Artificial Intelligence (AI) is absolutely at the forefront of marketing currently and gives brands the capability to democratise creativity, said Infosys’ Chief Marketing Officer Sumit Virmani.
“Gen AI is potentially one of the biggest disrupter most marketeers are going to come across in their careers and it is going to impact the entire lifecycle of marketing from experience to effectiveness to efficiency,” Virmani told Moneycontrol in a interview.
He further said that Gen AI is going to be a true game-changer and “marketeers” who embrace it in a responsible way, would truly be able to leverage its power to distinguish themselves.
On June 12, Infosys announced that it has been ranked among the 100 most valuable brands in the world for the third consecutive year, by leading marketing data and analytics business Kantar.
The 20-year Infosys veteran elaborated on the potential of AI by citing an example from the world of sports marketing. The campaign by Infosys allowed fans to create personalised posters celebrating Tennis legend Rafael Nadal’s legacy using a simple AI interface.
"It was nothing but a simple interface where you and I can actually log in, choose a Rafa (Rafael Nadal) memory from the past, put in a little text prompt, and in about a couple of seconds you have this beautiful poster, celebrating Rafa that's available to you," Virmani explained.
The French Tennis tournament Roland Garros boasted of a virtual gallery using metaverse capabilities. "We created a gallery or a 3D museum for Roland Garros that any fan around the world can log into and see in one dimension as opposed to just viewing the poster," he added.
This allows fans to pick and personalise any Paris landscape into their own creative posters, which Virmani believes is a testament to AI’s ability to democratise creativity on a massive scale.
Improving efficiency
Highlighting the multifaceted benefits of AI, Virmani pointed out that it’s not just about creativity but also about improving marketing efficiency. "The biggest promise or the lowest hanging fruit of AI is in marketing efficiency," he said. As marketing budgets face increasing pressure, AI offers a solution by automating repetitive tasks and reducing costs.
"Marketeers create a tonne of content, whether it's blogs, white papers, or creative content. AI can play a tremendous role in this by defining brand guidelines and enabling marketers to create within these parameters," Virmani said, who is also the chairman of the CII CMO Forum.
He also discussed the concept of the narrow transformer model that Infosys has adopted, which combines open-source tools with proprietary ones to train AI systems on company-specific data. "Infosys Topaz provides the boundary of responsible AI to ensure that anything that goes out protects the reputation and minimizes hallucination," he said.
The effectiveness quotient
He also shed light on the third critical aspect of marketing—effectiveness. “We've all talked about the promise of personalisation or hyper-personalisation for almost a decade,” he said. However, technological limitations have been an impediment to this promise.
"Finally, with AI and Gen AI, with the ability to really process reams of structured and unstructured data, that promise can actually become a reality," he stated, saying to achieve this, brands must ensure their data is prepared for AI integration. "Your data needs to be ready for AI. You cannot have data residing in disparate systems," he said, pointing out the need for data management and integration.
Nonetheless, Virmani is optimistic about AI’s potential to revolutionise marketing across all dimensions—experience, effectiveness, and efficiency. "We will see a massive embrace of AI over the next few months and years," he predicted.
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