Productising AI – The Future for Agencies?

AI is everywhere. It’s in our homes, our offices, our bedtime reading.

It’s in our algorithmic social media timelines and our one-hour delivery drones. Whether you’re excited or sceptical, AI will undoubtedly be one of the biggest talking points of our lifetime.

And what makes it so is its uncertainty - we don’t have all the answers. As much as we humanise individual machines with talk of ‘intelligence’, we have to admit that the field of AI is much like a living organism – it’s growing, changing and unpredictable.

Whilst we can all speculate on what might happen next, the honest truth is that its direction is uncertain. Will machines help us become the best versions of ourselves or will they destroy us? Will the impact be much less than that? Could it be even more?

The experiments we recently conducted on AI as part of the Partners Andrews Aldridge ReThink sessions proved that, if anything, the practice is still a long way away from the theory. The potential of AI could be huge, but the technology has a way to go first.

Perhaps even more importantly, we have a long way to go too. Because without our whole-hearted backing, AI won’t develop.

What does this mean for brands and businesses? Well, There needs to be enough appetite for new technologies and enough people willing to test them out. Otherwise, AI can’t develop much beyond an idea in somebody’s head.

It’s partly why we’ve spent a lot of time focusing on developing a few AI inspired products to help brands push their boundaries.

There’s an ‘Introduction to AI’ product, where over lunch, our team will walk through the latest developments, examples and trends within Artificial Intelligence. We look at how these are influencing customer experience today and which brands are investing for the future.

There’s an ‘Automation Audit’. Our team spends time in a business, speaking to key digital stakeholders and platform owners. We assess the levels of marketing and advertising technology automation, and gauge how the brand’s teams are utilising tools that provide machine learning capability.

These sessions are designed to look at how a business’ automation tools are configured and where quick wins could be made. We review the frequency and format of data collection from these tools, and assess how this storage procedure can prepare an organisation for future capabilities in Artificial Intelligence and predictive analysis.

And then there’s Decision Support Recommendation reports, which outline how new tools and practices could be used to improve automated decision support inside a business. We organise these into quick wins, medium term improvements and longer term visions.

Why? It’s simple. Because AI is here to stay. And we truly believe that only the agencies and brands with a genuine understanding of how it can impact a business – and have the capabilities to put it in place – will really be able to prosper going forward. The future is now. The only question is, are you on board?