AI agents want to take over marketing but humans must stay in charge

In my career, one of the most successful advertising campaigns I was part of was the ‘dishum dishum’ campaign for Pepsodent toothpaste. I remember the various stages of developing that campaign.

For several years, the key thought that drove Pepsodent’s advertising campaigns was that they should always have some new news about the brand. So, the latest findings of the company’s research and development (R&D) team were almost always projected in the brand’s ad campaigns. 

Those days, I had just begun understanding the human brain’s functioning. Even my early readings on the brain convinced me that this vital organ is an energy-optimizing machine and not interested in processing new knowledge. Armed with this newfound learning from brain sciences, I presented a new advertising strategy for Pepsodent. It was a single-slide presentation. 

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Since the core position taken by Pepsodent in the market had been as a germ-fighter for a long time, I suggested that we focus on strengthening this positioning and not be distracted by fresh news.

I recall the marketing head’s reaction to my suggestion of changing our focus away from new news. He crumbled the printout of my presentation and asked me, “Do you think by moving away from our past practices, we will achieve the market share gain we are looking for?” He got up in apparent anger, threw the crumbled paper on the table and left the room. As he was leaving, I shouted back at him, “Compared to your old strategy, this strategy will sell at least one pack more of Pepsodent”.

The next day, the marketing head called me. “You guys are right,” he said, “Let’s go back to focusing on the core positioning of the brand.”

To unearth an evocative insight for a new campaign, my team and I met lots of young mothers, the brand’s core target audience. They had the same thing to say: Responsible mothers make sure that their kids do not eat sweet foods that spoil their teeth; and that a toothpaste that fights germs for a long time is a good one. 

These truisms I had heard hundreds of times, but one cannot develop an evocative campaign based on them. Just then, I heard one woman say something different, “I do not want to be a policewoman monitoring my child’s eating habits all the time. Occasionally, I do not mind my child eating some sweet food he wants to eat.” But she revised her stance immediately: “No, I don’t want to give him too much freedom. Otherwise, my mother-in-law will scold me for not taking care of my child’s teeth.”

I felt there was something interesting in that random statement. But I was not confident enough. When I reached office the next day, I told Balki (R. Balakrishnan), my creative director, about this women’s off-hand statement. 

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He said, “Wow this is brilliant.” Further, he said, “It is easy to say ‘Pepsodent fights germs for a long time.’ But no one has seen germs, nor this fight. We need to get mothers to visualize the brand benefit better.” Taking a cue from Hindi film soundtracks, the new brand campaign (https://tinyurl.com/sj6nrmdt) revolved around the words ‘dishum dishum,’ and of course the insight that emanated from the random statement of a mother.

Could an AI agent have created that campaign?

Sure, with multiple agents, debates on the campaign strategy could have been taken care of. But would an AI agent have recognized the deficiencies in human perception and suggested remedial measures borrowed from the world of Hindi cinema? The most critical question is whether, while looking for a big consumer insight, an AI agent would have given greater weightage to the statements of thousands of mothers, or to an outlier, the half-finished sentence of only one mother?

Marketing is a science and an art. Every brand campaign must be honest to the core benefit offered by the brand. But with so many competing brands promising to take care of that evolutionary need, each brand must differentiate itself. Yet, every brand must be consistent in the position it adopts, which could mean searching for new interpretations of it for every new campaign. 

Marketing is the art of setting a brand apart from other brands (and often from its own past), while adhering to its core positioning. Can AI agents, which are powered only with past data, manage this subtle but crucial dichotomy within the marketing function?

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There might be few who believe that an ideal advertisement for Pepsodent would just display the pack shot with the headline, “Fights germs for a long time.” To add persuasive power, perhaps a blurb could say, “20% discount.” Those who think this is what persuasive brand communication is all about may well be pleased to let AI agents step in and take charge of ad campaigns.

However, there are also many marketers who believe that persuasive brand communication is all about understanding deeper but rarely articulated emotional conflicts in the consumer’s mind, and then creatively positioning the brand to resolve a key conflict. These are the people who develop ad strategies that break the clutter and get a point across. To serve these marketers, AI agents will have to evolve much more.

The author is chief evangelist, Fractal Analytics.