In the current times, wherein AI and generative technologies are revolutionizing marketing, brands face the dual challenge of fostering innovation while maintaining authenticity and trust. Purnima Menon, Chief Marketing Officer at Marlabs, shares her insights on navigating this transformative landscape. From creating a culture of openness and collaboration to leveraging cutting-edge tools responsibly, she explores strategies for enhancing brand positioning, personalizing customer experiences, and ensuring data integrity. With Marlabs’ innovative approach to AI readiness and customer engagement, Purnima sheds light on how businesses can adapt to shifting consumer behaviors and drive impactful, sustainable marketing practices.
TAM: With rapid advancements in AI and generative technologies, how can companies prioritize and foster core innovation in marketing?
Purnima Menon: Marketing leaders need create a culture of openness and trust within their teams. With the rapid inflow of AI tools and platforms, leaders need to ready their teams to be able to engage with the tools and enhance their productivity. In addition, marketers need to communicate honestly about how these tools will change job roles and work with the teams to help elevate their learnings through corporate and technology trainings. Innovation takes time to fruition and in today’s world, it’s extremely important to have innovation flow upwards and downwards. It is important to realise that every single person in the organisation is capable of bringing innovative ideas. An open mind and collaborative culture are key.
TAM: As new age technologies are reshaping marketing, how can companies leverage these tools to enhance brand positioning and personalize customer experiences?
Purnima Menon: With rapid increase of AI based tools and platforms that are enticing Marketers today, it becomes very imperative to choose wisely. More often than not, platforms that are not industry grade have low threshold for data privacy and attribution. Marketers need to ensure the tools they use do not violate privacy and confidentiality of data and images.
Marketers need to choose industry grade tools and platforms to ensure their brand reputation is not tarnished. In today’s age where customers are sensitive about authenticity , brands need to communicate honestly and transparently. For instance if a campaign is created using AI generated content and images, Marketers need to disclose that. In today’s age where deep fakes can build or ruin reputation, Marketers need to tread v carefully and be honest in how they leverage AI and Gen AI tools to enhance customer connect. There is also an inherent need to ensure data integrity as any analytics run on faulty data will give misleading results and mitigate the effect of brilliant marketing campaigns as well as not deliver a consistent brand experience. Another key area that is becoming increasingly relevant for Marketers to enhance brand positioning is that of Responsible and Sustainable Marketing. While respecting privacy regulations regarding customer data, Marketers also need to ensure that their marketing practices are aligned with CSR and ESG initiatives of the company. Reducing waste, favorable working conditions, promoting charitable initiatives etc should be an integral part of the Marketing charter to elevate the brand and customer experience.
TAM: What strategies or digital capabilities are crucial for brands aiming to strengthen engagement in today’s AI-driven marketing landscape? What specific strategies or digital capabilities has Marlabs developed to engage more effectively with its audience?
Purnima Menon: Understanding customer behaviour and intent is a significant game changer for all organisations wanting to create a strong brand and maximise value creation. Our strategies are specific to process, people and technologies as we believe the human-cyber world has the strongest potential for creating amazing client experiences and delivering excellence in what we do.
At Marlabs, we have been very strategic in the way we engage with clients given the backbone AI and related technologies. For starters, in Marketing itself, we have identified every process and subprocess within marketing that has a potential to be AI- ready. Content, Data and Analytics, Customer Experience, Campaign Management etc are processes where the benefits of AI can be felt almost instantly. We have developed a scale that allows the rating of these processes across AI readiness. AI- driven marketing will become a huge game changer for the organisation and it is interesting to see how much more strategic Marketing can become in the coming years.
TAM: Capturing customer intelligence is key to understanding and responding to evolving consumer needs. Can you share how Marlabs collects and utilizes data to drive targeted and meaningful digital strategies?
Purnima Menon: We are bound by very strict NDAs and privacy contracts when it comes to our clients data. Our utmost priority is to safeguard and maintain data integrity at all costs. In fact our Data and IT teams are constantly working together to scour for data breaches or threats. Our strategy has been that of transparency and zero tolerance for non compliance. We have strict guidelines to protect privacy of data. The Marketing team works closely with these teams to ensure we are compliant with regulations and privacy laws. Marlabs is also extremely mindful of local privacy laws with respect to each of the regions we work with.
Marketing uses a mix of inbound and outbound strategies to engage meaningfully with prospect data. Heat maps and other parameters are closely looked at to see how prospects are engaging across our content and channels like website and social media..With these analytics we are able to better target our prospects as well as engage with relevant content and communication to ensure we remain relevant and top of mind.
TAM: With shifting consumer behaviours, how can brands maintain a high digital quotient to drive more personalized and impactful interactions? How’s Marlabs helping its customers do that?
Purnima Menon: The balance between hyper-personalisation and data privacy will be delicate for marketers to navigate. As privacy laws become more stringent, it will have an impact on how digital platforms and tools are collecting and monetising data. In this scenario Marketers need to drive authentic communication by acknowledging the support of AI tools across content, visualisation, communication channels. Marketers need to look at AI-readiness of Marketing in a holistic fashion and avoid plugging in tools and platforms that are not industry grade. Most often the plethora of new tools etc can ruin your brand’s reputation by not conforming to industry standards. Marketers need to be able to look at data in real time to be able to respond quickly and effectively. And that often means having a strong roadmap to actualising data integrity and becoming AI-ready.
At Marlabs we look at holistic solutions for our clients to navigate the digital maze. We start not by proposing a solution outright, but by having high touch workshops across client leadership and execution teams to understand what the end goal is. User journeys, journey mapping and A/B user testing etc. Our scope with clients deals with overseeing their data strategies, data modernization , and enabling clients become AI-ready.
