AI and Nightingale – Aurora

The current hype about AI reminds me of the story of a nightingale who lived in the garden of a Chinese emperor. The nightingale sang to the emperor, and the emperor was so pleased that he gave the little bird great honor and respect. But then the Japanese emperor sent him a mechanical nightingale that sang even more beautifully than the real thing. The Chinese emperor became so enamored with the mechanical bird that he forced the nightingale to leave. After that, the mechanical bird broke and could not sing. The emperor fell ill and was dying. Hearing of this happening, the Nightingale returned and perched on a branch of a tree outside his bedroom and began to sing. The emperor recovered, and he and Nightingale became friends again.

I can see parallels between this story and the world of marketing and advertising where people are obsessed with shiny new toys. Everyone is so busy pretending to be competent that they forget to think. I have been involved in the Pakistani marketing industry since his 2005 and have seen both sides of the pendulum. The mad pursuit of fads and trends like big data, virality, programmatic and now AI. I’ve also seen colleagues resist using media such as radio, the internet, and Facebook because they think they’re too niche and lack critical mass. It’s like a corporate expert talking about how Google doesn’t require a degree to hire, but only selects graduates of his school of business for certain local or overseas businesses. We always talk about trends and big changes but somehow we believe their time in Pakistan has not yet come.

But this doesn’t seem to be the case with AI. If the introduction of AI has a reputation, the prevalence of AI in Pakistan is incredible. It’s also interesting that, as we know, the future of advertising and marketing appears to be tied to AI. Almost everyone seems to be fascinated by this phenomenon.

But there are also some naysayers, like Tom Goodwin, who believe we are using this technology for the wrong reasons. AI should not be used to do things humans can already do better, but to do things humans can’t do well, such as repetitive tasks. He argues that AI is not for performing creative tasks, but for performing mundane tasks. In fact, he calls his AI the average of the internet, which reminds me of the old computer term his GIGO (Garbage In Garbage Out). In his view, the biggest problem is that the software absorbs the information and ideas that people create and explain, leading to widespread misconceptions. It’s like trying to renovate a house with a faulty foundation. To work, the entire structure must be rebuilt.

Speaking of structure, “advertising contrarian” Bob Hoffman said in 2019 that we are moving away from principles and solid foundations in advertising. His views are the voice of opposition in the world of reactionary or bandwagon marketing. Most of us don’t have the courage to challenge the status quo and tend to go with the flow. He argued that all activities developed for the gradual increase of knowledge. He gives the example of medicine, first bacteria were discovered, then bacteria were identified, then viruses. Science began with geocentric beliefs, then geocentric beliefs, and then culminated in the discovery of other planets and moons orbiting the sun. Regarding advertising, Hoffman thinks: more than this. We used to believe that big ideas are at the heart of great advertising. no more. We used to believe that an agency’s main job was to deliver great advertising to their clients. Not today. ”

As I said before, if you want to learn anything, you have to master the basics. If you want to be a good soccer player, you need to learn the rules of the game and how to kick and pass the ball. You can watch a video of a famous soccer player scoring a goal, but you can’t imitate him if you don’t know and master the basics. Advertising and marketing are all about creativity. That is the basis of the profession. Whether it is part of art, part of science, or both can be debated to the end. Data and AI, like everything else, can only be built on that foundation.

As Goodwin puts it, the information that can be extracted from AI probably won’t be able to tell the story behind that information. As he wrote in his LinkedIn post a month ago, “Insights are often thought of as understanding people’s behavior from data, but in reality, people It’s about why it makes decisions, and it’s never obvious.Initialization.”

Martin Lindström would agree. At a time when people were going insane with big data, he coined the term “small data” and proved it. Marketing, like any other department, is about people, and people are neither logical nor rational. In the words of Margaret Mead, we are all unique and special. Trying to segment people using data and AI can lead to bad results.

Returning to the Nightingale story, it does not appear to be an old Chinese tale. This work was written by Hans Christian Andersen, best known for his fairy tales. Andersen harnessed the gift of imagination and harnessed the power of culture and storytelling. And we can harness this power in advertising. The Nightingale story can be read online, but it is much more interesting and moving than the condensed version here (I doubt there are several versions of the original). This is because when we transmit information, we want to add our own tastes and prejudices to enrich the information.

The power of storytelling and the transformation that occurs when we transmit and communicate it is akin to the nature of mechanical things like nightingale, AI, and artificial birds. They can temporarily dazzle, but they can never take the place of humans.

Tyrone Tellis is Bogo’s Senior Manager of Corporate Sales and PR. tyrone.tellis@gmail.com