What Praveen Rao teaches about AI in marketing

Sometimes you may not get an opportunity to apply your knowledge to your day-to-day work, but who stops you from doing your own stuff? Since we are constantly, you know, discussing how important video is, you know, when it comes to the digital medium today, what do you think is going to be the next biggest, you know, medium in India, post-video? Well, video will extend literally to become immersive videos. Right. Thanks to the AR and VR technology, videos will get a new dimension altogether literally. Why?

Simple, the cost of producing the video content is certainly going down, but even the AR and VR factors are going to have cost-benefit that brands will see. Right. Number one. Number two, the enablers around that, the ability to deliver in AR, VR content will become more or less possible on your handheld devices. With 5G, which is around the corner, the kind of speed that you can get on your mobile phones, it's a matter of time when people should be able to get those immersive content. The second aspect is gamification, which is related to again,

the whole virtual world becoming amalgamated with your video world. Right. Now, certain brands are already doing that. Right. They are trying to create simulated situations in the environment of real video. Think of real estate, think of automotive, think of healthcare. They are able to simulate certain situations on top of a real video being shot. Now, this is going to become mainstream in the years to come. Now, be it entertainment, we are already seeing that 80% of our movies today are virtually created.

The real actors are no more part of that 80% creation. Now, the impact of that on brands is bound to happen. The other factor that I can certainly talk about is an ability of a video content to become multilingual and multi-contextual in nature. Right. Which means that I create a video, but I twist and turn by editing it or by shooting it for a larger format and having certain conclusive ends to it for either a relevant set of audience, this is their lifestyle and life journeys or their background, their socioeconomic background, language, etc. Right.

Can you give me one trend that's going to change the face of marketing as we know it in 2019? I think it's all about automation and yes, everybody is talking about RPA and machine learning. Right. But come to think of it like this that today when a video is getting shot, you try and pick up metadata tags, basis, the frames and the voice that you use in the particular video. Now, those metadata that you generate from those videos are going to be in if not millions, hundreds, thousands. Yes.

Now, ability to bring forth a specific aspect of a video for an audience or a consumer, basis, his set patterns in context with the metadata that you are generating from these videos will change the landscape in the way the videos will get delivered or the marketing would happen. Right. Example, I am an insurance company. I am a mutual fund company. I create certain content and that content is being created keeping in mind my product. But the outcome of that content would be delivered differently to different set of people,

basis what my audience wants to see in that content. So, it's about the timing. It's about the positioning. That is becoming real. Brands have started using it. But I think it will become more of a generalized adopted technology in 2019. Right. So, tell me what really drives you? What is your passion? Well, there is a passion and there is a need. And I am happy to state that my passion and need are the same, which is evolving myself continuously. Right. I started my career with a media company some 20 years back selling ads.

I moved into the zone of data driven marketing. But all of that happened partly by default and partly by design. But I think every marketeer today has to evolve himself or herself practically every six months. They call it versioning and we have to keep doing our own versioning to remain relevant. And also be mindful of the fact that what's happening in my environment around just not related to my domain, but also factors that may affect my domain directly or indirectly. But I have a question.

When you say, you know, it's easier said than done, stay relevant. You have to kind of update your version if I can use that. But now, you know, AI, ML and the kind of challenges they are throwing. There are also many misnormals that are going around in the marketing domain. So, how do you think marketers today can really equip themselves to stay relevant and, you know, deal with the dynamic ecosystem that we have today? Simple yet difficult. When I say simple, see, cut to 2010. Most of the marketeers were forced to think digital.

By qualification, by interest, they were nowhere close to being digital marketeers. Some of them don't exist today. Those who exist today are the real ones who have really dirtied their hands. So, to answer the specific answer to your question would be that, A, you have to practice. But before you practice, you must also theoretically understand that domain. So, people who really went ahead and upgraded their knowledge beyond the understanding of impressions, clicks, and, you know, return on leads, etc.

They are the ones who really succeeded in deploying things. Getting a certification, yes, a lot of people do that. And I don't discourage that. And one must do that. I also did that at some stage in my career. But important aspect is applying that knowledge to your day-to-day work. Sometimes you may not get an opportunity to apply your knowledge to your day-to-day work. But who stops you from doing your own stuff? I ended up creating a community for MBA students and those who wish to pick up MBA courses. Purely organic.

In some time, I managed to get some 3000 plus members in my community. That was my experiment. But that is how I sharpened my saw of practicing digital and applying it to the real life world.