Jennifer Kattula is GM of Global Marketing at Microsoft Advertising. She will be participating in Marketing Brew's event “The Marketer's (Early) Guide to AI” next week.
Ahead of the event, we spoke to Kattula a little bit about how he and Microsoft Advertising are leveraging AI and what he thinks about the technology's potential.
Does your company have a policy regarding the use of AI? If so, what are the main tenets? At Microsoft, we are committed to responsible AI. We believe that when we develop technology that can change the world, we must ensure that it is used responsibly. Microsoft's AI efforts are guided by a set of responsible AI principles adopted in 2018: Fairness, Trust and Safety, Privacy and Security, Inclusion, Transparency, and Accountability.
What AI tools are you currently using? What are you using them for? We build generative AI tools for marketers, and we use generative AI tools internally as well.
Specifically for generative AI for marketers, generative AI can be used to create more engaging experiences for consumers, help everyone across the advertising ecosystem achieve more, and help advertisers Allows you to improve performance more efficiently. We took inspiration from the Copilot experience to create an entirely new category of ad experience formats called conversational ads. We have launched the first He Copilot designed specifically for advertisers. A real-time intelligent assistant is by her side 24/7, guiding her through best practices, how-tos, and supporting her advertising goals. Finally, for the first time, we integrated Microsoft's industry-leading generative AI technology into our retail media platform using Retail Media Creative Studio.
Our marketing team uses AI to generate drafts of social copy, blog posts, and more. If you're writing something in Word and you get stuck, you can highlight the paragraph and have Copilot suggest some other ways to write it. You can then feed your blog to Copilot and ask it to clarify three key messages. If these messages are off, you can adjust them. It's like a brainstorming partner that helps you clarify your positioning, expand your thinking, and identify gaps. We are also conducting comprehensive prompt engineering experiments. With a single prompt, you can generate keywords that convey different emotions with ad copy specific to your specific industry. We also leverage generative AI to not only improve the quality of our products, but also the level of service we provide to our customers. Our latest development is Insights Navigator, our first sales enablement tool with generative AI at its core.
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What is the best real-world application of AI that you have seen in the marketing world? It's still early days, but I'm very bullish on several areas. One is creative production, like what we do with Retail Media Creative Studio and Copilot on the Microsoft Advertising platform. The other thing is customer insights, like what we do with Insights Navigator. Both examples represent activities that have historically been resource-intensive and require specialized skill sets.
There are many proposed use cases for AI, from customer service applications to improving brand voice to customer lifecycle analysis. Which applications are the most promising for you? Which are the least promising? There are three areas that I think are the most promising to invest in and explore. 1) Rapid engineering. This is difficult and requires practice. We've done a ton of research on inclusive prompt engineering. Although our team uses the tool every day, there is still a learning curve. 2) Brand training. Brands want generative AI trained on brand books and historical assets that can capture creative and campaign briefs. This still exists in fragments, but I expect the pace of evolution in this field to accelerate dramatically. 3) Connections across the marketing lifecycle. Although each activity is completely different, generative AI tools can help you every step of the way from concept to execution. Connecting the dots will be exciting for marketers, especially across sectors.
What advice do you have for marketers and brands who are considering using AI but don’t know where to start? Let's start by getting started. The learning curve is steep, so experiment with the tools available to you. There are many free and paid tools out there. There are hundreds of generative AI startups and projects built for specific use cases. If you work for a large brand or agency, you probably already have access to the tools. Strive to use generative AI throughout the day and study prompt engineering. play.
