Winning with AI over changing "hearts and minds"

Brands are always evolving.

People tend to think of “Branding” as identifiable logos and incredible product designs  amplified via advertising and mass distribution. But today, brands are no longer just products or services, but also communities of people that surround these products and services. They are not created by companies but by consumers. They are social and participatory. Even if you argue that brands have always been social, the difference is that today, technology has made it very instantaneous and public. The massive glut of Internet traffic and technology are taking us to new levels.

But sadly, most companies and their agencies are still stuck in old ways. They still rely on traditional methods such as customer surveys, when user data is a real-time perception about what’s unique about your brand, the competitive landscape and how your category is performing. And the derivative from this user data can be used to inform campaigns, develop campaigns, or adjust campaigns in real time. As today’s consumers share their distastes, their approvals, and their aspirations on social media, they tend to highlight experiences over the products themselves. Being able to observe consumer reactions in real time is critical. It’s the difference between ‘What happened?’ and ‘What’s happening?’. You don’t want to wait two quarters to find out what went wrong.

Consumer insights teams readily see the value of our platform. We are in the midst of making our insights consumable via API which will help drive a 360-degree view for insights team and business leaders as they overlay all sorts of sales and support data on top of these consumer insights.

For example, a high-end luxury goods brand has been using the Commerce AI platform to track the evolution of its brand and how its perception has been subtly changing over the last few years. The brand was able to track how their key product attributes have been trending in the last 3 years and validate their internal hypothesis about user perception of their products. This helps their marketing campaigns to be aligned with the changing perception, thereby enabling better engagement.  They have also been using our platform to track how their top competitors’ perceptions have been changing and to provide content ideas to marketing teams that hugely reduces the time for campaign content creation.

Bottom line: Your user’s brand advocacy, loyalty and passion are metrics that can be analyzed, determined and predicted. Understanding them can become your unfair advantage.