When AIGC meets marketing, what changes will it bring to the marketing logic of consumer brands?

As the world's leading artificial intelligence community, AIGC (Artificial Intelligence Global Community) is not only at the forefront of technology, but also has demonstrated its unique advantages in cross-border marketing. With the rise of AIGC in China, the application of artificial intelligence has been accepted and adopted by more and more companies. This article analyzes the layout and classification of AIGC marketing, as well as the pros and cons of AIGC applications. Let's take a look.

As Internet companies around the world have released information on how to integrate AI tools into daily workflows, layoffs have occurred in many positions such as art, design, and original painting. This wave of AI's cost reduction and efficiency improvement has really affected everyone's jobs.

For example, ZMO.AI has been rooted in the field of marketing generation for a long time. Since the end of 2020, it has launched AI model functions in the field of clothing marketing, and has many in-depth and successful cooperation with well-known domestic clothing brands. As a result, ZMO.AI's generative marketing software has rapidly exceeded one million monthly active B-side users, and ARR has reached 3 million US dollars.

Some netizens predict that by 2025, 90% of online content will be generated by AI, and 30% of outbound messages from large organizations will also be output by generative AI.

If you are still watching the excitement of AIGC or think it has nothing to do with you, this grain of sand may fall on your head, because AIGC is sweeping across various fields like a tide. An entrepreneur has said: With the empowerment of AIGC, every industry is worth redoing.

Artificial intelligence technology has brought about tremendous changes in all walks of life. As the world's leading artificial intelligence community, AIGC (Artificial Intelligence Global Community) is not only at the forefront of technology, but also has demonstrated its unique advantages in cross-border marketing. Applying artificial intelligence technology to the field of global marketing has become an indisputable trend. In China, with the rise of AIGC (Artificial Intelligence in Global Chinese Consumers), the application of artificial intelligence has been accepted and adopted by more and more companies.

1. See how big players plan AIGC marketing

Some foreign experts said: Currently, AI companies have an ecological layer, including the big model layer, pure application layer and vertical big model layer.

First, the large model layer is like an operating system: it is an opportunity that belongs to a few people and is more suitable for players such as large companies or big guys with strong financial and human resources. Startups are more suitable for the latter two categories.

The second is the pure application layer: but in an era where the underlying large model is constantly changing, the barriers are very low and sustainability is not strong.

The third is the vertical large model layer: vertical large models are our firm direction. Companies of this type, such as Character.AI, Midjourney, Typeface, and ZMO, build end-to-end engineering stacks that cover the entire value chain of model research and development, training, data, and applications. The products of these companies do not rely on third-party APIs, iterate very quickly, and can make good use of data feedback from users on the application side to form a data flywheel.

In February 2023, Baidu announced the launch of a ChatGPT-like conversational AI tool called "Wenxin Yiyan". Microsoft also publicly launched the search engine Bing and Edge browser that integrate OpenAI's latest technology.

From the perspective of content, marketing and operation:

At the 2023 Baidu Channel Ecosystem Partner Conference, Wang Fengyang, Vice President of Baidu Group and Head of Mobile Ecosystem Business System, said, "AIGC technology will start from the content level and bring Baidu marketing triple opportunities in content, marketing, and operations, from shallow to deep. AIGC will first greatly improve the production efficiency of various types of content, thereby enabling the entire marketing chain to enter the fast lane and achieve true self-evolution, with quantitative changes bringing about qualitative changes. At the same time, marketing and operations will be closer, and the richer the business information expressed by the company, the more adaptable the AIGC content will be. Furthermore, AIGC will penetrate deeper into corporate operations and bring opportunities for change in thousands of industries." The content production field, once the "life source" of marketing, has been the first to be affected by AIGC technology, and the demand for AIGC technology is also the most urgent.

Then on April 25, the BlueFocus Zhiyang team started a dialogue with Canon on AI content creation by sharing a proposal for AIGC content creation: the two sides discussed the challenges, opportunities and changes of brands in the AI ​​era, and thought about how AIGC technology can be applied to new scenarios, new ideas and new models of content dissemination. With an open and diverse development attitude, the two sides started in-depth cooperation in the field of AIGC content, marking a valuable step for BlueFocus towards the "field of intelligent marketing creation."

With the help of AIGC technology, the BlueFocus Zhiyang team created a "dimensional world animation work" for Canon. This work took only a few working days from AIGC basic generation + manual post-production. Using traditional animation production methods, such a two-dimensional animation video post-production would take at least a month or even longer. This shows that AIGC has fully enabled creative execution and post-production, and the combination of AIGC and manual work can produce new intelligent content creation methods.

As of May 8, 2023, Insai Group stated: The company's independently developed artificial intelligence creative marketing content generation and management platform "Insai Engine INSIGHTengine" has achieved some results since it was launched. In the future, the company will continue to increase investment in the research and development of the combination of AIGC and brand marketing on this basis, and promote the marketing industry to "intelligent + intelligent" transformation and upgrading.

In fact, Insight Group started to deploy intelligent marketing technology in 2019, and officially launched "INSIGHTengine" in August 2021. INSIGHTengine is equipped with a large amount of brand marketing content materials + multi-dimensional brand user data + INSIGHT's 20 years of brand wisdom assets, which enables it to have machine learning capabilities when targeting specific brands, products, users, and marketing scenarios, and can achieve high-quality creative expression. Based on the company's self-developed "AIGC batch creative content generation technology", the creative generation speed of INSIGHTengine has been greatly improved.

Insai Engine has successfully created tens of thousands of graphic and video creative content for brand clients, and has been applied in various marketing scenarios such as posters, private domains, live broadcasts, short videos and NFTs. It is understood that the Insai Engine team has also connected to engines such as OpenAI and Midjourney, and achieved better service to brand client needs through training.

Finally, AIGC's overseas marketing track has also become popular: AIGC's "real person" short video overseas marketing artifact Wondershare has attracted a lot of attention because of its "novelty and cost savings" and To B application breakthroughs focused on overseas scenarios. This new Wensheng video product launched by the Chinese version of Adobe Wondershare Technology integrates hundreds of professional-level scenario templates and ultra-realistic multinational AI digital human functions, which can help users generate AIGC's "real person" overseas marketing short videos with one click.

Some media have tested it and said that compared with traditional marketing video production, Wondershare Video is indeed smarter and easier to create. Not only does it not require hiring foreign models or actors or real people to appear in the video, but it also does not require high fees to cooperate with third parties. It only takes a few minutes to create an international short video. There are a wide variety of templates to choose from for overseas marketing-related scenarios such as product promotion, oral explanations, discount promotions, product introductions, etc., which can save a lot of time and cost in finding materials.

At this point, you may wonder, what kind of changes will your industry undergo? Will your position still exist? That starts with the classification of AIGC marketing.

2. Classification of AIGC Marketing

AIGC marketing refers to a way of conducting marketing activities using artificial intelligence (AI), big data, intelligent algorithms and cloud computing technology.

The first category of AIGC marketing: conversational interaction to generate marketing content. Operations and marketing planners within the company only need to ask questions to the robot assistant in the group to get highly relevant and applicable marketing copy, which can be continuously optimized and adjusted after contextual training. In the later application scenarios, the advice to companies is to use the application-oriented text characteristics that AIGC is good at to produce personalized marketing content for different user groups, different marketing scenarios, and different product types, so as to bring personalized interaction and service experience to users.

The second category of AIGC marketing: personalized intelligent customer service. Empowering the user tag scenario of the enterprise, through the question-and-answer interaction within the community, the user's keywords are captured and tagged, which greatly saves the cost of manual tagging. With the help of AIGC capabilities, a comprehensive evaluation can be made based on the user's tag information and past speech preferences, and personalized content output and interaction can be made in subsequent user surveys, product promotions, and event marketing. Enterprises can improve the service efficiency and service satisfaction of their own intelligent customer service in interactions.

The third category of AIGC marketing: digital employees who can chat and answer questions intelligently. The digital employees provided can be used directly in the community, and can interact and respond to users intelligently through text, voice, video and other forms. They can respond to messages sent by users with voice or video. In the banking and education industries, it can be used in scenarios such as teaching, training and standardized Q&A. Combined with AI and automation capabilities, it provides enterprises with more efficient operating methods, which can ensure service quality while maintaining the warmth of interaction.

AIGC marketing also has the following characteristics:

First, the content is rich and diverse. AIGC marketing can generate content in various forms such as text, images, audio, and video to meet the needs of different scenarios and channels. For example, AIGC can generate text content such as news, articles, slogans, slogans, titles, summaries, comments, and dialogues; it can generate image content such as paintings, comics, logos, posters, and emoticons; it can generate audio content such as music, songs, voice, and dubbing; it can generate video content such as short videos, animations, and movie scripts.

Second: high-quality content. AIGC marketing can use AI's learning ability and creativity to generate high-quality content and increase user interest and trust. For example, AIGC can generate personalized and accurate content based on user preferences and behaviors; it can generate novel and valuable content based on market changes and trends; it can generate content that meets the image and goals based on the brand's style and positioning.

Third, fast content production. AIGC marketing can use AI's computing power and automation capabilities to generate fast content and improve marketing efficiency and effectiveness. For example, AIGC can generate a large amount of content in a short period of time to meet massive demands; it can generate content in real time to adapt to dynamic environments; it can generate content on different platforms and devices to achieve seamless dissemination.

In short: The core of AIGC marketing is to attract, influence and convert target users through AI-generated content (AI Generated Content), thereby enhancing brand value and marketing effectiveness.

3. “Good” and “Bad”

With the acceleration of globalization and the rapid development of information technology, the field of global marketing is undergoing profound changes. AIGC (Artificial Intelligence in Global Commerce), as an emerging technology, is having a far-reaching impact on the marketing community at home and abroad.

Among them, the “good” aspects of AIGC’s impact on the Chinese and foreign marketing communities include:

CEO Zhang Wenhao, a PhD in artificial intelligence from Tsinghua University, said: "The emergence of ChatGTP has greatly upgraded the user experience. It has a very strong coverage of the breadth of knowledge. Almost all the information that can be seen on the Internet has been learned into its machine model. At the same time, the multi-round dialogue method also shows its depth of thinking."

First, it can improve marketing efficiency. Artificial intelligence technology can greatly improve the marketing efficiency of enterprises through automation and intelligent means. For example, AIGC can process a large amount of marketing data in an automated way, provide accurate data analysis and prediction, help enterprises quickly understand market information and consumer needs, and then formulate more accurate marketing strategies. At the same time, AIGC can also optimize the allocation of marketing resources in an intelligent way to improve marketing effects and sales.

Secondly, it can improve marketing creativity. Artificial intelligence technology can help companies better understand consumer needs and preferences through technologies such as deep learning and natural language processing, so as to more accurately create marketing ideas that meet consumer expectations. AIGC can analyze consumer language and emotions, identify the characteristics and needs of different consumer groups, and provide companies with more detailed market insights and creative concepts, thereby improving the company's marketing creativity.

It can also promote marketing innovation. Artificial intelligence technology can open up new marketing models and channels by creating virtual reality, augmented reality and other technical means, helping companies gain more advantages in the fiercely competitive market. AIGC can improve the innovation and personalization of marketing through automation and intelligent means, help companies discover new marketing opportunities and market space, and inject new impetus into the development of enterprises.

It can also improve the accuracy of marketing. Artificial intelligence technology can improve the accuracy of marketing and better meet the needs of consumers through big data analysis and machine learning. AIGC can analyze consumers' historical behavior data, predict consumers' future needs and behaviors, and provide companies with more accurate personalized services and product recommendations, thereby increasing corporate sales and customer satisfaction.

For example, Typeface is a startup founded in June 2022, but its founder is the famous former Adobe CTO Abhay Parasnis. Typeface's most impressive product is: personalized text and image content generated for large brands based on corporate brand positioning and audience targets. Unlike general content generation for the general public, the requirements of large brands for brand tone and content controllability cannot be achieved by directly calling Stable Diffusion.

Abhay Parasnis said: For a company, the most basic issue is the security of its data and brand image. Every business wants to ensure that it does not inadvertently create inaccurate, plagiarized or offensive content that damages its reputation. Currently, Typeface helps these big brands solve the above pain points through personalized training of brand-specific models and content review algorithms.

Finally, the arrival of AIGC can lay the foundation for the construction of new infrastructure in the metaverse. On the one hand, generative AI can liberate productivity in terms of interaction, simulation, and programming technology. On the other hand, AI-produced content promotes the accumulation of digital content in the ternary world, accelerates the transformation of production relations, and makes decentralization more realistic. It may be too early to talk about the metaverse now, but AIGC is "helpful" in the construction and creation of virtual space. At present, virtual conferences, virtual experience spaces, and virtual concerts have become a marketing trend.

Then let’s look at the “unsatisfactory” aspects of AIGC:

Adobe, the pioneer of the design industry, also released its own AIGC product Firefly some time ago. Facing the concern of designers losing their jobs, Adobe put forward the slogan of "not replacing, but empowering", and provided practical AIGC functions at a more professional design level. For example, the function of generating vectors only needs a sketch to generate custom vectors, which is very practical for designers.

But first, the technology has not yet met the demand: for example, ordinary AIGC generators often generate an overall plane map and cannot actually generate vectors and layers. Adobe also mentioned at the press conference in October 2022 that it would embed AIGC capabilities into PS. It has not yet been implemented, and many functional points on Firefly are still under development. It is conceivable that integrating Firefly into Adobe's complex tool ecosystem is still a very huge project.

Second, the audience is limited: Similar to Typeface and Adobe, ZMO.AI is also a vertical large model for professional users, but ZMO's user group is more of a small B in the marketing direction. In the view of Maliqian, co-founder of ZMO.AI, although the basic large models can perform at the average human level in many tasks, they perform poorly in specific vertical fields. This is because the domain knowledge in these fields is not common sense, and the relevant data is not easy to obtain publicly.

For example, in order to fully preserve product details, ZMO will need to use its own high-precision cutout algorithm. Cutout is a complex visual task that involves accurately estimating the alpha value of each pixel to extract foreground objects from images and videos. This can be challenging due to factors such as complex backgrounds, lighting conditions, and object transparency. The annotation of this task is difficult, specific, and expensive. It took ZMO a year and a high cost to obtain these highly precise annotation data. The technician said: Focusing on cutout specific objects (such as products) is not the advantage of large base models.

It is not difficult to see from the products of Typeface, Adobe and ZMO that large models ultimately require data and rules for segmented scenarios. In specific scenarios, a large number of specialized optimized general large models are needed to improve the generation quality, and the controllable input and output that conform to this professional scenario can be truly put into use.

IV. Conclusion

Because of AIGC's "shortcomings", it can be said that the "jobs" that cannot be replaced by AIGC at this stage are roughly the following:

First of all, highly interactive work, such as event execution and customer operations, is difficult to replace. AIGC cannot replace "sensitive and emotional" conversations, and cannot do the management and coordination work in event execution.

Secondly, positions that are engaged in work from 0 to 1 are also difficult to be replaced by AIGC. For example, product marketing managers (PMM) need to produce product content materials, but the efficiency of this position will be greatly improved because of AIGC, and the salary income will probably be higher.

In addition, strategic positions in the brand market will also be popular. AIGC can give some general advice, but to integrate business and market needs, and to decompose the strategy into implementation plans, it still depends on experienced and logical humans.

Regarding design work, we need to discuss it in different situations: if it is just a "rookie level", then it is dangerous, for example, in graphic design and video production, only relying on materials from various websites to make splices, then Mid Journey and Stable Diffusion are higher. But imaginative designers, copywriters, and video creators don't have to worry, with the help of AI, they can focus more on thinking and be more efficient.

It can be said that in scenarios that require a lot of "brainstorming", AI's powerful ability to read, store, receive and output information has expanded the boundaries of human capabilities. The core value of humans is to propose a more profound brief and make the final judgment and decision. The value of marketers is more concentrated at both ends: the front end proposes an accurate brief that meets the definition of "good content", the back end controls the quality and tone, and AI generates content in the middle.

For example, when AI uses a lot of calculations to describe user preferences and generate content, it must first get a clear and specific instruction: what is good content and what kind of content we want to see. In other words, marketers need to have a higher judgment than AI on content quality and tone.

In general, the "mouthpieces" who pass orders, tool people, and people who just goof around are more dangerous, but the creative people, planners, and marketers who need to use their brains and do the execution themselves will not be affected, but will be more popular. Whether it is for the promotion of productivity or the transformation of production relations in a certain field, under the surge of AIGC, there are crises and opportunities, everything depends on "our view and use".

Author: Li Jiaman

Source: Public Account: Consumer World (ID: xiaofeijie316), new consumption, new opportunities.