Seth Marquart, Director of Strategy and Planning
Experienced, creative and highly motivated professional with over 12 years of marketing/communications experience.
Audience Engagement = Brand Currency
Now that the role of experiential has expanded within the marketing mix, how do we elevate each experience to continue to meet the latest consumer demands? Living in a digital world, audience engagement is more valuable – and sometimes more difficult to achieve – than ever. Enter the infusing of Artificial Intelligence into the event space…enabling brands to cut through the clutter faster and create more meaningful, poignant real-time audience engagements. Aside from having the latest and greatest technology showcased in an engagement activation, putting AI ‘behind the curtain’ could be the ace in the hole providing a customizable real-time WOW factor moment.
Elevating the Customer Experience
Customer experience is rapidly becoming a key marketplace brand differentiator. To compete on customer experience for better customer acquisition and deeper retention and loyalty, companies must make the most out of every direct and indirect touchpoint they have with customers and prospective customers. Creating a deeper level of personalization and enhancing the intuitive experience is where AI can play a huge role and quite possibly, change the game. By personalizing events for each attendee, you create a more memorable experience, giving attendees the feeling of inclusion as they contribute to the creation of their experience. Connecting customer data from sources like registration websites and social media enables companies to craft marketing messages and customer journeys that are more relevant to consumers’ current needs. AI can deliver an event experience that is more personalized for each user, shaping the attendee journey, influencing agenda planning decisions, and building brand loyalty.
AI Isn’t SKYNET – Overcome Negative Stereotypes
There’s no need to cringe when you hear AI mentioned in a conversation. It doesn’t automatically mean the downfall of humanity and the rise of the Terminators. The AI event marketers should be focusing on is supplemental AI that augments human interaction, creating instant connections between consumers’ likes/dislikes and ultimately helping create a hyper-personalized, secure and multilingual inclusive experience. Although the use of robotic AI at events is a nice touch, experiential AI uses are a bit more passive in nature, working behind the scenes making the customer experience as consumer friendly and memorable as possible.Even with concerns of data sharing and movement tracking linked to AI and machine learning capabilities, the minimal amount of personal data collected and used onsite for an event shouldn’t detract from the positive event-streamlining outcomes.
Let AI Do the Heavy Lifting
As last-minute consumer decisions are becoming increasingly more popular, AI can help put out the fire that moment marketing has a tendency to start. Opportunities are endless within an event itself, in terms of creating moment-worthy spaces where attendees can share their instant gratification with the rest of the world, giving spectators FOMO (delivering a sense of urgency to become an in-person participant at the brand’s next event). With AI’s ability to sift through data instantly (social, industry, local, regional) you can tailor your event content specifically to that consumer in that moment. Properly timed implementation and deployment of AI can also reduce language barriers, creating frictionless interaction between consumer, attendee and the registration process.
One Ingredient In The Recipe
AI In Action |
| IBM is constantly creating content. There is so much content, it is difficult to connect people to the content that matters. GPJ was able to implement AI to connect Think Summit attendees to meaningful content based on who they are and where they are. If they responded, they were given more hyper-targeted content, unlocking a powerful new way to deliver brand and product stories as needed to keep customers and prospects engaged, informed and ready to have a deeper conversation. |
By using AI to enhance current engagements, technology platforms and registration processes, you create hyper focused events that are ever changing to meet the consumers and attendees needs.
AI by itself isn’t the silver bullet and the answer to evolving with the consumers wants and needs. AI platforms are only as helpful as the information they ingest. Think of AI as a child that can learn and build at an astronomical rate. In order to have it work properly and effectively, it needs information to learn from and evolve, ultimately helping meet your client’s KPIs and increase the event’s success. AI should be utilized to accentuate and enhance the current tools and tactics and not thought of as a replacement.
In a digital world of ever-evolving consumer wants, AI is a data-driven way to help close the gap between a brand’s view of their consumer and how the consumer actually views the brand. As event marketers, it’s our job to make sure brands are addressing the needs and wants of the consumer and are equipped with the ability to address those needs in real-time. In an effort to stay ahead of the curve, take a closer look to see if there’s an opportunity to introduce the use of AI at your next event.