There are many moving parts to building a successful live event or experiential marketing campaign. From brand and audience building to getting the event or campaign up and running, the ability to optimize all of the moving parts within a scalable framework can make or break the final execution and effectiveness of your team’s efforts.
Depending on the scope of your events and campaigns, you’re probably already using technology and social media to plan and execute. And chances are that you are already relying on everyday artificial intelligence, from your favorite apps to the digital tools that help you keep your inbox organize and plan agency workflows.
But there’s much more to AI than self-driving cars and friendly customer service chatbots.
Generative artificial intelligence and deep machine learning are set to build on the progress that basic AI has already made across business and personal computing and daily life – and then some.
Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI): What it is and Where it’s Going
Despite how terrified or excited you may feel at the thought of a deep machine learning program that allows a computer to become a master level chess player capable of defeating the human title holder in a measly four hours, AI is already transforming everything from graphic design to content creation, namely many of the areas essential to designing comprehensive marketing campaigns and events.
Using algorithms, artificial intelligence programs can process and analyze massive amounts of data at breakneck speed in a way that would be impossible for humans in a single lifetime.
Generative artificial intelligence refers to programs that make it possible for machines to use things like text, audio files and images to create content.
Until recently, machine attempts – even really smart machines – to perform basic human tasks like drawing a sketch or writing a few lines of prose have produced results that have ranged from the comical to the downright creepy.
And although much of the news surrounding the imminent robot takeover has been greatly exaggerated (for now), generative artificial intelligence is essentially making the canvas and toolkit available to creative professionals and marketers across the board much larger and varied than ever before.
The new deep-learning programs have become much more sophisticated and successful in producing human-like results in four key areas:
Generating Quasi-Life Like Images and Models
The best example being of images of a human face that has actually been rendered by what is known as a generative adversarial network. It looks like a real picture of a human face, but it is actually a compilation of a series of data sets taken from numerous images of human faces. It’s a computer model of a model. Confused yet?
Language Translation
If you plan international events or branding campaigns on a global scale, the concept of a multilingual robot has probably been something of a pipe dream at some point or another. While the robots have still not caught up to the humans in language translation abilities, deep learning researchers and program developers have found a new technique (known as sequence to sequence) that is improving the results in common programs like Google Translate and customer service chatbots.
Image Understanding
Machines are getting a lot better at accurately recognizing objects in an image thanks to sophisticated deep learning algorithms. Suppose you have a database of millions of images, but you or your client have a very specific idea about the handful of images that would make for the perfect logo or infographic for a campaign. Generative AI programs that utilize image understanding can not only shave off value time (and ultimately money) off the design process, they may help to deliver more accurate and targeted results.
Sequence Prediction
For the purposes of creative content creation, think of sequence prediction and advanced pattern recognition as the image generation magic but for text. Just as the program can connect disparate data points to generate an artificial image that accurately resembles a human face, smart machine learning programs can train for handwriting and text sequences that resemble something produced by human hands.
What’s next? Generative AI Tools for Branding and Events
On a practical level, one of AI’s most valuable contributions to the event marketing industry is the ability to use and optimize all the data quickly and efficiently. Events and campaigns can be more targeted and granular than ever before thanks to the ability to know your audience and customers more intimately than ever before.
Other ways generative AI is transforming the events industry include:
- Facilitate and speed up check-ins
- Security
- Better customer service
- Facilitate seamless connections and networking opportunities
- More targeted personalization
- Performance monitoring and quality control
- Anticipate problems before they happen (never run out of tp or cups again)
So does this mean you can fire your design and marketing team and outsource your agency’s events and campaigns to Siri and her army of increasingly intelligent and creative friends?
Not just yet.
But as AI programs become more sophisticated, intuitive and prevalent, they do offer a number of unique and exciting opportunities to leverage the work your organization is already doing and to offer your clients and audience a more dynamic and enriched experience.