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July 11, 2018July 11, 2018

In The News: Ad Age AI & Brands

Recently, my commentary on data & AI was included in an Ad Age piece on the role of data, artificial intelligence & brands.

Here is a link to the full article.

Here is my full commentary based on Ad Age’s original question…

Ad Age: We’re seeing more agencies now offering services for AI solutions, but how do you see this shaking out? What will separate the ones who will succeed with the ones that do not?

TOM: Offering an AI service for clients is one thing, but the key is understand that data is the fuel for AI. Without a solid understanding and corpus of data as a starting point for AI driven experiences consumer facing experiences have the potential of falling flat.

The organizations and experiences that will succeed in the short term with AI will understand that the consumer facing experience should not try and solve every possible outcome for consumers.

We have conducted research on user expectations of AI and there is one fundamental truth for adoption of AI and consumer facing experience adoption across generations and that is ease & convenience. Whether it’s managing personal time, predicting financial needs, or order replenishment through AI. The key is to understand that AI solutions need to seamlessly make consumers lives easier.

What will truly separate AI solutions over time are the ones that have both structured & unstructured data at the core that is built to action against consumer needs, will design for multimodal experiences beyond mobile and desktop, and be prepared to fully guide consumer experiences via virtual assistant ecosystems as AI becomes a proxy for consumers over time.

The organizations that can market to both consumer and systems will win the day. It’s no longer just the consumer decision decision journey as system based marketing via AI is now here and will continue to take on more responsibility for consumers.

Follow Tom @BlackFin360

March 27, 2018April 11, 2018

The Innovation Playoffs

Over the past 18 years, the first three months of the year always seem to stand out in terms of analyzing the alignment of emerging technology and consumer behavior that impacts trend analysis for the remainder of the year.

2018 was no different. I often joke that the “playoffs” for emerging technology happens between January and March each year. We immediately kick off the new year with CES, the consumer electronics show. CES is all about the latest technology and covering multiple football fields of tech in addition to all of the sessions and announcements culminating in a trend recap and analysis.

February is all about infrastructure and the underlying technology that will power the next iteration of multi-modal computing (voice, vision & touch) through Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The discussions here highlight key tech tied to the upcoming rise of 5G connectivity and edge computing that will connect our world like never before. Find out what these trends mean for your business.

March then caps the three-month sprint with SXSW. The first fifteen days of March 2018 were especially accelerated from discussing machine learning, blockchain and humanizing artificial intelligence with ZD Net to previewing SXSW with Ad Age and Adweek

South by Southwest Interactive focused on experiences that build on technology and infrastructure to provide the consumer perspective for how the technology will further adapt to us vs. us inputing into technology. I spoke about our approach to artificial intelligence actioning data during SXSW with John Dubois of Oculus 360. And you can watch our Epsilon Agency SXSW recap video here.

The final leg of the innovation sprint culminated in delivering a TEDx talk on March 17th. TEDx is about sharing “ideas worth spreading”. Since 2009, TEDx talks have garnered over a billion views. I had the opportunity to speak at TEDx Oaklawn in Dallas, Texas on the evolution of experience. I focused on when the mobile device will no longer be the primary way we interface with technology as we shift from desktop and mobile to incorporate voice, vision and touch powered by intelligent systems that will ultimately enhance our reality.

The full TEDx video will be available within the next few weeks.

I look forward to sharing more throughout the year. For more, follow me @BlackFin360

This is a repost from the Epsilon corporate blog

February 11, 2017April 11, 2017

In The News: Ad Age Data Design & Alexa

I was recently interviewed by Ad Age discussing the efforts of my data design team and our work with Amazon and the Alexa Skills Kit.

When I first joined the Epsilon agency team I wanted to bridge traditional brand planning, strategy and data science to uniquely assess all of our data sources and build recommendations that leverage the right data to assist planning, strategy development and data-driven insights to support strategy and creative.

Now the agency data design group is comprised of 3 core components: 1) Mapping the data landscape 2) Storytelling through data 3) Consulting & training. My goal with this team is align intelligence from the data, regardless of source, that will inform how we communicate and message with consumers as technology and behaviors evolve and most importantly drive performance.

There are three primary areas of focus for the team:

1) Proprietary data sources & methodologies e.g. Leveraging Epsilon’s structured data

2) Unstructured data sources & methodologies e.g. Finding previously invisible insights by applying machine learning & artificial intelligence to unstructured category data

3) New data sources & methodologies e.g. Uncover new types of data sets that we call affective datasets and how it will impact and reshape how we connect across the consumer journey

Unstructured and New Data sources combined with Epsilon’s proprietary data began to accelerate our processing and analysis capabilities to uncover consumer truths with unstructured data to further fuel our agency’s strategic storytelling and data driven creative leading to an evolution of brand planning.

For the past 12 months my data design team has focused on aligning emerging artificial intelligence systems and algorithms with our structured data assets to combine all of the following elements.

Data Design is the bridge between planning and bleeding edge tools like cognitive computing, artificial intelligence and natural language processing. Ad Age highlighted our approach with Amazon and how we leverage machine learning on amazon.com down to the product SKU level to further inform communication and engagement strategy as well as our team being one of the early adopters of the Alexa Skills Kit (ASK).

Here is an example of data design concepts in action.

Follow Tom Edwards @BlackFin360