MAM
Generative AI and the future of brand storytelling
Mumbai : Brand storytelling is a powerful tool leveraged by marketers to communicate their brand’s values, identity, history and purpose. Marketers see GAI as a productivity booster in brand storytelling, enabling one-to-one personalised experiences and dynamic messaging. According to a SAP report, 48 per cent of companies leverage generative artificial intelligence (GAI) for their marketing and sales content. This illustrates the importance of GAI in enhancing marketing strategies and consumer engagement, improving customer experience, loyalty, and firm performance.
GAI has the potential to create content at scale and even real-time, helping brands maintain a consistent and dynamic presence on multiple platforms. These tools often are easy to use especially by users belonging to a non-technical background. Large brands like Vistara, Zomato, Coca cola, BMW etc. have employed AI in the creation of ads for various marketing channels like billboards, social media and events. Companies like Netflix and Amazon are leveraging GAI to curate personalised recommendations and experiences, effectively turning each customer interaction into a unique storytelling opportunity.
By analysing engagement patterns with AI-generated content, brands can also gain deeper insights into customer preferences and behaviours, further refining their storytelling strategies. Also, the scale at which content is generated, brands can rapidly experiment with different storytelling approaches and monitor their effectiveness to select the best suited story. GAI is also being used in engaging customer experiences at events, experience centres and museums. Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York uses AI to enhance their visitor experience by analysing visitor behaviour and experiences. BMW teamed up with an agency to project AI content on their BMW 8 series Gran Coupe. The algorithm was fed with 50,000 images and artwork spanning 900 years.
Some researchers believe that there is a need for more empirical studies to quantify the benefits of GAI in storytelling. The research should focus on measuring the impact of GAI on key marketing metrics such as customer engagement, conversion rates, and campaign effectiveness. These studies will also initiate the development of best practices for implementing GAI in marketing.
While more small to medium companies are enthusiastic about adopting GAI there are a few barriers to the absolute adoption of GAI.
● Cost – The enterprise version of most GAI services charge monthly or annually which can be a hindrance for small companies in developing countries.
● Data privacy – Employing GAI on large scale projects collects proportionally large amounts of consumer data, raising privacy concerns and regulatory challenges.
● Lack of skilled workforce – Since it is a fairly new field of work, there is a dearth of skilled professionals in AI and data science who can develop and manage GAI systems.
● Quality control – Images especially videos generated by AI can be unpredictable as there is a lack of quality control on visual content. Often correcting mistakes made by AI in images and videos can take more time than creating them from scratch.
Although, GAI is great to enhance the creative process for creators and designers, potentially streamlining brainstorming and simplifying development stages. IT cannot entirely replace the need for human generated content. AI on its own is not good enough to develop the entire brand story. It is only a tool that requires more experimentation and study on its effectiveness. As the technology evolves, it is certain that newer innovative ways of leveraging it will develop.
The article has been authored by Tagglabs founder Hariom Seth.
Brands
Faber-Castell India appoints Sunaina Haldar as director – marketing
With stints at Tata, SleepyCat and ADF Foods under her belt, Haldar is primed to redraw Faber-Castell’s brand story
MUMBAI: Faber-Castell India has poached Sunaina Haldar from ADF Foods, appointing her director – marketing as the German stationery brand looks to muscle up in a category that is rapidly reinventing itself around creativity and self-expression.
Haldar hit the ground running. “My first couple of weeks have been incredibly energising, understanding consumers, visiting markets, engaging with retailers and immersing myself into the world of Faber-Castell Group,” she said.
She arrives with considerable firepower. At ADF Foods, Haldar ran marketing across India and international markets for a portfolio spanning Ashoka, Aeroplane, Camel and ADF Soul. Before that, she was vice-president – marketing at direct-to-consumer mattress brand SleepyCat, where she helmed brand, content and performance marketing. Her résumé also includes a stint leading marketing, new product development and CRM for Tata SmartFoodz at Tata Consumer Products, no small proving ground.
Between corporate roles, Haldar also operated as a fractional CMO for early-stage startups, building marketing strategy and operational structures from scratch, a signal that she knows how to move fast with limited resources.
With 18 years straddling FMCG, D2C and the startup world, Haldar now takes the reins at a brand that has long owned the classroom but is clearly hungry for the living room. In a stationery market where the pencil has become a lifestyle statement, Faber-Castell has picked someone who knows exactly how to sell that story.
