Human-centric technology works from the idea that the human operator is an asset, not an impediment, rich in creativity, flexibility, knowledge, and skill. Yet, if you’ve watched your sci-fi enough, isn’t Artificial Intelligence the very technology that’s supposed to ‘replace’ the human?
While it seems like a contradiction on the surface, AI is actually doing a lot to push ahead the idea of human-centered tech, especially in the marketing world. Let’s take a look.
The Need For Marketing Empathy
In an increasingly oversaturated world, brands need to be able to connect with their consumers in a meaningful way at both heart and mind level, and that requires building genuine empathy and connection. In the marketing landscape, most AI-based solutions are focusing on unpacking the motives behind why customers do what they do, targeting the identification of their needs, and fostering a more meaningful connection behind them. Already, we’re seeing small hints of not just what customers have already done, but how that affects their future needs, in the metrics and data we assemble.
Yet pulling these tiny pieces of gold from the stream of endless data and making the most of these ‘ears on the ground’ needs a massive amount of data analysis before anything truly meaningful about changing preferences and broader patterns can be determined, and there, AI shines.
AI Builds a Consumer-Centric Perspective
Combining artificial intelligence with data intelligence and prediction-based modeling can do things like:
- Immediately apply ‘apology sweeteners’ like exclusive offers to those who have orders delayed or lost.
- Detect behavioral patterns that will alert an individual to new stock, or price drops, on what they want.
And what’s more, they can do it at any hour of the day, a fact more important than ever in the digital landscape. It can also help advertisers better fathom how their customers relate emotionally to the brand. Adding machine-learning algorithms to consumer behavior analysis helps suggest improvements to campaigns. Campaigns can be humanized to the individual, instead of merely mass targeted. Pain-points and challenges are easier to identify.
Adding a Human Face to Digital Interactions
Additionally, having a humanized marketing campaign has become more important than ever. A brand that cannot demonstrate empathy, is one that will fail, especially in a landscape of tightened budgets and supply interruptions. Using the wrong tone or approach simply entrenches negative brand perceptions in the consumer. Younger consumers, in particular, are happy to share data, and even pay extra, to get the personalization they want to enhance a product experience.
Smart AI use allows you to introduce attributes and features that resonate with the target audience. Think of an artificial intelligence video maker, for example, humanizing a marketing script into a meaningful, engaging experience from someone they can connect to visually and emotionally. AI in marketing even has the potential to help sort data by attitude and emotion, identifying negative, positive, and neutral attitudes through natural language processing.
Today, we’re finally seeing the world we were promised come to fruition – one in which AI is making a splash from homes and schools to businesses and public spaces. But the focus, ironically, has not become the machine. Empathetic, humanizing AI elements in marketing put the human back at the center of marketing goals. By cultivating technology that adapts to the user, it is actually making it easier than ever to adapt the tech to the user, and not the user to the tech.