Volvo's personalized WhatsApp chatbot

Plus: How to turn a picture into an audio ad

December 20, 2023

Hey there! You’re so close to the end of the year—and hopefully, a much-deserved break. As you spend the last drops of your ad budget this week, we hope you’re able to step back and look at how much you’ve accomplished this year: Did you run a goal-crushing campaign? Come up with the perfect copy? Nail the creative for a launch? Whatever success looked like for you, take the time to soak it in.

With that, here’s our holiday gift to you: the last roundup of marketing AI news for the year.

Meet Volvo’s AI WhatsApp Chatbot

Source: Volvo

Earlier this month, Volvo was one of the first brands to launch its own custom WhatsApp chatbot through Meta’s testing program:

  • Volvo custom-trained the base of Meta’s large language model (LLM) to act like its customer care specialists, with a professional and polished tone to echo the brand’s personality. The bot was also programmed to retrieve data specifically on Volvo’s new EX30 vehicle.

  • To further customize the bot, Volvo selected which questions were “fair game” to answer and which questions would trigger a hand-off to a human customer care specialist. 

  • Meta directly supported the bot’s media strategy by serving Facebook and Instagram ads directing users to chat with Volvo on WhatsApp.

  • Volvo is hoping to gather data from WhatsApp's 2 billion active international users, primarily on younger consumers and Hispanic consumers.

This Feature Turns a Picture Into an Audio Ad

AI audio platform Adthos just released a new AI-powered feature that analyzes visual elements to create a fully-produced audio ad in minutes: 

  • Adthos users simply upload a picture (like a product image or storefront photo) and the platform will automatically analyze its content—identifying slogans, styles, and even the target audience. 

  • Adthos then uses AI to generate a creative brief, which is used to write an ad script, curate voices and sound effects, and finally put all the elements together in a ready-to-run audio ad.

Trivago’s New Ad Replaces 20 Actors with AI

Source: Trivago

This summer, Trivago decided to “go big” on TV advertising. Now, it’s keeping its promise with a multi-country ad spree powered by AI:

  • Trivago’s “first-of-its-kind AI-driven” TV ad campaign replaces 20 spokespeople and 35 productions with just one actor in one production—cutting production time in half.

  • One English-speaking actor plays “Mr. Trivago.” The company leverages AI to translate the ad into multiple languages for audiences around the world.

  • Trivago sees this ad as the start of a multi-year effort to regain momentum and reposition the company as a necessity for travelers.

AI-Free Is a New Point of Differentiation

This year, many agencies jumped on the AI bandwagon. But at the same time, marketing professionals have become increasingly wary of consumers’ negative perception of AI. A new study and forecasts from Gartner explore this dichotomy:

  • 72% of surveyed consumers were concerned about the potential for AI-based platforms to spread false information and 70% believed that generative AI integrations could further harm the user experience.

  • In response, Gartner predicts that 20% of brands will go “acoustic” by 2027, leveraging an absence of AI in their business as a point of differentiation.

  • Gartner’s researchers believe that “AI-free” as a positioning strategy will “distance brands from perceptions of AI-powered businesses as impersonal and homogenous.”

Around the Web

Thanks for joining us, and happy holidays!