In addition, 43% think it will replace some in marketing teams, yet humans are needed to guide AI

Almost eight in ten (78%) of digital marketers surveyed responded that AI is helpful in marketing. At the same time, forty-seven percent (47%) said it was dangerous in marketing. The results are from an Optimove May 2023 survey of 221 B2C executives responsible for digital marketing. The findings come on the heels of Geoffrey Hinton, an artificial intelligence pioneer and now former Google executive, saying that companies are accelerating to danger in creating products based on generative artificial intelligence. 

Pini Yakuel, CEO and co-founder of Optimove said, "Many may fear that generative AI could be dangerous in marketing. But the operative question is, 'What task are you asking it to do?' It is not dangerous if asked to provide information on a subject or suggest viable solutions to a problem. Armed with information, the next action is still in the hands of humans. If asked to take unmonitored action, generative AI could go astray. So, humans need to monitor the actions of generative AI. Doing so is a powerful tool for marketers – not dangerous."     

The Optimove results underscore the question facing marketers, "how do we accelerate the use of AI in a responsible way?" At risk is the possibility of AI going awry.

At the forefront is, of course, ChatGPT. In their first blog about ChatGPT, OpenAI described it this way: "We've trained a model called ChatGPT which interacts in a conversational way. The dialogue format makes it possible for ChatGPT to answer follow-up questions, admit its mistakes, challenge incorrect premises, and reject inappropriate requests."

Admitting mistakes and rejecting inappropriate requests is a quantum leap forward for tech teams using AI. Compare this with Microsoft's conversational bot, Tay, introduced in 2016. It was designed to engage people in dialogue while emulating the style and slang of a teenage girl. Within a day of its release, Tay tweeted more than 95,000 times, many of which were abusive and offensive.

Tay had a fundamental problem: It was designed to learn about language through interactions with people. Tay was shut down less than 24 hours after its release.

Seven years later, we are smarter, and so is AI. ChatGPT, as an example, is intelligent and sophisticated. Used properly, marketers can use AI to move to the new era of personalization in marketing without alienating customers.

Leading marketers are driving marketing actions guided by intelligence from the consumer. They start marketing activities from intelligence derived from a customer data platform (CDP). They use that intelligence to drive and guide marketing actions with a seamlessly integrated multichannel marketing hub (MMH).

Yakuel added, "Marketers we partner with use AI to optimize marketing campaigns. At the end of the day, the marketer is in charge. They build out experiences for customers, analyze data, and design experiments. Asking the right strategic questions still requires humans. But AI can save time, simplify things, or boost performance. For example, it can help determine the best communication a customer should get or provide insights by quickly analyzing vast data sets. But humans must measure, analyze, and monitor AI recommendations to ensure their marketing programs engage the customer." 

The survey also revealed that 43% think AI would replace some marketing team members. It is helping marketing teams with some rote actions, like writing email options. But it is still in progress with human decision-making.

Yakuel concluded, "AI should not replace the marketer – it should enhance the marketer. AI is a technology that helps marketing productivity by suggesting and creating marketing options, so humans make better decisions. It is humans who choose what to execute."

Guided by humans, AI is being implemented responsibly to help marketers create deeper connections with their customers.

Strategic, Results-Oriented HR Leader to Drive Global Growth and People-First Culture

Integrate, the leader in B2B Precision Demand Marketing (PDM), today announced the appointment of Christy Dinges as Chief People Officer. Dinges brings over 30 years of HR leadership across public and private companies, multi-site and dispersed environments in private equity, software, consumer brand, retail and manufacturing. Dinges most recently served as EVP, Global People and Culture at Perforce Software, where she was responsible for all Human Capital Strategy and Operational Execution including Talent Management, Organizational Design, M&A Integration, Total Rewards and Operations, Communications, Culture and Employee Engagement.

“As a high-growth company that is continually evolving and innovating, we recognize the importance of investing in our culture and ensuring employees have the resources to succeed in both their professional and personal lives,” said Jeremy Bloom, co-founder and CEO of Integrate. “Christy has an established track record of developing best-in-class teams and thoughtful systems for rapidly growing businesses, and I’m excited to welcome her to the Integrate family and look forward to partnering with her on global growth initiatives.”

Prior to Perforce Software, Dinges held HR Leadership positions at Rogue Wave Software, Stella & Dot, Gap Inc., and Pottery Barn Brands. Dinges holds an MS in Human Resource Management from the Keller Graduate School of Management and as BS in Human Relations and Family Development from Arizona State University.

“Throughout my career, my passion has been in building the foundation and processes for global teams, brands, and cultures that enable a company to thrive and scale,” said Dinges. “I’m excited to join a company that is not only at an important juncture for growth, but also already committed to a people-first culture, thoughtful set of cultural pillars, and customer-centric values.”

Integrate’s cultural pillars include performance, innovation, happiness, trust, and radical candor. The company empowers its employees to drive performance by taking ownership over their roles. Integrate encourages employees to continue to innovate, be curious, step up to new challenges, listen for understanding, and solicit feedback.

Messangi Corporation, a leading provider of innovative communication solutions, proudly announces its recent achievement as a Badged WhatsApp Partner. This partnership status is granted to organizations that excel in providing exceptional communication services and meet stringent quality requirements set by Meta, the parent company of WhatsApp.

The Badged WhatsApp Partner program recognizes companies that have demonstrated excellence in active account management, daily conversation engagement, and quality service offerings. By achieving this status, Messangi Corporation reinforces its commitment to offering best-in-class communication solutions to its clients worldwide.

As part of this new partnership status, Messangi Corporation can now be found in the Meta Business Partner directory listing. This public recognition will make it easier for potential clients to discover the company's specialization and unique value proposition. Clients can visit the Meta Business Partner website to view the company's profile and learn more about the services offered.

"We are thrilled to have achieved the Badged WhatsApp Partner status, as it is a testament to our dedication to offering top-notch communication services to our clients," said Santiago Rojas, CEO of Messangi Corporation. "This accomplishment strengthens our position in the market and reinforces our promise to provide the best communication solutions available."

The Badged WhatsApp Partner status comes with numerous benefits, including increased trust and credibility in the eyes of clients and access to exclusive features, tools, and insights designed to enhance the customer communication experience. As a Badged Partner, Messangi Corporation will be able to offer its clients cutting-edge communication services that leverage the full potential of the WhatsApp platform.

The team at Messangi Corporation is excited to celebrate this milestone and looks forward to continuing its mission to provide exceptional communication solutions that drive business success.

Content Graph service extends the capabilities of Optimizely's best-in-class CMS by enabling flexible content delivery across channels and applications

Optimizely, the leading digital experience platform (DXP) provider, today introduces Content Graph: an all-new service that developers can use to search and deliver content anywhere. This update enhances Optimizely Content Management System (CMS), making it possible to easily repurpose content, provide highly customized search experiences, and create compelling content blocks – ultimately enabling more dynamic content experiences.

Content Graph is powered by GraphQL, a query language for APIs known for its powerful yet simple form of data fetching. It serves as an on-demand content library that provides a more streamlined way to access content, enabling the seamless delivery of content across multiple platforms, channels, and devices. Content Graph extends GraphQL to offer powerful search and full text indexing, blazing fast speeds served from the CDNs, and a universal API that will layer into all Optimizely products beyond just the CMS.

"Optimizely is unique in that we deliver a composable CMS that can be configured around organizational-specific needs," said Rupali Jain, Chief Product Officer Optimizely. "While many customers – particularly those whose dominant digital channel remains their website – only need a traditional CMS, larger, more digitally mature companies that run many different digital channels have an increasing need for more diverse experiences. Our approach offers the best of both worlds, as customers can leverage the benefits within a user-friendly interface of traditional CMS while enabling the flexibility and efficiency of headless."

Both traditional and headless CMS offer distinct advantages. A traditional CMS offers an intuitive interface, ensuring ease of use for marketers; however, it may pose challenges when it comes to repurposing content across channels. On the other hand, a headless CMS addresses this issue but lacks a marketer-friendly interface, which means that it can create dependencies on developers, resulting in potential inefficiencies and slower time-to-market. With Optimizely, customers no longer have to choose – they can use the CMS in a headless or traditional fashion, or even a combination of the two, if they're looking for optionality.

"We've always had a strong headless component to our product, but Content Graph embraces a known standard," said Deane Barker, Global Director of Content Management at Optimizely. "Content Graph has great implications for MarTech interoperability and it lets us play well with others, when our customers want to compose their own MarTech stack."

Event management platform Planned announces today the release of the first AI-sourcing tool for corporate event planners. This launch marks Planned's ambition to leverage this game-changing tech to make event planning much faster, less stressful, and a little more fun.

Planned, the all-in-one event management platform for corporate events, has announced the launch of its AI-powered sourcing tool, released on June 12, 2023. Integrated with a global marketplace of 230,000 venues, caterers, entertainers and more, the new sourcing tool leverages ChatGPT to automatically collect suppliers' quotes for event planners.

Easily the most time-intensive part of planning events, sourcing is now transformed into something planners can look forward to. Going forward, Planned’s users get to skip the follow-ups and back-and-forth, letting them focus on ideation and price negotiation. For beta users, the tool is already cutting the planning time in half, generating considerable savings in the process.

THE EFFORTLESS EVENT BRIEF
To begin, event planners submit their event brief in the platform. They can either fill out a form, paste an existing description of the event, or converse with their personal account manager to explain what they want. From there, the AI tool identifies the relevant information and inputs everything into a standardized event brief.

The event planner can quickly fill out any missing information, the way you do when completing an auto-filled address for an order. This is one of the ways the tool saves planners substantial time.

AUTOMATIC QUOTE BUILDER
For each service needed, the tool identifies the best suppliers from Planned’s marketplace and automatically sends the standardized event brief.

With the help of generative AI, the tool automatically answers suppliers’ questions until they’re ready to submit a quote. This ensures that planners receive at least 3 quotes for each individual event need, fast, with no manual follow-ups.

From there, they can compare their options using Planned’s quote comparison tool to negotiate the best prices.

While most are already familiar with AI writing and content creation, Planned’s AI sourcing tool takes the technology a step further for event planners. Now, they can leverage AI to address a key pain point in the planning process and save a significant amount of time.

WHAT'S NEXT?
Planned's overarching goal is to save clients time and money while bringing people together for incredible events. That’s why we are focused on augmenting the capabilities of the platform with AI, in the near future and in years to come.

“We’ve been dedicated to streamlining the process for event planners since day one, and generative AI is allowing us to take that to the next level. With such great success already, we’re excited to see what this tool enables event planners to accomplish, while reducing their effort and saving time,” said Gabriella Hachem, Head of Product at Planned.

“With a constant pain point in planning being waiting on supplier responses, this AI-powered sourcing tool will revolutionize the way planners are able to optimize supplier outreach and communication. An intentional implementation of AI to the Planned platform, we will continue to develop our product with this game-changing tech to make event planning less stressful, and a little more fun.”

Bitstrapped today announced an expansion of its longstanding relationship with Google Cloud to drive digital innovation and accelerate the adoption of advanced Generative AI technologies for enterprises across industries. Bitstrapped will pair several years of focused expertise and experience in AI and Machine Learning consulting, with Google Cloud's impressive GenAI product offerings, in order to help businesses solve previously unsolvable challenges and offer next generation experiences.

"Generative AI can create new opportunities and deliver significant value for organizations across industries," said Jim Anderson, Vice President, NA Partner Ecosystem & Channels at Google Cloud. "Bitstrapped's investments in expertise and delivery capacity will help drive transformation forward by bringing generative AI to customers and helping them improve their business, swiftly and efficiently."

Bitstrapped's GenAI solution offerings will leverage Google Cloud's new Generative AI suite, which includes Generative AI Studio, Gen App Builder, the PaLM Foundation Model, and Vertex AI Model Garden. This suite of tools provides a range of first-party, third-party, and open-source GenAI models which enable customers in diverse industries to meet their unique needs and accelerate their ability to apply Generative AI to their business.

Bitstrapped is primed to help customers adopt these new technologies — through identification of strategic use cases and solution implementation. As part of this commitment, Bitstrapped will offer pre-designed solutions tailored to the unique needs of retail, finance, and healthcare industries. These solutions will help reduce time-to-market and drive immediate efficiencies and transform experiences on both the operational and product side of businesses. To help onboard customers who are new to and curious about GenAI, Bitstrapped offers two workshop variations that help to accelerate team learning, discovery of Generative AI use cases relevant to a given business, and demonstration of how to integrate this technology.

"We could not be more excited to support Google Cloud and their customers, to drive business impact with Google Cloud's Generative AI technology. This technology will be truly transformative for the digital experience and presents many business efficiencies. There is no shortage of interest," said Wes Wright, Director, Strategy and Business Development, at Bitstrapped. "With our combined expertise in Data and the Generative AI capabilities offered by Google Cloud, we are well-positioned to deliver meaningful, real-world value to our clients with an emphasis on ensuring the use of data remains secure and responsible."

Hexagon's platforms will integrate with NVIDIA Omniverse to enable businesses to become software-defined and realise the enormous potential of industrial automation

Hexagon AB, the global leader in digital reality solutions combining sensor, software and autonomous solutions technologies, announced a collaboration with NVIDIA to enable industrial digital twin solutions that unite reality capture, manufacturing twins, AI, simulation and visualisation to deliver real-time comparison to real-world models.

The collaboration will connect industry-leading technologies from Hexagon and NVIDIA to enable seamless, multi-user workflows through a unified view for factory planning and design, as well as process quality optimisation and operations.

As part of the collaboration, Hexagon's HxDR reality capture platform and Nexus manufacturing platform will be connected to NVIDIA Omniverse, a platform for developing and operating industrial metaverse applications, based on the Universal Scene Description (USD) framework. The connected platforms provide complementary technologies that enable customers to advance manufacturing for digital factories and accelerate the power of digital twins for intelligent cities, construction and infrastructure.

"Our Hexagon innovation team has been working with NVIDIA to develop opportunities that unite reality capture, AI, simulation, data analysis and visualisation with seamless collaborative planning platforms," said Paolo Guglielmini, President and CEO, Hexagon. "With NVIDIA technologies and Hexagon's Smart Digital Realities, our solutions will deliver real-time comparisons of real- and virtual-world models."

Through real-time data capture and analyses, Hexagon's Smart Digital Realities™ transform digital twins to provide customers with a 360-degree picture of the real world that helps improve productivity, quality, safety and profitability when used with simulated solutions. 

"Every industry is racing to digitalise their physical processes for the next wave of advanced automation," said Rev Lebaredian, Vice President of Omniverse and simulation technology at NVIDIA. "In collaboration with Hexagon, we'll bridge the gap between the real and virtual worlds — a prerequisite for building digital twins — allowing us to train robots in virtual worlds and bring autonomy to everything that moves."

Appointment of Glenda Kirby as chief customer officer and the promotion of Abhi Anantharaman to chief technology officer demonstrates focus on customer experience and technology innovation

Leading communications experience software company Poppulo announced the expansion of its executive leadership team by appointing Glenda Kirby as chief customer officer (CCO) and promoting Abhi Anantharaman to chief technology officer (CTO).

As Poppulo's new CCO, Glenda will support the company's 4,500+ enterprise customers by developing and implementing customer-centric strategies, driving growth through exceptional customer experiences, and ensuring long-term client satisfaction through meaningful engagement.

With over 20 years of technology experience, Glenda brings a wealth of knowledge and expertise to Poppulo and a proven track record of transforming customer experiences, creating high-performing teams, and championing diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. Most recently, Glenda served as Indeed's vice president of client success for EMEA, SEA, India, Australia, and New Zealand. Previous to that, Glenda led a world-class customer success team at LinkedIn.

"We are thrilled to welcome Glenda to our executive leadership team," said David Levin, CEO, Poppulo. "The strategic needs of our customers are more important than ever, and Glenda's guidance will help us deliver unparalleled experiences that lead to long-lasting relationships. Glenda's experience driving customer success and leading high-performing teams will be instrumental in delivering our customer-centric approach."

As Poppulo's newly appointed CTO, Abhi will drive the company's technology strategy, delivering the product roadmap and innovation. With a deep understanding of AI and Poppulo's platform, Abhi will play an integral role in maintaining and enhancing Poppulo's position as a leader in the communications experience category.

Abhi brings more than 20 years of software engineering experience to the role. Most recently, Abhi served as Poppulo's senior vice president, head of engineering, where he was responsible for product development, engineering, architecture, AI, research, data science, and more. Previously, Abhi held software development and engineering leadership roles at Amazon and Morgan Stanley.

"Abhi has consistently demonstrated an exceptional ability to leverage technology to drive business success," said David Levin, CEO, Poppulo. "We are pleased to add him to our executive leadership team as we continue to leverage new technologies to enhance our product offerings and strengthen our competitive edge in the market. Abhi's deep understanding of Poppulo will help make this a seamless transition to this crucial role for our organization."

In addition to Poppulo's executive appointments, the company will hold its annual Engage conference on June 15, 2023. This virtual conference is designed to inspire creativity and provide workplace communicators with the strategies needed to achieve more. The event will bring together thought leaders and customers for high-level discussions about the state of employee communications.