalization builds deeper connections creating a positive feedback loop - Nike produces a new shoe (corporate), loyal customers buy new Nikes (deep learning), and they provide feedback (tapping Nike’s collective consciousness). Nike improves the shoe and their messaging, and they sell more improved shoes.
Branding and logo design We used AI tools to create our disruptive mouthwash brand EcoFresh, whose tagline is fresh breath, clean planet. We used Dall-e, another OpenAI text-to-image AI Tool, to generate a logo color scheme and typography based on a simple prompt—designing and creating new brands sure to resonate with your target audience has never been easier.
Social media monitoring and sentiment analysis AI can help monitor and analyze social media, online reviews, news feeds, and other sources of user-generated content to tap your brand’s growing collective consciousness and understand public sentiment about your brand.
Chatbots and virtual personal assistants AI tools such as chatbots and virtual personal assistants engage customers, answer questions, and share personalized recommendations. They enhance the customer experience, strengthen your brand-customer relationship, and increase brand loyalty.
Predictive analytics Artificial intelligence tools and predictive analytics analyze consumer data and market trends to identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT), helping you make informed decisions about product development, marketing strategies, and resource allocation.
Content creation ChatGPT and AI AI tools can create targeted, relevant, and engaging content for social media posts, ad copy, and blog articles. AI tools like ChatGPT help brands maintain consistent messaging and tone across marketing channels.
Visual recognition AI-powered visual recognition tech can identify logos, colors, and other brand elements in images and videos shared online. This kind of business intelligence provides valuable insights into brand exposure, engagement, and the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns.
While AI offers numerous benefits and efficiencies in the branding process, it is essential to remember that human creativity, intuition, and expertise remain critical in building a strong, authentic, and emotionally resonant brand. AI supports and enhances the branding process rather than a complete replacement for human expertise.
Artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT and Microsoft Azure can enhance the smartphone-enabled online customer experience by providing personalized, efficient, and engaging interactions. Here are some ways AI can help create unique customer experiences online:
Personalized recommendations AI can place customers into segments or groups based on customer preferences, browsing history, and purchase patterns to share personalized, relevant product or content recommendations leading to higher engagement and conversion rates.
Dynamic content and messaging AI can adapt the content, images, and messaging displayed on websites or in emails based on user behavior, demographics, or preferences to create a customized experience, improving the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns.
Chatbots and virtual assistants AI-powered chatbots and virtual personal assistants can answer questions and guide customers through their online journey improving customer service efficiency while reducing wait times and frustration.
Natural language processing (NLP AI understands and processes natural language, enabling more intuitive and human-like customer interactions. AI conversations can improve communication and make it easier for users to find information or complete tasks on your website.
Voice assistants AI-powered voice assistants allow customers to interact with brands using voice commands, creating a hands-free and convenient online experience.
Sentiment analysis AI can analyze customer feedback, reviews, and social media comments to identify trends and sentiments (emotions) about your brands, products, and services. Sentiment analysis helps tailor the customer experience more effectively.
Predictive analytics AI can analyze customer data to predict future behavior, preferences, or needs. Brands can use these insights to provide proactive support, anticipate customer requirements, and create targeted marketing strategies.
Visual search and recognition AI can analyze images to identify products, colors, or patterns and provide relevant search results or recommendations. Visual search makes it easier for customers to find products they like or discover new, visually similar items.
Augmented reality (AR) experiences AI can enhance online shopping experiences by integrating AR technology, allowing customers to try on products virtually, visualize furniture in their homes, or explore different color options. This immersive approach can increase customer confidence in their purchases and reduce return rates.
By leveraging AI technologies, brands can create more personalized, efficient, and engaging online experiences that cater to individual customer needs and preferences, ultimately leading to higher customer satisfaction and loyalty.
AI and predictive analytics can significantly streamline and enhance content and social media marketing workflows. By automating various tasks and providing valuable insights, ai tools improve efficiency, potential customer targeting, and marketing effectiveness. Here are some ways AI and predictive analytics can help automate content marketing and social media marketing workflows:
Content creation AI-powered tools assist in generating headlines, ad copy, social media posts, and even full-length articles by analyzing data and learning from previous content. Content creation can save time and resources while maintaining brand messaging and tone consistency.
SEO AI tools like ChatGPT, Clearscope, Neil Patel’s Ubersuggest, and IBM Watson help research keywords, write branding and marketing copy, develop metadata such as page titles and descriptions, and implement marketing messaging faster, better, and cheaper.
Content curation AI can analyze target audience preferences and behaviors to identify relevant, high-quality content for sharing on social media platforms, blogs, and newsletters.
Personalization AI makes customizing content and messaging for individual users based on their demographics, preferences, and online behavior easier, more efficient, and cheaper making marketing campaigns more relevant and effective.
Predictive analytics AI, machine learning, and generative AI can identify patterns in big data to help predict future customer behavior, preferences, or trends. This information should inform content strategy, targeting, and timing, allowing for more proactive and data-driven decision-making.
Optimal posting times AI can analyze engagement data to determine the best times to post content on social media platforms, maximizing visibility and reach.
Testing AI can automate testing different content variations, such as headlines, images, or calls-to-action, so implementing the most effective options and campaigns.
Sentiment analysis AI can monitor large social media datasets of customer conversations and online reviews to gauge sentiment about a brand, product, or topic. Sentiment analysis can inform content strategy and messaging and provide valuable feedback for improving products or services.
Social listening AI can track brand mentions, hashtags, and keywords across social media platforms, providing insights into customer preferences, emerging trends, and potential influencers or partners.
Chatbots and virtual assistants AI-powered chatbots can engage with users on social media platforms, answer questions, and provide personalized content recommendations, improving customer service and driving engagement.
Performance analysis and reporting AI can automate the process of gathering, analyzing, and presenting data on content and social media marketing performance, making it easier to identify trends, measure ROI, and make data-driven decisions.
By automating various tasks and leveraging data-driven insights, AI and predictive analytics can improve the efficiency and effectiveness of content marketing and social media marketing workflows. However, it is essential to maintain a balance between automation and human creativity to ensure that the content remains authentic, engaging, and relevant to the target audience.
Since our Content Marketing Director Martin Wescott Smith was an executive for two of the best brand building companies in the world I asked him what he learned working at Procter and Gamble and M&M/Mars:
I learned different things from P&G and M&M. P&G taught me brands never sleep because static brands die or get disrupted, so P&G pioneered "New and Improved" marketing. I worked in Bar Soap and Household Cleaning Products, or BSHCP as we called it, and brands like Ivory soap, Bounce, and Downey wouldn't have much excitement after over a hundred years for Ivory, but brands never sleep. So we looked for collaborations with hotter brands in the P&G family, such as Febreze. Febreze didn't exist when I was at P&G, but the idea holds - find something "new and improved" to keep your brand in motion. M&M/Mars taught the relentless, obsessive need for quality. Brands like M&M's live a long time; M&M's, invented by Forest Mars in 1941 to give soldiers something to eat that wouldn't melt, became a brand millions love. When I worked in M&M's headquarters in Hackettstown, New Jersey, one of the M&M's plants was connected to our marketing offices. It's a cliche to say you could eat off the floor, but that is the level of quality Mars demanded. Every production "associate" wore a white uniform. Notes from customers about quality issues lived on a giant board just in case anyone needed to remember how vital M&M quality was and trusted me; no one did. When I think of how P&G and M&M would use AI, that, too, strikes me as a different path. Both companies are inventive and brilliant in manufacturing and supply chain logistics, so automation and improvements go without saying. P&G's marketing was more quant-math intelligent than when I worked at Mars though that gap may differ today. P&G will use AI to process and understand the massive data sets they must sift. M&M/Mars will use AI to sift the massive datasets social media and their websites generate, looking to understand what stories to tell, so their brands continue to resonate with changing consumer needs, pain points, and tastes. Where P&G is a more left-brained quant, M&M is a more right-brained storyteller, and that, in a nutshell, is why I worked at M&M much longer than at P&G because I love telling stories. Eric asked me one question, and I was still talking twenty minutes later. There are brands such as Amazon, Starbucks, and Nike that will use ChatGPT and AI in quant-math ways like P&G while others will want to understand what stories to tell like M&M, but, after using ChatGPT for months there is little doubt every marketing department and company I used to work for is diving in, testing, and looking to use AI to keep their brands in motion, and I'll shut up now.
I learned different things from P&G and M&M. P&G taught me brands never sleep because static brands die or get disrupted, so P&G pioneered "New and Improved" marketing. I worked in Bar Soap and Household Cleaning Products, or BSHCP as we called it, and brands like Ivory soap, Bounce, and Downey wouldn't have much excitement after over a hundred years for Ivory, but brands never sleep. So we looked for collaborations with hotter brands in the P&G family, such as Febreze. Febreze didn't exist when I was at P&G, but the idea holds - find something "new and improved" to keep your brand in motion.
M&M/Mars taught the relentless, obsessive need for quality. Brands like M&M's live a long time; M&M's, invented by Forest Mars in 1941 to give soldiers something to eat that wouldn't melt, became a brand millions love. When I worked in M&M's headquarters in Hackettstown, New Jersey, one of the M&M's plants was connected to our marketing offices. It's a cliche to say you could eat off the floor, but that is the level of quality Mars demanded. Every production "associate" wore a white uniform. Notes from customers about quality issues lived on a giant board just in case anyone needed to remember how vital M&M quality was and trusted me; no one did.
When I think of how P&G and M&M would use AI, that, too, strikes me as a different path. Both companies are inventive and brilliant in manufacturing and supply chain logistics, so automation and improvements go without saying. P&G's marketing was more quant-math intelligent than when I worked at Mars though that gap may differ today. P&G will use AI to process and understand the massive data sets they must sift.
M&M/Mars will use AI to sift the massive datasets social media and their websites generate, looking to understand what stories to tell, so their brands continue to resonate with changing consumer needs, pain points, and tastes. Where P&G is a more left-brained quant, M&M is a more right-brained storyteller, and that, in a nutshell, is why I worked at M&M much longer than at P&G because I love telling stories. Eric asked me one question, and I was still talking twenty minutes later.
There are brands such as Amazon, Starbucks, and Nike that will use ChatGPT and AI in quant-math ways like P&G while others will want to understand what stories to tell like M&M, but, after using ChatGPT for months there is little doubt every marketing department and company I used to work for is diving in, testing, and looking to use AI to keep their brands in motion, and I'll shut up now.