AI as a Service.
Sticking a finger in the increasingly roiled adland air — damn, I hate to see Leo Burnett rebranded as roadkill — it’s increasingly clear that a whole lot o’ folks are betting that AI as a Service is the future.
I'm betting it won’t come in just one flavor, but three.
So far, the trade pubs have been stink on shit over the holding companies push to make their Large Language Machine models a centerpiece. “Give us your data, Ms. Massive Ad Spender, and we’ll train our AI to be your eager and obedient servant, even if under a roof not your own.”
Reminds me of why old school eateries used to offer customers brass labeled booze lockers or, in the brilliant case of Manhattan’s Keens Steakhouse, induct them into “The Order of the Pipe.”
Locks in the relationship.
Personally, I think it’s more akin to what John Le Carré, in the lexicon of the spy trade, would call a “honey trap.” Once ensnared, with AI’s coldly supple fingers wrapped around the brand’s complete data infrastructure, how would you ever part ways?
Speaking of Burnett, long ago they successfully backed off a giant car brand from reassigning a tiny sliver of their billion-dollar media pie by threatening to resign the whole gig. The client, facing the nightmare of disentanglement, said, “never mind.”
Mind you, that was just the media.
Picture what happens when EVERYTHING in the brand’s data treasure chest has been outsourced to foster care.
But that might be thinking small. Maybe the honey trap goes from class to mass with the adoption of branded AI agents.
More accurately, double agents.
Watch any screen these days and you’re likely to see a Salesforce spot with Matthew McConaughey getting drenched at an outdoor restaurant because he didn’t delegate the reservation to an AI agent who would have cross-checked the weather.
Bad Matthew! And bad consumer, if you don’t delegate elements of the routine — say, keeping beer in the frig or soap in the cupboard — to your very own AI agent.
One made available by, say, a clever brand who knows that few of us have the skills to DIY one on our own.
“If that happens, who will we be advertising to?” asks the insightful Bob Brihn.
My first answer is that maybe it’s “Paula Procter” or “Ursula Unilever” — reasoning that house of brand firms have the most to gain from the play.
But it’s equally true that just about every high roller on tech’s Mag Seven list is looking for new ways to own a bigger share of life.
Okay, that’s two, here’s three.
Right now, everyone is google-eyed at low-to-no cost AI subscription services like Chat GPT, Midjourney, Perplexity, and the flock of MAANG entries.
“Hollywood-level visualization tools,” we are gushed. “The democratization of creativity.”
“The trillion-dollar investment piper must be paid,” mentions nobody.
You see, for clients, consumers, and service users, this much is true: everything’s wonderful, and magical, and convenient, and free.
Until it's not.
hashtag#aipredictions, hashtag#brandfuture