HOLY GRAIL OF MARKETING

AI opens new vistas for reaching customers—and sets traps that could turn them off, according to this incisive marketing primer.

Licciardi, a Fordham marketing professor, asserts that attaining the Holy Grail of Marketing—which is to “Reach the Right Person With the Right Message In the Right Environment At the Right Time Delivering the Right Outcome” (namely, a sale)—now depends on AI and big data. Data-driven AI, the author argues, lets companies microsegment the market; predict behaviors of individual consumers and recommend products they like; target platforms they frequent; provide customer support through chatbots; hone pitches with A/B tests; and monitor social media to gauge customer sentiment. Licciardi also warns of risks in online marketing, including fraudulent websites that inflate ad views with click bots; the tarnishing of brands that appear on disreputable platforms beside unsavory content; and the eroding line between helpful AI and off-putting surveillance, “where consumers shift from feeling understood to feeling watched.” Later chapters focus on the cultivation of emotional bonds between brands and consumers. The author illustrates his treatise with well-chosen case studies on how to find receptive customers (Harry’s Razors caught on with an innovative customer-referral game and by touting itself as David vs. Gillette’s Goliath) and how not to (an almond commercial flopped because the glamorous actresses alienated the target audience of exhausted moms craving a pick-me-up snack). Licciardi conveys a wealth of information and experience in lucid prose, pithy aphorisms (“A top sales performer’s number one attribute is the ability to not waste time and effort on the wrong clients who will never buy”), and vivid evocations of the marketing craft (“Observe how buyers engage with your products: where their eyes land on the shelves, what catches their attention, how they handle the products, and even what they do when they put a product back on the shelf”). Marketing professionals will find much provocative food for thought here.

A stimulating guide to the brave new world of AI-driven marketing.