Building brand ambassadors in the age of conversational AI

Our CEO and Founder, Danny Tomsett, sees a new opportunity to take the brand icons, mascots and characters people know and make them into AI-powered brand ambassadors and influencers – ones that can interact, engage and provide a unique experience no other brand could offer.

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As you know, brands have gone digital.

Billboards have become banner ads. TV spots have become social content. And more people share TikTok videos than Super Bowl ads.

But while brands may now live in the digital space, they don’t really come to life there.

Take household-name brand icons: The King from Burger King, Flo from Progressive and Martin the gecko from Geico. Some may be on social media, but they aren’t social at all – and customers have noticed.

Things have become transactional, brand values have gotten lost and the hopes of maintaining loyalty are about as likely as befriending a chatbot.

The most successful brands are the ones that can make an emotional connection with their customers. But as content grows, attention spans shrink and emotional connections become harder to make. And yet, the tools to make meaningful digital connections are already here.

Enter digital human brand ambassadors

Through machine learning, advanced CGI, and conversational AI, it’s possible to create a fully interactive, completely engaging, AI-powered digital brand ambassador – one who talks WITH people, not AT them.

A virtual influencer who can meet practical needs and emotional ones. Who can not only interact, but also build a relationship. One who can make a genuine, lasting connection whether they’re interacting face-to-face online, voice-to-voice on calls, or text-to-text on devices.

The idea of digital humans may sound weird at first; but when done right and with the right strategy, these digital ambassadors can build trust, inspire loyalty and fundamentally transform a brand’s business model for the better.

What’s missing from so many technologies like chatbots is that their solutions tend to focus on technology experiences rather than personal ones. But it’s not the tech that people connect with, it’s the character.

Sure, chatbots can provide information quickly; but if the experience lacks personality, storytelling and an authentic connection, all they can deliver is customer satisfaction.

As the Harvard Business Review points out, it’s emotional connection rather than satisfaction that matters most to customers – and most impacts ROI. In fact, emotionally connected customers are more than twice as valuable as highly satisfied customers.

Putting digital human brand ambassadors to work

The brands that will thrive in the digital world will be those that understand what makes human engagement so powerful: the personalization, the relationship-building, the non-verbal cues like warmth and empathy.

That’s how companies can achieve and maintain relevance – not with a strategy of innovation alone, but with a strategy that provides their customers with a meaningful one-on-one relationship, at scale.

By combining artificial intelligence with emotional intelligence, digital humans can embody everything a brand stands for and bring companies the lasting customer relationships they’ve always wanted.

Imagine the quintessential expression of your brand – all its principles, all its ideals, all its charm – interacting, engaging and even bonding with your customers across all channels, all platforms and all devices.

Who wouldn’t connect with that?

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