Two are the main future trends Joris Haverkort, Director Experience Center Amsterdam @Mircosoft, shared with us during the EACD Netherlands webinar this November. These are the mixed reality and the AI introduction in more and morel aspects of our lives.
The mixed reality is predicted by many to be the next big thing for the consumers. We are not talking about some extremely innovative new technology. For example, augmented reality in its audio version is already here – think of Alexa, Siri, Google Home. But more, we are moving to the next level, where we shall blend and enrich all inventions we already have to intensify their application in our lives.
This AR (Augmented Reality) will not replace humans, only will augment our abilities to deal with many if not all tasks, supporting and enlarging the possibilities of our senses and capabilities. Consider for a moment the world of holograms merged with the “classic” reality. And how this could elevate our perceptions. Imagine what it could do for the architecture, for medicine & health, for the art scene.
AI is going to change – in fact, it is already changing – every feature of our lives, and despite all privacy concerns and controversial conspiracy theories, it will move over its “child phase”. Yes, AI could write down on its account some turbulent misuse cases, just as every technology and tool does. But I agree with Joris Haverkort that AI is here to stay and this is for good.
If you take a moment to think about how google maps not only gives you the static information about the streets in a city, let’s say, but also allows you to immediately understand where you are, even more – recommends you how to reach a certain point of interest in the fastest way, calculating the traffic jams in real-time. Not only managing your expectation about the time of arrival but also shaping your decisions on the go. And this is just the personal level.
If we expand the example on community-level we can discover even more large-scale benefits, like hours of saved time, lowering also the environmental footprint thanks to faster or more direct drives. Or many new working hours for all uber, lyft and taxi drivers that do not necessarily need to be familiar with each street in the city to be able to drive a cab. Going further – also improving the accessibility and integrity of the society in this way. Ideas, that are to be found and elaborated much deeper in Tim O-Reilly’s “WTF? What’s The Future and Why It’s Up to Us”.
So, we are not talking about new technologies, we are just connecting the dots of all elements we already have.
And how about the application of AI in marketing and communication?
The primary and most logical areas for AI here are the listening platforms where integration between media and language could happen for the benefit of the comm professionals – not only for external audiences’ purposes, such as public affairs or customer communities marketing – but also internally to improve the understanding of organisation’s own team.
Media relations will also be quite influenced by the combination of CRM-wise systems and lots of instruments to advance each process of routine communication activities. The ones, we at brand-network.me refer to as Keys.
We can also use AI for simple yet effective means of verifying our communication tactics, like questionnaires, A/B testing systems for mailings or design.
The most exciting aspect for me personally is the visualisation. As a huge fan of semiotics, I can truly embrace the trend of striving to automate the transformation of the content from a text to an infographic to a video, using different sign systems to better adapt to the audiences and their content consumption models and preferences.
On the long run, AI will exceedingly impact the whole process of the dialogue – clustering the bigger stakeholder groups into smaller tribes or communities where the personalisation will play its role as well. But the artificial intelligence will allow us also to go one step further and analyse the patterns of core messages transformation, adoption and interpretation to get more adequate responses and insights from our stakeholders on all levels.
Exiting future awaits us, and we at brand-network.me shall do our best to contribute to the development of AI-augmented professionals in a short time. Stay tuned!
