Chatbots and AI: "We are at the beginning of a new era".

TLDR: At Digital Marketing Days 2017, Tina Beuchler, Head of Digital at Nestlé and Chair of German Advertisers (OWM), announced nothing less than the dawn of a new digital era. A very remarkable moment, considering that CPG (consumer packaged goods) brands are among the most conservative players in marketing. Further message: The GooBook duopoly is becoming a brake on growth in digital advertising, Procter's threat(Comply or Die) sends its regards.

Well, were you also at the last conference?

Conferences in the marketing and communications industry are really not that exciting. The food varies between "okay" and "good. You meet your peers, discuss the topics you already knew, and confuse the narrow horizon of such events far too easily with the "world out there," which is an old-fashioned term from the Kohl era for filter bubbles, echo chambers, and targeted audiences. So all in all: stimulating at best, always predictable, boring at worst, but what won't you do to get that feeling of security and confirmation on the job....

Wait a minute, what did she say?

The Digital Marketing Days 2017 also fit seamlessly into this series of non-world-shaking industry meetings. But then there are those little moments where something happens in the middle of the noise of the presentations that makes you put your smartphone aside and suddenly listen very carefully because something is being said that you probably knew beforehand would have been worth hearing. This is what happened last week in Berlin

I then took down what Tina Beuchler said on a panel discussing chatbots and artificial intelligence (no verbatim quotes):

"Companies know that big changes are ahead of them and are just tackling big challenges with great optimism. It is definitely a new era ahead".

Now, Ms. Beuchler is not known as a steam talker. What she says has substance. So what is the new one that is drawing near and is so big that Nestlé and other big brands are actually assuming a new ERA?

Answer: It's the field hockey stick that is the typical steep, exponential curve in which digital growth takes place. The topic of bots and artificial intelligence will also take this curve. Within 3.4 years, it will catapult us into a completely changed media landscape, defined by digital assistance systems and voice controls that facilitate consumption en masse, but make it extremely difficult to sell consumer goods. The latter is the point that makes a Nestlé representative first ponder and then innovate.

"In a customer journey that is determined by artificial assistants, we as brand marketers may no longer even appear. If a single voice assistant becomes the central interface, the gatekeeper for information and purchase, how do we brands get past that gatekeeper?"

Their motto for going ahead: "test, learn, adapt, repeat". We can only agree with that. Let's go into the future, it will be very creative!

PS. And here Beuchler's quote on GooBook.

"We are very disturbed by the walled gardens. It's not good for the development of the markets. The pie is supposed to get bigger."