Reflections

It is time to reverse the approach. Let us start asking our prospects a fundamentally uncomfortable question: Are your data, processes, and people actually ready for AI solutions? In a recent poll, I asked this exact question across my network, offering four distinct perspectives: that you cannot deploy AI when you aren't ready; that it is the AI vendor's job to teach readiness; that data and processes will remain a mess so we cannot wait; and that asking this question is simply too risky because it may turn away customers.       Having vacillated between all four options at various times—depending on whether I was consulting for a vendor or a client—I know firsthand that there are no easy answers. That is precisely why I asked the question. What remains undeniable, however, is that AI requires robust, uncompromising preparedness. A single difference of just one letter in two data sets within a critical field, when replicated across thousands of records, can and does ...

  There is a lot of talk around the rise, nay - the rapid lightening rise of AI LLMs, Gen AI and more. The rhetoric around its being innovation-driven is to be heard a lot nowadays; there is no denying their innovative and inventive background reality. To deny that would be abject foolishness - but that does not mean it is the innovation that won the market. Innovation never wins markets - and that, in a world where absolutes cannot stated, is an absolute. The Prerequisites for Winning Markets A market victory requires purchasing customers, the right ecosystem, available finance and regulations, and a demonstrable value proposition - not one of these is negotiable. Therefore, let me take a quick look at the growth of the LLM phenomenon from the eye of a marketer   First of all - there is nothing like a product-led innovation - innovation is always market-led. Unless there was some history of innovations winning in the market, there would be fewer risk takers i...

Confidence vs. Arrogance: The Tone Problem in Modern Advertising - How many people in marketing actually stop and ask: what is the tone of my advertising? This seemingly small question is in reality lying at the core of advertising. Your advertising doesn't just communicate what your brand sells; it communicates what kind of brand you are. Furthermore, the consumer doesn't separate your brand from the behaviour of the people representing it in your advertising. And that is where the tone comes in – what you say, how you state it and in what context – all three are vital elements to brand communication       Take a step back from the job for a second. Put yourself in the audience's seat. You come across an ad whose central characters — through their expressions, their hand gestures, the whole setting — carry a feeling of being superior to anyone not using the product. Or the ad looks down on the competition, openly or through implication. Now ask: how does that reflect...

  In the midst of today's atmosphere when everyone is gung-ho about AI, few if any are speaking of the specifics of AI adoption and implementation inside companies. AI is not a magic wand—it needs to be fit into the organisation, its processes, and made a part of the life of the people who populate the organisation. It won't get its due just by hyperbole and constant focus on the promises of AI. Someone, and a lot of someones, has to get down to the hardcore practicalities of using it. Individual AI usage ≠ organisational AI implementation. A company can buy an excellent AI tool and still fail because it doesn't know how to integrate it into actual workflows.       People don't resist AI merely because they fear AI. They resist disruption to functioning processes. And therefore: the first implementation objective should not be transformation. It should be integration. That creates a two-stage implementation model: Stage 1: Fit AI into the existing process. S...