Vikram Sakhuja: what AI changes—and what it does not

I actually listened to a legacy marketer talking about conversational marketing in the age of AI. The best form of marketing probably is word of mouth. A lot of satyavachana in that. Very analog word of mouth. But this was a pure conversation which led to me purchasing it. My next show on OTT is definitely going to be influenced by Netflix's recommendation engine. Marketing communication by very definition means is a feedback loop. But then for a long time a large part of the money that has been spent on marketing has really been this one-way broadcast. An applause for our opening inspiration speaker Vikram Sakuja who needs no introduction. He's from Madison.

And he's here to dish out some AI-powered conversations on transforming marketing engagement and goodness. So get ready to be inspired by the fusion of AI and human creativity as we may learn how to strike a good balance between technology and engagement. And who knows maybe AI will teach us a joke or two. So over to Vikram. Boy, this creme de la creme is going to actually listen to a legacy marketer talking about conversational marketing in the age of AI. God help you guys. But anyway, let's give it a bash. There is, everybody said since, I don't know since when, that the best form of marketing probably is word of mouth.

If I have to look back, probably my, the two times I've been to a multiplex since the COVID started was for Pathan, RRR and of course Mission Impossible. And all three were because of a very analog word of mouth. If I have to look at, okay, just last week, we're renovating a bathroom and I had a conversation, a product kind of conversation, which led me to go to Vermora Tiles, which by the way are really good. And I actually went and entirely based nothing else, not on their ads, I've seen their ads, but this was a pure conversation, which led to me purchasing them. A Uniqlo jacket that I was browsing online followed me all the way when I went to the store, actually prompting me to buy.

Now you'll see that all of these have been some very insidious kind of dialogues that I've been having. Some of them through an actual conversation, some through other kind of cues, but they all seem to be working in towards driving purchase. At a profound level, when we say marketing communication, the word communication, it is supposed to mean two ways, right? Marketing communication by very definition means it's a feedback loop. But then for a long time, a large part of the money that has been spent on marketing has really been this one way broadcast, speak to many people and then hope for the best. The first point I'd like to really make is to all the marketers out here, and this is what, preaching to the converted in a big way.

Basically, marketers need to really understand that it's only a talk about it. And the big news, and the big news, and we've known it for a while, but I think it's now staring at us in the face that marketers for marketers, it is now increasingly possible to use all the elements of their marketing arsenal in a conversational manner. It is interesting that about ages back, 20 years back, when I joined Group M, at that point in time, WPP chose to call Group M's digital practice Group M Interaction. So they used the word interaction at that point in time, and truth be told, there wasn't too much interactivity then.

I don't know whether they were being prescient about it, but clearly since then, there has been a fair amount of stuff that you can now talk, which is truly interactive. Take advertising. Broadcast epitomizes the one-to-many and this entire piece about one-way messaging. Today, not only do we have the ability to deliver personalized messaging to cohorts, we also have the ability to provide an instant feedback loop that can take the interested consumer to their marketing assets, to their call centers, or even to their direct sales. I think the guys in the entire Instagram guys and the Pinterest guys, they're really getting this pretty well now.

So I think even the basic advertising, which earlier was seen to be one of those one-to-many kind of things, has got a conversation now slowly coming into it. The huge business that has come in is that in-market consumers have always been looking to expert advice to actually make a purchase. This is, in fact, what has really spurred search to the levels that it has now. It's, of course, followed by stuff like reviews, referrals, and now the burgeoning influencer marketing. All of this, in some form or the other, is listening to expert advice. A lot of good stuff is happening here, but I think a lot can be unlocked if you start viewing the expert advice as a conversation opportunity.

Right now, it still seems to be you put a search request, get something, and you do it. Likewise, influencer. If you start thinking of it of an interactive way, probably it will give you a little bit more sort of bang for the buck. If you have to look at Web 102.0, I think 2.0 was all really about user-generated content and the absolute explosion of social media the way we have now seen it today. And underlying this entire social media is the word sharing. And I think sharing has become one of the most important marketing arsenals, which has conversation embedded in the word in a very, very integral manner. Now, this is where, again, I think performance has got social and we're really using monetizing it in performance very well.

But in terms of above the top of the funnel, mid-funnel kind of activities, I still think we are figuring our way on how to make this entire content strategies that brands are hoping, social strategies that they're doing, just to build a kind of brand equity. I think the jury is out. In fact, the learning curve is still in on that one. And not the least, loyalty building. We've attempted CRM, remarketing, omnichannel marketing, the entire sales calls that we have been doing to get our consumers back to us. But somewhere here also, we're treating them pretty much as a, yeah, let's take CRM as one exercise, remarketing as somebody's come to us before or shown interest in us. Let's go back to them.

If we are to view it from the lens of conversation, I think you can probably get it more and loyalty will move from spam into something a whole lot more meaningful and relevant. So the insight that I'm really offering, or at least I don't know if it's insight, it's reasonably obvious, but I don't think today people are using what, be it advertising, search, social or loyalty with the lens of a conversation. If you are able to start now thinking that it is possible for me to actually drive a two-way kind of conversation going, I think more value is going to be unlocked. The second part of this entire topic is conversational marketing in the age of AI. Now, AI, it's got a, it's basically, it's got a very interesting layer that comes in through AI.

AI has this thing about learning from your past behavior. So when it learns from your past behavior, it typically tends to reinforce it. Now, what that really means is that if I've been watching crime and drug lord shows on a particular OTT platform, I keep on getting more and more referrals to see the same thing. What it's doing is, it's in a sense, yeah, in a sense it's maybe more relevant because I liked it before and I might like the next one, I probably do. But it's also making me a much more, much less multidimensional and a more insular person.

This at a very deep level and this bothers me actually because the very sinister and deep sociological implications of this entire move where you reinforce past behavior because you make polarized groups. And you create actually, in fact, you get into your WhatsApp chats with your college friends and so on and so forth and you suddenly see the political ideologies straight away coming. In a sense, it is certain groups feeding of each other's exhaust and then there's also the clash, inevitable clash that follows. AI to some extent is perpetuating that even further and that worries me. AI to some extent is perpetuating that even further and that's the same thing.

The salvation I see is that generative AI seems to be a way which possibly it may have a whole lot of problems of its own that it creates, but it's got a chance of making the insularity less and possibly increasing diversity a little bit more. I'll just give you two examples. Now, typically, if you're driving in India and your Google Maps fails you and you need to look for directions, you've got to choose very wisely as to who you want to take them from. Because regardless, if you just stop on the street and ask somebody, everybody will have an opinion even if they don't have the answer. What do I do? I normally stop at a panwala or I stop at if I can find one of these food delivery guys. I typically ask them because they know, they will know.

Now, let's see. I asked a question to Google and to Chad JPK. The question I asked was, what is the opposite of artificial intelligence? So, what did Google answer say? Artificial intelligence is a product of human intelligence and therefore there is no opposite to AI. The concept of the question is artificial. What is Chad GPK's answer to the question? The opposite of artificial intelligence would be natural stupidity or organic ignorance. Now, which answer is better? I'm not sure, but Chad GPK is making me think more. And that's where it comes from. Tuck, precise. To, there could be other options. Let's also look at SEO. Today, SEO is all about conducting keyword research, optimizing your website's content, and then driving inbound links.

Will a generative AI engine change the game? So, again, I went and did another experiment. I said, I queried, because as you know now, I'm trying to do my bathroom. I queried website for best bathroom ideas. On both Google and Chad GPK. Google's top two hits were sponsored. Beautiful Homes and Bonito. Organically, I got House.m, House Beautiful, Pinterest, Dash, KB Chat Drive, and Architectural Digest. Chad GPK gave me House.m, HGTV, Better Homes and Gardens, Apartment Therapy, and Hell Decor. Apart from House, they're all different. So, whose directions should I follow? Who should be the Paanwala's advice that I should follow in this case? This is where I think we need to go a little deeper.

Now, Chad GPK, with its underlying large language, model, and generative AI technology, is good at understanding the user intent and providing a summary answer from a vast pool of knowledge instead of pointing you to a particular destination. The Google search engines, in turn, are geared towards index and rank billions of web pages to provide users with the most relevant search results. So, the two are operating slightly differently. One is collating all the knowledge and giving you some kind of an answer. The other is actually taking you to a particular place where you might get your answer. So, in this particular case, the Chaywala for me or the Paanwala for me might still be a Google query.

But the same thing, it's not that Chad GPK doesn't have an answer in SEO. If you take enterprise, say, SEO, something with 10,000 pages of particular enterprise, 10,000 pages on their website, you'll be having plenty of pages with duplicate metadata. And Chad GPK out here can actually create a whole lot of custom title tags and descriptions, which otherwise you had to do with some formulas and some of the other things that you guys write these days and all the rest of it. But this can save countless hours to actually get you the same kind of SEO efficiencies across 10,000 pages. Even when it comes to content production, Chad GPK can play a huge role in increasing efficiencies by automating content production

and again saving those countless hours in actually providing it. But what does Google have to say about this? Now, that becomes interesting because while Google will be having its barred, it's still country right now. I think they are on the fence and they don't know which way to swing. So at this point in time, what we are probably going to see is that Google has this thing called search essentials where it categorizes automatically generated content as spam. The sole purpose of that was to actually influence rankings. However, if it is adding value, then they don't treat it as spam. Now, that's a gray area. What adds value versus what is just engineered to drive up page rankings?

And that is where I think there will be some kind of a battle laid out. But the interesting part in this one is that it seems that generative AI with the conventional AI engines have an opportunity to complement each other rather than maybe even substitute each other. So in the nine minutes ahead, basically what I've had to say today is the essence of a communication is basically a feedback loop. Consumers in any case are making decisions like I did for half a dozen examples that I gave you based on conversations they're having. Brands have a here and now opportunity to join this conversation. And you can do it across each and every element of your marketing mix, whether it is advertising, whether it's search, whether it is social,

whether it is CRM or loyalty building stuff. The entire piece, you have an ability. All you've got to do is put on a conversation lens, seek to understand, as Stephen Covey would say, seek to understand before being understood, or in this particular case, listen before responding. AI can play two roles in conversational marketing. A prescriptive one laid down by the old AI engines, and maybe a more cryptic one, which is being done by more degenerative AIs. Both of them can be used wisely for your benefit. And lastly, something which I haven't talked at all, but let's leave the thought and leave and just run before you can ask me questions on this tough topic. What will be the role of humans as this entire machine's takeover and so on and so forth?

I think the point out here is that the three areas where AI seems to struggle with are empathy, authenticity, and blue ocean ideas. And I think that's one area where, at least for men and human, humankind as such, the entire idea is to keep on innovating and coming out with the next orbit kind of ideas and let machines follow that. And maybe the evolution of man that happens as a result of that would be a little bit better than a two-day theory of machines taking over. Some questions. Can we have mic? Mic jaradija. Somebody. Thank you, Vikram. Future of men, you're saying good chance that because of empathy, etc., we will survive. What about the future of the intermediary? And by intermediary, people like agencies.

And I'm not alluding to the fact that now we can sketch our own models without having to come to the agency, etc. I'm talking at the slightly higher level. Is there a risk that marketing becomes an activity that ends up being insourced into the corporation and the agencies left out in the cold? Look, I haven't, I'm not having existential nightmares about this particular issue yet. The reality is that there is more that we don't know than we know. And at least my, look, I think I find the entire client organizations hugely savvy and they are very, they understand their business like none other. But there are so many new things happening in digital that they can't be a master of all. Like for example, let's take an example.

In e-commerce marketing, if I talk to a client organization today, which has been in this business for two years, they will know much more. And I'll see you next time. Bye.