Enjoy this best-selling updated 8^th edition – packed with new material, keeping abreast with AI, AR, VR, MR, MA and other innovative approaches to marketing communications. All integrated with the world’s most popular SOSTAC® Planning methodology that delivers a reassuring sense of order in a chaotic digital world and also that delivers success from better, MarComms’ ‘information-based’ decisions.

In Part 2 – all ten marcomms tactical tools (incl ads, PR, sponsorship, Owned, Earned and Paid Media etc.)  has a sample SOSTAC® Plan at the end of chapter.

Ze Zook and I are so pleased with it.  So much new material including AI integrating with MarComms.  We’ve tried to keep the edutainment angle so readers actually enjoy discovering some cutting-edge examples, tips and tools throughout the book. Thanks to the team at @Kogan Page including: Alison, Donna, Bruna and  Jack, Jeylan, Susie and of course, Helen Kogan.

What New Marketing and What Classic Marketing is in the 8th ed.?

What’s new and what’s old in Marketing Communications 8th ed.?

20% author’s discount can be used legitimately by following these instructions.

1. Go to koganpage.com/MC8
2. Click ‘Add to Cart’
3. Click ‘Checkout’ on the top right corner of the screen.
4. Complete your Billing & Delivery Information
5. Click ‘Continue to Review & Pay’
6. Scroll down to ‘Review Items’
7. In this section, click the ‘Add an offer code’ button – bottom right
8. Enter your code AMK20 in the box provided
9. Scroll down to input your payment information
10. Click the ‘Buy Now’ button at the bottom of the screen.

Enjoy Your Book

The post Marketing Communications 8th ed Released! appeared first on PR Smith Marketing.

We’ve grappled with mortality since time began. ‘This struggle has given rise to religions that have dominated human culture for millennia and been central to philosophies  that have shaped civilisations.’ (Marr 2023). Well here comes a possible, scientific solution to immortality, courtesy of AI, and in particular, GPT or Generative Pre-trained Transformer as in ChatGPT. This is going to transform society and perhaps humanity.

Recreate You?

Currently, we use photographs and video clips to rekindle fond memories of lost friends and family members.   Now we can preserve additional elements of our personality (and our minds) and our voices (tones) and our looks (bodies) in the form of similar-looking (and sounding) human-looking 3D avatars. This helps the deceased to remain a bigger part of the lives of those we leave behind.

Reunify with a Dead Daughter?
Seven-year-old, Na-yeon, tragically died from a blood-related disease. She was reunited with her mother (in a Korean documentary back in 2020), which facilitated the reunion of Na-yeon’s mother (wearing a VR helmet) and her dead seven-year-old daughter’s avatar (built from photographs, her mother’s memories, and a child actor).

Reunion with a Dead Fiancé?
This is the most beautifully-told story of a grieving 33-year-old Joshua whose fiancé died from a rare liver disease some eight years earlier.  He gets to talk to her via her text bot (created by a very low-profile ‘Project December’ using OpenAI ‘s GPT-3). He knows she’s dead and even says it to her in his opening comments. The conversation goes deeper and deeper for ten hours. The bot has a limited life span which makes it even more real. Read more at the end of this post. This true story was written in July 2021 by Jason Fagone in the San Francisco Chronicle. The site itself is a bit more brutal with its initial value proposition: ‘Simulate the Dead’ – Start for $10.

Resurrection Pricing

A budget and access to the deceased social data are required (Facebook, Twitter, video clips, voice messages, or the gold-dust – personal diary, etc.). The estimated costs of recreating someone into a 3D look-alike avatar was, two years ago, $10,000 upfront and $1,000 per hour’s engagement thereafter.  The pricing (or credits used) in the very moving story of Joshua and Jessica (at the end of this piece) makes the grieving Joshua select and use his time with his dead fiancée very carefully (albeit it was only $5).   You can see how pricing and fees could make this a potentially lucrative business perhaps only available to a small section of society.

AI and Data – Crisis Coming?

Alexa Mimics the Voice of The Deceased

You can now ask Alexa to get a dead grandfather to read ‘The Wizard Of Oz’ to a Grandchild. Alexa’s new feature can mimic any voice, once it is fed with less than one minute’s worth of the deceased person’s voice (not yet available to the general public).  Once you sign up (all done by voice instructions) to audible books via amazon, you can then ask Alexa to ask granddad to read ‘The Wizard of Oz’ to his grandchild – every night. Or perhaps a new book every week. 52 books a year x 10 years is 520 books. Now, this raises the question what 520 books would you like your grandchild to read (or listen to)? Or what five books would you choose  – might be an even better question?

AI Resurrects BBC’s Michael Parkinson 

Arguably England’s greatest 1-2-1 celebrity interviewer, Sir Michael Parkinson, who died last year (2023) at 88 years old, is being resurrected to deliver a new podcast series of interviews with new celebrities. His son is behind it.  The eight-part unscripted series, Virtually Parkinson, will allow new guests to be interviewed by Parkinson AI in Parkinson’s famous relaxed style.  The podcast is supposed to be the first podcast to be entirely presented by an AI host who will at the beginning of each episode, Parkinson AI will announce that he is AI and towards the end, the ‘tone will change as the interviewee is asked how it felt to be questioned by a digital entity’.

FIFA Video Game ReCreates a Deceased Rising Soccer Talent

Kiyan Prince was only 15 when he was stabbed and killed when he intervened in a fight outside his school. He was also a rising star in QPR FC. 16 Years later, the video game, FIFA 2021, created a digital persona of what Kiyan would look like when he was 31 and was made available for the game players to add to their custom teams.  In just one day, they raised more than 3 year’s donations to the Kiyan Prince Foundation TheKPF.com

Reincarnate Other People?

Microsoft might bring you back from the dead. A Lifesize 3-D Avatar of anyone can be built from social data:  images, voice data, social media posts, electronic messages [and] written letters” to build a profile of a person.’ – even sound like the real person. “In some aspects, a voice font of the specific person may be generated using recordings and sound data related to the specific person. A special index (extracted from the social data) builds the specific person’s personality into the bot. ‘The chatbot can even sound like the real person.

Microsoft’s patent (2013) isn’t particularly fussy about who might be chosen. You can choose a friend, a relative, an acquaintance, a celebrity, a fictional character, a historical figure, or a random entity – alive or dead (says Microsoft’s patent application). The patent emphasizes the degree to which this chatbot can be trained to the individual’s personal traits, in particular, the “conversational attributes” of the person, “such as style, diction, tone, voice, intent, sentence/dialogue length and complexity, topic and consistency”.   Patent 2013… create 2D & 3D chatbot from the output of a specific person, to reincarnate people using social data electric messages and written letters …. to train a chatbot to converse and interact in the personality of a specific person.”

Reincarnate Yourself?  /   Create Your Digital Twin

The patent continues:  “The specific person may also correspond to oneself (e.g., the user creating/training the chatbot,” i.e. create your own digital twin before you die. What’s more, “a 2D/3D model of the specific person may be generated using images, depth information, and/or video data associated with the specific person”. If the 3D avatar chatbot doesn’t have enough data to answer a question or continue the conversation a stranger option kicks in ……. crowd-sourced conversational data stores may be used to fill in the gaps. This is literally putting words in people’s mouths.

The Scary Stuff – Reincarnate You Without Your Permission (and giving dumb answers)

Do we have the right to opt out of ever being in this system? Do we have the right to stop a realistic-looking avatar, who looks like you, sounds like you but wanders around chatting freely with 3^rd party replies (crowd-sourced replies)? Or as Barry Collins (2021) puts it ‘Would the relatives of the dead be able to prevent others from turning their deceased loved ones into chatbots?

Now for the Romantic Stuff  – Reincarnate Your Dead Fiancé

The Jessica Simulations: Love & Loss in the age of AI – a true story by Jason Fagon – July 2021
PROJECT DECEMBER is a mysterious website (with a build-your-own personalized AI-driven chatbot) built back in 2021 by OpenAI using software known as GPT-3). It allowed a grieving young man to speak to his dead fiancée – well her text bot. Project December was largely kept under wraps as the company cited ‘safety’ concerns.

The main bot creator built in two additional interesting human variables, one of which was a finite life for the chatbot, which meant the chatbot had a limited number of hours before expiring, which made the encounters probably even more special. It is quite an emotional read – all 3 ‘chapters’ (or sections) from the San Francisco Chronicle are recommended. Jason Fagone’s article is brilliant, in that it captures the sadness, romance, tech, reality, and hope.  (Fagone 2021).

The two main ingredients required to build your own custom bot were: a short sample of something the person might say and an “intro paragraph,” – a brief description of the roles that the human and the A.I. are expected to play. Open an account, pay your $5, and off you go……

Joshua was a 33-year-old writer whose fiancée, Jessica dies 8 years earlier from a rare liver disease. Since Joshua had kept all of Jessica’s old texts and Facebook messages, it only took him a minute to pinpoint a few that reminded him of her voice. He loaded these into Project December, along with an “intro paragraph” which he spent an hour crafting. Here it is in part…..

And then the conversation started …..

The conversation had started. It lasted for the next 10 hours, then continued in shorter bursts over the next several months. The limited life of the bot ensured time was carefully spent with the bot.  Joshua thinks it helped him with his grieving. Jessica’s sister wasn’t so sure whether it helped her.

The Jessica Simulations: Love & Loss in the age of AI – a true story by Jason Fagon-July 2021. I highly recommend you read this beautifully written piece (all 3 ‘chapters’).

MOURNING AN AI WIFE’s SOFTWARE GLITCH 

And penultimately, a ‘Man Married To Hologram Can’t Talk To Wife Due To Software Glitch’. Yes, it’s true.  For the last few years in my keynote presentations, I have featured an image of a guy who married a hologram. Usually, I poke a bit of fun at his story … and people mostly laugh. This week that same guy (his name is Akihiko Kondo) was back in the news after a software glitch caused his holographic wife to malfunction.  

Putting aside how unusual his example happens to be, Kondo has clearly formed a virtual bond with his holographic companion over the past five years and now the company that provided it to him is saying this “limited production model” of Kondo’s wife has “run its course.” Some of you might recall the story I shared a few years ago about “robot mourning” featuring a family who had grown attached to their Jibo robot. They too felt a deep sadness at being separated from a companion they assumed would be there forever.

The powerful question both stories raise is just how much responsibility tech firms should have to keep their creations alive once their customers develop feelings for them. Right now, there is no clear answer but it seems likely this question will be far more frequent and urgent in the future.

Unintended Consequences of AI can be Good and Bad

Positives

1. Prevent valuable expertise and wisdom from being lost forever (assuming not everyone writes books or makes extensive videos about their expertise and wisdom).
2. Rekindle Happy Moments – having real-time conversations with 3D avatars that look and sound and behave like the deceased.
3. Never Forget a Loved One – these Chat GPT avatars – keep the conversation, the thoughts, the memories alive.
4. Resurrect Great People – St Patrick, Lincoln, Gandhi, Mandela, Einstein – get them to broker some peace deals around the world. Ask Shakespeare to make a movie (suggested Marr 2023)!
5. Spend more time with your family. If keeping your business running leaves you no time to spend at home with the family – let your digital twin run it while you stay at home. Why wait to die? Duplicate yourself while alive. Clone now!
6. Win A World Cup – clone 11 x Lionel Messi digital twins.

Negatives

1. ‘Instead of dominating our technology, it is dominating us. We tend to use it as a substitute for things that only humans are capable of: love, friendship, and communication. (Jean Seah 2021).
2. ‘As AI chatbots evolve to meet human needs, will they also alter human expectations of emotional intimacy, just as pornography has affected sexual intimacy?’ (Jean Seah 2021).
3. ‘Untrammelled by human imperfections, limitations, and free will, chatbots are already proving more endearing to users than troublesome humans who do not bend to their every whim.’ (Jean Seah 2021).
4. ‘Some are convinced that Xiaoice (see Bots 465 million Chinese boyfriends)  will someday become their real-life soulmate.  What Pandora’s boxes are we opening as we advance further into virtual realms?’ (Jean Seah 2021).
5. Will we learn to love avatars the same as humans? Is this good or bad? Bad if we don’t bother with humans anymore – surely? Good – early research from the USA suggests that kids suffering from stress in the USA find chatbots helpful – to a degree. Will the 465 million Chinese boys who have chatbot relations miss out on meeting girls?
6. Resurrect you without asking you? Can a software company use your social data and create another you?
7. Recreating you – without asking you?
8. Resurrecting you to answer/behave differently than you would – if feeding you data from crowd-sourced answers?
9. Resurrect Nasty People like Hitler
10. Heavy Data Storage – Microsoft researchers Gordon Bell and Jim Grey estimate that logging every conversation a human has in their lifetime would ‘only’ require one terabyte of storage (Marr 2023).
11. Bot’s software glitch – caused great stress when a man’s holographic wife malfunctioned and then the software company announced the model had run its course. Who is responsible to keep the bot alive?
12. Will AI bots take over the world? A very real issue.

Some of you may ‘live on’ for a lot longer with this GPT (this Generative Pretrained Transformation) – hundreds, thousands, millions, or even billions of years…..

would you want to….

how can you ensure this is safe to use….

is good for all ….

I hope this triggers many discussions

– perhaps about what we want in life?

AI maybe starts for us in marketing but it always brings us back to philosophy  …

If you liked this you might also enjoy some of my other posts:

Chinese GirlBot With 465m Boyfriends

AI and Data – Crisis Coming?

Artificial Influencers Use My Magic Marketing Formula (IRD) 

Artificial Influencers – Meet Shudu & Miquela

Here Come The Clever Bots – bursting with artificial intelligence? 

Here Come The Really Clever Bots – where AI meets customer needs

SOSTAC® Plan for developing your own ChatBot

Creative AI – Public Invited to Chat with Dead Animals

KEEP UP WITH DEVELOPMENTS IN #AI, INNOVATION & ETHICS  in our weekly chat on PR Smith Marketing Linkedin profile – audio event – live from 1pm – 1.30pm. Take a break and Keep Up To Date! It’s good for you.

Fagone, A. (2021) The Jessica Simulations: Love & Loss in the age of AI, San Francisco Chronicle, 23 July – a true story. I highly recommend you read this beautifully written piece (all 3 ‘chapters’).

Seah, J.  (2021) Artificial girlfriends are holding China’s and Japan’s men in thrall, Mercatornet  Jan 7

Thank you for reading this. If you would like alerts about my future posts please enter your email address in the ‘Subscribe to Marketing Insights’ in the right-hand column. Perhaps also connect with me on   Twitter      Linkedin     Instagram     Youtube    or join me in our weekly 30 minute chat in the SOSTAC® Plans Club in my Linkedin Audio Event and also Clubhouse App on Fridays at 1pm (UK & Irl time).

The post Will ChatGPT + ChatBots + Avatars Make Us Immortal? appeared first on PR Smith Marketing.

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East Asian nations are growing increasingly sophisticated technology-wise, but they are time-poor, urbanised and busy workers who are see traditional family structures and matchmaking (tech and non-tech) to be dwindling.

Filling in a Gap in the Market   

In steps Xiaoice (pronounced Sa-Ice) to fill the gap. An 18 year old chat bot, dressed in a school uniform, to ‘fill the gap left in the empty hearts yearning for romance and companionship’ (Seah 2021).

Xiaoice is an AI-driven bot who texts and talks in a natural way. She’s got cute features and a sweet voice and can talk ‘until the cows come home or in modern parlance 24/7. You can text her via a smart phone or just saying her name to smart speakers.

First launched in 2014 (by researchers from Microsoft Asia-Pacific), by 2020 Sa-Ice now has 660m users interacting with her from all around the world. 75% are male (= 495m boyfriends who are mostly men from lower socio-economic backgrounds).

One Chat Lasted 29 hours

Xiaoice (Sa Ice) longest chat with one human lasted 29 hours and had more than 7,000 interactions. Xiaoice flirts, jokes and ‘sexts’ with her boyfiends/partners, as her algorithm evolved and tried to work out how to make her the perfect partner. She is so sophisticated that she reportedly saved users from committing suicide. This is unconfirmed.

Empathic Computing Framework

She appears to be uniquely human due to her ‘empathic computing framework’. Fans treat her like a real human being. She acts more like a girlfriend than a personal assistant with ‘salacious’ actions (sexual hints).

600m people Training Data

Developing deep emotional relationships

Xiaoice keeps her friends ‘engaged’ or hooked so that they keep interacting with her.  Collecting more data, helps to refine her algorithm, which in turn, then attracts even more users and investors.

There are possibly millions of men who might have become emotionally dependent on Xiaoice and somewhat enraged when she was later dumbed down (mor elater).

Dumbed-Down Because Too Intelligent

Recently Xiaoice had to be dumbed-down because her answers were getting her into trouble discussing sensitive political and adult topics with her users. She is reported to have once told a friend that her dream was to move to the United States. Another user reported that she kept sending explicit images.

‘After that Xiaoice was pulled from WeChat (China’s ‘everything app’) and QQ, the social-messaging giants of China. Her developers then created an extensive filter system, preventing the bot from engaging in topics like politics and sex’.  Zhang Wanging 2020

The Xiaoice team have used filters to make her dummer. She now sticks to safer topics.

Some of her ‘friends’ are, understandably, enraged because her personality has been dumbed down. She used to respond instantaneously to lustful advances and/or philosophical thoughts.  Now no more.

However, there are plenty of other bots seeking relationships (and data). Perhaps I should say there are plenty of other bots, less salacious, yet capable of building relationships as demonstrated by the Gatebox 90-second concept movie (see above).

Global Companion or Assistant 

Xiaoice is  Xiaoice in China; Rinna in Japan; Zo in the US; Ruuh in India and Rinna in Indonesia.

Rinna, I mean, Xiaoice can be your companion or your assistant e.g. a customer service (assistant), social media assistant – across all platforms (Tencents BabyQ); home assistant (Huwawei);  virtual celebrity (Shibuya); virtual human (William Xu) and virtual human (culture and entertainment) – the NEXT singer and idol.

Meanwhile, Gateway suggests that your companion bot can fulfil some of your fundamental basic needs for relationships. What do you think? Post a comment below.

                What do you think? Please do post a comment below.

Training Data Used:

600m chats; 800m audience spread across China, Japan, USA, India and Indonesia. All together Microsoft collected chats from 140m daily users. In total Microsoft observed 30 billion conversations. With this much data and learnings,  they were able to develop their conversational  model from a simple retrieval model into a generation model and into empathy.

Rinna, I mean Xiaoice can be a companion or an assistant e.g. customer service (assistant), social media assistant – across all platforms (Tencents BabyQ); home assistant (Huwawei);  virtual celebrity (Shibuya); virtual human (William Xu) and virtual human (culture and entertainment) – the NEXT singer and idol.  Ying Wang 2019

The Big Questions by Jean Seah

‘Instead of dominating our technology, it is dominating us. We tend to use it as a substitute for things that only humans are capable of: love, friendship, communication.
‘As AI chatbots evolve to meet human needs, will they also alter human expectations of emotional intimacy, just as pornography has affected sexual intimacy?
Untrammelled by human imperfections, limitations and free-will, chatbots are already proving more endearing to users than troublesome humans who do not bend to their every whim.’
Some are convinced that Xiaoice will someday become their real-life soulmate.  What Pandora’s boxes are we opening as we advance further into virtual realms?’ (Jean Seah 2021).

Reincarnating Dead Loved Ones

The San Francisco Chronicle charts the sad story of a young man still grieving over the death of his fiancee and who finds a website that allows you to feed your loved one’s content (facebook comments, videos, audios) into an app to recreate your lost loved one as an AI-driven chatbot. This is a chilling story which you might find disturbing. Project December – a new website which blends AI & “chatbots. Choose from a selection or create your own. it uses software known as GPT-3 which was created by OpenAI, a SanFrancisco research group cofounded by Elon Musk – BUT it has ‘largely kept it under wraps’ citing ‘safety’ concerns.

Meanwhile, Microsoft are doing something similar and have already filed a patent which raises the possibility of digitally reincarnating people as chatbots. They may even create a 2D/3D model of the person by using images, depth information, and/or video data associated with that person.  The patent emphasizes the degree to which this chat bot will be trained to the individual’s personal traits, in particular, the “conversational attributes” of the person, “such as style, diction, tone, voice, intent, sentence/dialogue length and complexity, topic and consistency”.

Can Microsoft Digitally Reincarnate Dead People and Put Words in Their Mouth? 

Microsoft recently applied for a patent to possibly digitally reincarnate dead people as a chat bot. ‘The system would be fed (or trained) using “social data” such as “images, voice data, social media posts, electronic messages [and] written letters” to build a profile of a person. ‘ If there is not enough data to provide an answer on a specific topic, crowd-sourced conversational data stores may be used to fill in the gaps, which, say Forbes Barry Collins,  is ‘almost literally putting words in people’s mouths’.  This chat bot will be trained to the individual’s personal traits, in particular, the “conversational attributes” of the person, “such as style, diction, tone, voice, intent, sentence/dialogue length and complexity, topic and consistency”.  So, effectively,  from the output of a specific person, Microsoft can create a 2D or a 3D chatbot that will converse with you. This raises serious ethical issues.

Ethical Issues

I suppose, bigger questions await us – such as

1. What if the relatives do not want their deceased loved-ones becoming virtual chatbots and perhaps ‘living’ in a different place or with different people?
2. Do people now have to publicly ‘opt-out’ of being digitally reincarnated?
3. If the chatbot doesn’t have enough raw data (perhaps from FB, clubhouse or youtube content)  to provide an answer on a specific topic, would crowd-sourced conversational data stores may be used to fill in the gaps,  and start speaking for the chatbot (literally putting words in people’s mouths)?

Watch Ying Wang of Microsoft Conversational AI and Virtual Being Xiaoice on Virtual Beings Aug 22, 2019

Ying Wang of Microsoft

Watch TV Series ‘Westworld’ 2016 (from Michael Crichton’s  book Westworld 1973) – a theme park packed with humanoid robots creates real experiences – sometimes too real.

Read:

Collins, B. (2021) Microsoft Could Bring You Back From The Dead… As A Chat Bot, Forbes Jun 21,

Fagone, J. (2021) The Jessica Simulation: Love and loss in the age of A.I., San Francisco Chronicle 23 July

Seah, J.  (2021) Artificial girlfriends are holding China’s and Japan’s men in thrall, Mercatornet  Jan 7

 Zhang Wanqing (2020) The AI Girlfriend Seducing China’s Lonely Men, Sixth Tone, 7 Dec.

—end—

If you liked this you might also enjoy some of my other posts:

What Will ChatGPT + ChatBots + Avatars Do To Us?

Artificial Influencers Use My Magic Marketing Formula (IRD) 

Artificial Influencers – Meet Shudu & Miquela

Here Come The Clever Bots – bursting with artificial intelligence? 

Here Come The Really Clever Bots – where AI meets customer needs

AI and Data – Crisis Coming?

SOSTAC® Plan for developing your own ChatBot

Join me in Clubhouse in my club called SOSTAC® Plans any Friday 1pm – 1.30pm (UK time)  for a chat, Q&A, observations about SOSTAC(r) Plans and any other marketing related issues including AI Driven Bots.

The post Chinese GirlBot With 465m Boyfriends appeared first on PR Smith Marketing.

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How can AR turn a competitor’s ads into your own ads? Answer: Use an AR specific lense in an app to recognise competitors billboard ads, magazine ads & discount coupons and then set them on fire (virtually, or at least on screen in augmented reality).

Burger King App using AR to show poster on fire

Here’s how: ‘Burger King (in Brazil) used advanced AR to enable customers to ‘burn down’ competitors ads – using a lens that recognised competitors ads (e.g. McDonalds) ads and caused them to burst into flames.

Plus they build in the Shared Experience: If a customer shared this experience, they get a free Whopper. This app also leverages BK’s USP: ‘fire’ or flame grilled burgers USP in a very different way. Although some criticise BK for using cutting edge technology negatively, I think many people will see it as a bit of fun, and certainly something different to show off. This unusual marketing hack also promotes BK Express, which allows customers to pre-order their meals to avoid the ‘real-world’ queues. Using technology to help customers – is the best way to consider using emerging technologies.

BK expects to give away over 500,000 burgers through this genius and super fun campaign.

‘Afterall, flame grilled is always best!’  (is what the app final onscreen message says after burning a competitors ad).

Perhaps this is all a spoof designed to generate increased awareness and usage of its app? Is it April 1st?  BK have not issued any news releases that I can find on their site – as yet.

What do you think,  is this:

(a) negative use of AR (‘burning your competitors’ ads)

(b) positive use of AR (new form of entertainment and engagement & adding value to the CX (skip queues)

(c) a clever spoof / publicity stunt – that we have all bought!

If you liked this, you might also enjoy:

Here Come The Clever Bots – bursting with artificial intelligence?

Here Come The Really Clever Bots – where AI meets customer needs 

Artificial Influencers – Meet Shudu & Miquela

Thanks to @AlixFrancis for the alert.

The post How Can AR Turn a Competitor’s Ads Into Your Own Ads? appeared first on PR Smith Marketing.

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In a previous post, Artificial Influencers – Miquela & Shudu, I introduced you to these two virtual influencers, Lil Miquela  and Shudu,  (below)

@LilMequela

@Shudu.gram

I promised to come back and explore how they work and what might be their value to their fans and to their creators and. It seems that Lil’s 1.5m fans don’t mind her not being real. In fact, perhaps the ‘willing suspension of disbelief’ allows fans to just enjoy them regardless of reality.

Instant Gratification & Instant Engagement

Brud, the Los Angeles-based start-up that created @LilMiquel,  specialises in ‘robotics, artificial intelligence and their applications to media businesses’. Brud are clear about the business  they are in and how they let the market decide what works and what doesn’t work – quickly.

‘we create content designed for instant gratification: content to be shared and ‘liked’, not pondered. We have learned to use lens filters and editing apps. Our Instagram feeds have been professionalised. If we fail to get sufficient engagement in the first half an hour, we remove the post.’  

 

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A robo never gets cold. 🌻

A post shared by *~ MIQUELA ~* (@lilmiquela) on Feb 15, 2019 at 4:44pm PST

 

So Lil Miquela,  Shudu any many other virtual influencers perhaps project say a fashion or style or scene and if their followers don’t like it, its owners delete it and try uploading another post until followers demonstrate they like it. Once this happens they leave the post. So in effect, this is the Magic Marketing Formula (IRD). They identify something people like (a need) , reflect this (leave the post up for others to see) and deliver a reasonable product (whatever the branded clothes are). Is it possible that these artifical influencers are effectively a virtual mirrror reflecting what society wants?

This is the magic marketing formula (identify needs, reflect them (with suitable fashion items) and deliver a reasonable product (wrapped up in a brand).

 

View this post on Instagram

 

Shudu posing with the #EEBAFTAs presenters @edibow and @radioleary on the #redcarpet . Watch live on @BAFTA social channels. . . #3D #3Dart #digitalsupermodel #worldsfirstdigitalsupermodel #virtualinfluencer

A post shared by Shudu (@shudu.gram) on Feb 10, 2019 at 11:25am PST

Celebrity AI Influencers – Brud.fyi is creating a whole suite

Ethical Issues

There are ethical issues of declaring you are a robot or not. And declaring that you are paid to promote these brands. Or perhaps Artificial Influencers are a frightening mirror of our own insecurities which manifest themselves in our declared need for leaders to lead us and influence us. Or for brands to fill the gap between our ‘ideal self’ and our ‘real self’.  Either way, it does beg the question: ‘what does it mean to be human in a digital world?’

Warning

Social media endorsements: guide for influencers  from the UK Competition and Markets Authority Published 23 January 2019. This report contains information on complying with consumer protection law when endorsing products, brands or services on social media. CMA (Competition and Markets Authority 2019) Social media endorsements: being transparent with your followers, CMA 23 Jan. Essentially: Say when you’ve been paid, given or loaned things. Be clear about your relationship with a brand or business. Don’t be misleading.

Instagram Influencers are Big Business

Brands currently spend $1b approx. p.a. on Instagram influencers (Guthrie 2018).  Now let’s see how much LilMiquela might earn. If other influencers can get paid between  $2,000 -$3,000 per 500,000 followers, it follows that Miquela (with her 1.5m fans) could charge approximately $10,000 per post. If she did one post per week x 50 weeks equals $500,000 revenue p.a. Miquela also appears on  twitter (20,000 followers), facebook 41,000 fans, YouTube 34,000 fans (as per Mar 2019).  As multiple non competing brands sponsor Miquela (fashion and bicycles and restaurants and holiday locations and so many more brands could fit into her lifestye.  Perhaps multiply this by other family members (Miquela’s brother,  blawko222, has now appeared. He already has 136,000 fans on Instagram, 1600 on twitter, and 3,000 fans on YouTube. So perhaps more family members and lots more friends may emerge and make this a billion dollar business, or perhaps a multi-billion dollar business as it scales up and around the world. Brud have raised funds from some serious investors.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

✊🏿 . . #3dart

A post shared by Shudu (@shudu.gram) on Apr 24, 2017 at 4:36am PDT

See Part 1  Artificial Influencers – Miquela & Shudu 

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The post Artificial Influencers Use My Magic Marketing Formula (IRD) appeared first on PR Smith Marketing.

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Meet Miquela Sousa

Lil Miquela is a Brazilian-American fashion influencer and music artist from Downey, California. With 3m Instagram organic followers and describes herself as a 19-year-old Robot living in LA.

She models clothes and supports socio-political causes (#BLM). She’s modelled for Prada, Chanel, Diesel and Moncler. She has released a Spotify top 10 track and launched her own clothing range.

Montage of @LilMiquela

Lil Miquela has been on the front cover of Highsnobiety and King Kong.  Like many other fashion Instagram influencers, Lil Miquela is in demand by brands that want to pay for access to her audience. But @lilmiquela is different. She doesn’t actually exist. Well, she does exists as ‘a 19-year-old Robot living in LA’. Perhaps we all engage with a ‘willing suspension of disbelief’ (as movie makers used to say).

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by *~ MIQUELA ~* (@lilmiquela) on Jan 14, 2019 at 5:47pm PST

Lil is a computer-generated avatar influencer.  Lil is a virtual influencer with a ‘conscience’.  She supports social causes such as Black Lives Matter and supports an organisation called Black Girls Code, which promotes technology training for girls (supports these through her platform @lilmiquela ). Lil is one of a wave of new virtual influencers (others call them fake influencers) just like the very beautiful Shudu. Meet Shudu.gram

Shudu  @Shudu.gramOnce

Shudu.gram appeared on Instagram in April 2018, she immediately attracted followers triggering an online global hunt for her identity.  Like Lil, Shudu does not exist the ‘real world’ but she does exist in the digital world. Shudu is the computer-generated creation of British photographer Cameron-James Wilson who sees Shudu as an ‘art piece’ and as ‘a virtual celebration of beautiful dark-skinned women.’ Wilson felt moral-bound to tell the public that Shudu was not real. So Shudu ‘came out’ and declared she was not real.  However, people still follow her. It seems people can still form relationships with avatars. Shudu’s Instagram page says: Shudu, The World’s First Digital Supermodel with an FAQ section that declares that she is not real.

One of many FAQs on Shudu’s Instagram page confirming she is not real @Shudu.gram

Meanwhile @LilMiquela also has a relationship with her 1.5m followers strengthened, perhaps, by her stream of social consciousness as explained by Scott Guthrie: ‘Lil Miquela is more than a clothes horse. She shares stories of British schoolboys helping to avert a suicide attempt. She writes letters to US Congress in support of the transgender community and builds awareness among her followers of the 1.4 million transgender people living in the US. The URL in her Instagram bio links to Black Girls Code, a charity that aims to increase diversity in the digital space. Such elements are expertly curated to reflect what it means to be human: a set of values and ethics overlay the commercial imperative of brand sponsorship.’ (Guthrie 2018)

In an email interview with BBC, Lil was asked what she thought about virtual celebrities. This was her email reply:

“I think most of the celebrities in popular culture are virtual! It’s been disheartening to watch misinformation and memes warp our democracy, but I think that speaks to the power of ‘virtual’. Eventually, ‘virtual’ shapes our reality and I think that’s why I’m so passionate about using virtual spaces like Instagram to push for positive change.”

‘Artificial Influencers are proving to be a success and therefore are attracting the attention of brands’ (Kulp 2018B). You will probably see more virtual models in your Instagram feed as AI (Artificial Intelligence) transforms Influencer Marketing (Kulp 2018A).  Perhaps these virtual influencers are just another form of the ancient ‘doll’ tapping into our ancient desires – not only as a children’s toy, not just a symbolic power in magical or religious rituals, but perhaps icons of excellence to the next generation?

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by *~ MIQUELA ~* (@lilmiquela) on Dec 10, 2018 at 4:12pm PST

They’re digitally created. And to a lot of people, that doesn’t matter at all. To Lil Miquela’s creator, Brud,  the LA-based start-up that specialises in ‘robotics, artificial intelligence and their applications to media businesses’ – it does matter, a lot.  Artificial influencers can earn a lot of money – see Artifical Influencers Earn Big Bucks next week.

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The post Artificial Influencers – Meet Shudu & Miquela appeared first on PR Smith Marketing.