Conversational Commerce, Creativity & AI Find Focus At BW Marketing World’s Momentum Conference 2024

EE News Desk Jul 04, 2024

The first edition of the event highlighted the nuances of creativity and AI in the new age of marketing

The fundamentals of building a brand and crafting a story haven’t changed. It’s about storytelling, conversations, advertising, advertorials – organic and inorganic, and much more. And these need to be brought in even more strongly.

The first edition of the BW Marketing World’s Momentum Conference & Merit Awards 2024 - Unravelling the next chapter in modern marketing, which took place on 3 July, 2024 in the capital under the theme – ‘The Great Creativity Reset’, highlighted the nuances of creativity and AI in the new age of marketing.

Opening the floor for the event, Dr Annurag Batra, Chairman & Editor-in-Chief, BW Businessworld Group and Founder & Editor-in-Chief, exchange4media Group asserted that digital is about 40 per cent of the advertising and marketing spends today and is seeing an upsurge. Out of this 40 per cent, 70 per cent of it is dedicated to programmatic advertising.

“India is a country with one of the largest populations, as well as the youngest population in the world - and these millennials and Gen Z’s are not only teenagers but also screenagers. There is a movement towards cause-based marketing, and the significance of sustainability is on the rise,” he spelt out.

Conversational commerce

Conversational commerce, a major marketing buzzword today, enhances brand-customer connections, provides valuable data, and streamlines purchases via chatbots, voice assistants, and messaging apps. Rajat Tuli, Vice President- Marketing, VLCC Group, ratified and assured that it is good to leverage it in businesses, especially in the service sector, as it tackles bad customer experiences. “Though there do remain several technological hiccups, interaction with customers by bots helps elevate the overall experience,” he said.

Ketan Bhatia, Group Brand Director, Good Glamm Group, too, understands that this concept is not new. “We all have our favourite kirana stores. It’s an old example of conversational commerce. But in the case of the e-commerce market, it is still not mature enough.”

The transformative journey

There is also a transformation in the journey of campaigns from traditional media to digital and finding the right balance between data-driven decisions and innovative storytelling is the call of the hour.

Ishwinder Singh, GM - Marketing, Pernod Ricard was of the view that if creativity is solely driven by metrics, we risk mediocrity. Brands must balance ROI with daring creative choices. The essence of great marketing lies in taking calculated risks. He further added, "While digital media offers personalised and interactive experiences, traditional media still holds sway in certain contexts. The key is understanding where your audience is and adapting your strategy accordingly."

The growing use of AI

Needless to say, modern marketing is incomplete without the mention of AI. Vipin Yadav, Director - Marketing, Hisense outlined that AI has become a significant part of the company’s day-to-day work. “Its role is very critical because it is the next product revolution that is happening across marketers. Apart from the day-to-day work exposure, students are using AI a lot.

The very fact that ChatGPT has the word ‘chat’ in it - it denotes interaction. It puts across clearly how prompt AI is when resolving queries. In a way, it is AI but it is about seeing it from the lens of humans and how they are dealing with AI. The way we chat on WhatsApp is what is expected out of ChatGPT as well. We need to maintain brand hygiene and also have to understand and manage the usage of AI in our everyday lives. Gen AI is still in its early stages and still needs to get past surpassing human intelligence which is still about 20 years away. The need of the hour is where we wish to use it and how much we want to use it. In a gist, AI is all about data – what you feed in as an input, and accordingly, the output is defined by the algorithm machine learning processes.”

He adds, “Human intervention is required. There are tools which are used on a day-to-day basis, but we can’t avoid human interference at this stage as it is too early for AI to give a desired output.”

It is safe to say that the more the world changes, it stays the same. Even though the tools available for building brands might have seen a spike, the rules remain the same.

The day-long event concluded with the Merit Awards 2024 which celebrated and recognised outstanding marketing work and achievements, showcasing remarkable strategies and contributions that have propelled businesses and the marketing ecosystem forward.