AI Should Help You Sell Sh*t. It’s That Simple.

Very recently, a customer of ours (forgive the mystery, but I can’t say who – let’s just say a brand you’ve definitely shopped with before) told me that unscheduled events account for at least half of their potential revenue. And today they get none of it!

Think about that for a moment. The success of your business is at least 50% dependent on events you can’t predict in advance.

And yet, for anyone in the modern shopping business, that’s a reality you’re already living with. Stuff happens that could absolutely be an opportunity for your brand. And. You. React. Too. Slowly. To. Capitalize.

The commerce reactivity problem

Most brands in the shopping space – and by that, I mean everything from retail and grocery, to travel and leisure – are only equipped with the resources and the process to create experiences based on scheduled events. Brands are good at hitting Valentine’s day, Christmas and their spring launch. If they can predict it coming, they can be ready with something great. If not, the options are either delivering a shoddy experience (forgive the bluntness, but it’s true) or more often, lose the opportunity and they do nothing at all.

The issue of agile content can be traced back to creative teams. Now, I must admit that I’m frequently rapped across the knuckles by my own (excellent) creative team for saying the kind of things I’m about to say. But the reality is that the traditional creative team, however large, talented or hard-working, is not a system designed to move with the speed and scale an unexpected opportunity presents. To prove the point, look how many brands pushed out weak content, or none at all, when the Barbie movie was all anyone on the planet could talk about.

What I call ‘dynamic opportunities’– whether a social media trend, a news moment, a competitor’s announcement, a major sports result or even the weather – are the great untapped treasure for shopping brands. There are great, spontaneous, victories to be won – if only the content creation process was agile enough to enable brands to have a chance at getting there first.

The creative team – for all their devotion and brilliance – are limited. They have limited hours, limited availability, limited capacity, and those limitations often mean the unexpected opportunity is sacrificed to a schedule that offers little room to react as fast as a modern brand must in order to compete.

Why the waterfall process doesn’t work today

The truth is that the old waterfall ways of working in creative teams, with comprehensive briefs, endless ‘check-ins’ and extensive timelines are at serious odds with today’s need to take chances whenever, and however, they present themselves.

That’s precisely why I say the people most frustrated by this inability to act fast are the marketers and merchants – the people who are tasked with selling and making the numbers! These are the individuals who spot these important moments, have great ideas, but have never had the tools or the expertise to bring those ideas to life ... and make it happen.

They know all too well that any content that comes from the brand must be compelling, high-quality and tick all the distinctive boxes of a brand’s voice and style, customer segment, location, product details – and that’s always been the argument for leaving this kind of content creation to the creatives.

This problem – arguably the costliest problem any shopping brand is facing today – is what inspired Amplience to pursue a very specific purpose with AI.

A new wave of efficiency

Powered by the world’s most advanced AI models, our AI Content platform allows marketers and merchants to create shoppable content at scale – reacting in real-time without compromising the very highest creative standards of the brand. We deliver AI that understands your customer, your product, your location and your brand’s unique voice.

Ours is an AI Application built to deliver on true personalization, not just a word that brands use to grab attention. The kind of personalization-at-scale that lets your marketing team seize the advantage of every unexpected opportunity that arises, wherever it occurs, whoever it appeals to and scale it with the dimensions of customer, product and location.

I see a lot of AI brands out there talking, in great detail, about the features of their product – but very few with a true understanding of the frustration and, dare I say, impotence marketers and merchants feel when a great window for making sales is slammed in their face.

Liberation isn’t perhaps a word you’d previously associated with marketing teams in a commerce brand. But, internally, liberation has been a word we’ve become rather attached to. Liberation from outdated processes that lose you money. Liberation from relying on a small number of people who have a long list of jobs to do before they get to yours. Liberation from regretting the sales you could have made if only you’d moved faster.

I believe that the primary role of AI in the shopping space is to usher in a true democratization of creativity – giving the incredible marketers and merchants in your team the tools, the power and the permission to create differentiated, tailored, on-brand shopping experiences all by themselves.

If I could write the strapline for Amplience – and my superb Product Marketing Team tell me I’m definitely not allowed to – it would be this:

‘At Amplience, we build AI to help you sell shit.’

So, when you’re making your choice about the AI provider you pin your business’ hopes on, make sure to ask if they can truly say the same.