We live in a brand-cluttered world. A world where everything and everybody is a brand today. My definition of a brand is simple. Uncomplicated. No jargon. “The brand is a thought. A simple thought that lives in a person’s head.” Brands are, however, not simple. They are complex. Complicated even.
Brand complexity arises from the fact that this simple thought that lives in one person’s head is different in every other head. As many heads, those many thoughts of the same brand. And this complexity is what a brand manager deals with every single living moment.
The better brands are more of a single cohesive thought in people’s minds, and the lesser brands are those that are widely disparate thoughts, different in literally every head they live in. And just to clarify, brands are really not about those who buy them at all. Brands are, really, just owners of the mind. Brands occupy a very vital portion of the mind. And the fight is for this valuable piece of mind. A forever fight.
The year 2023, in many ways, has been the year of AI. The biggest newsmaker of the year is ChatGPT and the 4 lakh-odd applications it has spawned (either as a subset of its offerings or as competitive responses) point to the fact that AI is everywhere in our midst today. In a world of business laden with data—none of which were ever optimally used—machine-learning mechanics and AI offer the ability to make use of this large ocean of data to market just about anything. Let’s remember the world is all of 8 billion-plus people today, and there is a demand for just about anything that can be marketed intelligently and intuitively.
What’s exciting me in 2023 then? A piece of work I have been researching and piloting for the past two years: Can brands guide consumer buys? The emergence of ChatGPT has given brands and their guiding process much-needed momentum in 2023. The future emergence of Quantum Computing is definitely going to give it that much-needed leg-up, but what we see today is no less exciting. We are just about entering an era in marketing where data-driven decision-making with zero bias is going to be a reality.
The end goal of automation and AI is reaching a stage of fruition in marketing and branding terms already. Let me share some early excitement, optimism and fears as well that I will plant in our minds for a debate.
I will call this science of subliminally making the consumer buy branded stuff “guided marketing”. The marketer today has savvy tools in hand. AI is a good friend of the marketer. And my creative friends in advertising are not going to like it all that much. Remember, advertising agencies have typically and fiercely protected the power of the “creative process” to make brands happen, run and fly. The industry is filled with examples of great minds putting together great works that have created brands literally out of simple chewing gum, chocolate or cement for that matter.
The advertising and marketing industry has always been at loggerheads when it comes to the debate of data and market research evidence versus the creative process at play. I have been a party to many a fight on this count for sure. And now, in comes AI-led branding. This, in fact, is “guided marketing” at its best. Or worst.
Today, data science, machine learning and mind science (consumer memory science included) join to create a brand algorithm that has the ability to actually create processes, pathways and a formula for the sure-fire success of the brand. This brand algorithm, just about falling into place at the back-end of many a serious marketing organisation, is going to change the very nature of brand management and is most certainly going to shake up many a job in the marketing organisation. AI-guided marketing simply says that consumers do not decide anything. The marketer does for him, her or them—subliminally—using all the data in hand which has suddenly become very powerful.
The mind of a consumer is a dustbin of brands really. Brands do not take permission to enter consumers’ minds. They never have, even in the past. Brands are just thrown into this dustbin and nurtured in these minds by clever marketers. The brand manager to that extent is a gardener who throws in the seed of the brand into the consumer’s mind and then takes care of how she nurtures it into purchases. Unflatteringly so, you are a function of the brands you use and want to use in the future. Brands define you. You don’t define brands. Ouch!
My current work in this space is getting me to say something nasty now. Dear consumer, you don’t decide what to buy. The marketer does. Subliminally. So subliminally that you don’t even know. And you don’t care really. Not yet.
AI in branding is at the stage of weaponisation today. Tomorrow is already here. Every marketing company that wants to be the best at branding is already rejigging its marketing team. Marketing is just too important to be left to marketing people alone. The new teams I have put together for hitherto old-world companies incorporate this ethos. The new brand manager is not a brand manager at all. It is a brand management team. A team that comprises the data scientist of the company, the AI evangelist, a consumer psychologist and a core traditional creative person who is able to build storylines and storyboards with themes to test. Oops. There is a brand manager (as we knew her in the old days) on the team as well. I forgot to add.
The back-end work done by this ‘BrandTeam’ (as I call it) actually leads to the creation of a strand of thought that digs deep into consumer psychology, memory science, behavioural psychology and perception science. This strand of thought then gets married to the corpus of consumer data that is already available and now being harvested minutely and profitably (at last). And at the end of it all, there is a unique brand algorithm in place. An algorithm that will be dictated to the creative agency to put together communication in the flow that is cogently dictated and within the ambit of the science being spoken. Ouch again. Not a happy thought for the creative person who has forever fought even the smallest bit of data thrown in by the client at the briefing sessions on the brand.
Life ahead is different. Brands that use AI at the back end might just be forced to add a statutory warning on their products and services in the future. A label that simply says: “STATUTORY WARNING: We make you buy. We decide what you buy”!
Harish Bijoor
Brand Guru and Founder, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc