Robots Smiling Back

Not sure how much this buys you, but it makes sense where creating a android-like image to have emotion matching to group or task. We experimented only slightly with this in brand equity systems,  mostly keeping the image smiling.   It was suggested that we might include a quizzical or neutral face to indicate a more neutral position, but that was never integrated.

The Robot Smiled Back   By Columbia Engineering

Columbia Engineering researchers have spent five years developing an autonomous robot with a face that mimics the expressions of nearby humans.

Development of the EVA robot began with the construction of its physical mechanisms, engineered as a disembodied bust with a blue-colored face that can express basic, as well as subtler, emotions via artificial muscles.

The researchers used three-dimensional printing to manufacture complex components that could fit into EVA's human-sized skull without losing functionality. EVA employs deep learning artificial intelligence to "read," then imitate, expressions on nearby human faces, and learned to mimic faces by watching videos of itself.

The robot eventually became capable of reading human facial gestures from a camera, and of responding by mirroring those facial expressions.  .. "

Use of Digital Humans Expand

 Recall our own experiments in the space.   Interesting to see these expanding ...... would like to see more data on how effective these are in varying contexts.     Are humans naturally warmer in these contexts

Cookie, Candy Companies Among Those Fielding Digital Humans in Marketing

May 20, 2021 

Ruth the Cookie Coach is a “digital human” incorporating AI to help Nestle connect to customers around its Toll House brand, offering recipes and support. (Credit: Nestle)

By AI Trends Staff

Ruth the Cookie Coach is a digital human being introduced by the Toll House brand of Nestle Global to provide baking assistance on a 24-7 basis, using an avatar incorporating AI that exhibits a degree of emotional intelligence, according to the company.

Ruth is named after the creator of the Nestle Toll House original chocolate chip cookie, Ruth Wakefield. Customers have the option to see, speak, and chat with Ruth while following the dynamic, on-screen content, according to an account on the website of Soul Machines,

The avatar is the culmination of two years of effort between Soul Machines, which offers a Human OS platform with a Digital Brain, and Nestle. The effort leveraged data from customer questions through the call center, social channels, multiple recipes across the web, and with the expertise of Nestle Corporate Pastry Chef Meredith Tomason.

Founded in 2016 in Auckland, New Zealand, Soul Machines has raised $65 million to date, according to Crunchbase. The company was spun out of the University of Auckland by Mark Sagar, CEO and Greg Cross, chief business officer. The company combines AI researchers, neuroscientists, psychologists and artists to create lifelike, emotionally responsive digital humans it calls Digital Heroes, with personality and character.   ... ' 

Stanford Chatbot Study

Mostly obvious results, but useful characterizations.   We leveraged a 'concierge' model being most important, how do you get people to the right humans, the ones with the best answer in context?   I also recall also including a 'competence in context' rating we also measured.   We also tried to measure 'ongoing engagement', which was useful for future marketing connections

Do chatbots need to be more likable?    by Tom Ryan in Retailwire

A new Stanford university study finds people will more readily use a chatbot if they perceive it to be friendly and competent and less so if it projects overconfidence and arrogance. The challenge, the authors say, is finding the right balance.

Across three studies with 300 participants in the U.S., researchers tested reactions to AI-bots with the same underlying functionality but different descriptions.

Among the findings:

Low-competence descriptions (e.g., “this agent is like a toddler”) led to increases in perceived usability, intention to adopt and desire to cooperate relative to high-competence descriptions (e.g., “this agent is trained like a professional”). 

People are more likely to cooperate with and help an agent that projects higher warmth (e.g., “good-natured” or “sincere”).

Descriptions “are powerful,” helping drive user adoption and engagement with chatbots.

The authors suggested chatbots need to instill confidence that they are worthwhile to engage with. At the same time, acknowledging some errors may occur early on as the chatbot learns what users want will likely help people become more accepting of a chatbot’s mistakes. Pranav Khadpe, a co-author, told The Wall Street Journal, “You really want to manage the expectations you set before the first interaction.”  ... '

Seeking Conversational Writing

We  want our AIs and Bots to speak  and converse understandably.  Engaging with us and our colleagues and customers.   Efficiently providing answers and teaching too.   So what are the basics in making that happen?    Ultimately an important idea, which we struggled with when creating our speaking brand equities.   Here is a good start.

In the Alexa Blog.

4 Conversational Writing Tips That Will Transform Your Customer Interactions  By Lydia Roth.

Lydia is Digital Marketing Manager for Alexa. She has 4 years of experience in content marketing and demand generation, and is passionate about helping others grow their marketing know-how.

As more conversational AI assistants, such as Alexa and Siri, become mainstream, brands are looking for ways to make their own conversational experiences shine in the midst of the competition. Today’s rapidly shifting conversational marketing landscape has seen many technological advances, but some companies still fall into the trap of bland, robotic script writing that leaves many customers and prospects confused.

The good news is that rigid, robotic conversational experiences can be avoided by understanding key principles behind conversational writing. The key is to simply make your writing flow in a natural manner.

In this article, we’ll discuss four expert tips for conversational writing. We’ll focus on how these principles apply to creating conversational experiences, however these tips will provide value for anyone creating content. If that sounds like you, read on.   ... ' 

More Digital Humans Emerging

Recall Microsoft's patent of a particular person, just mentioned here.   Recall too the 'uncanny valley', and other disturbing side-effects.   And the magic can collapse quickly of the conversation is not convincing.   But I expect this kind of play being quite common in not too many years.    I have mentioned our own primitive attempts here to simulate conversational brand equity.    Learned much before the capabilities were ready.

Home/News/'Are You Real?'

'Are You Real?'   By Gregory Goth, Commissioned by CACM Staff, January 26, 2021

A Digital Employee developed by IPoft company Amelia.

The digital human is a chatbot partnered with a lifelike avatar to add a visually relatable element to interactions.

Tyler Beck, chief operating officer of Dothan, Ala.-based Five Star Credit Union, recently began evaluating artificial intelligence-based technologies for the $500-million institution serving portions of Alabama and Georgia. As his research progressed, he said he was contacted by a vendor's representative via LinkedIn.

"When I finally got to talk to the company, the lady wasn't on the call," Beck said, "and it hit me she wasn't real. She was artificial intelligence. And not only was the interaction I had with her powered through AI, her profile picture was created through AI. That did a lot to tell me it was on a whole different level than I realized it was at. The functionality and use cases for AI, especially in financial services, is going to be great."

Among the latest iterations of AI-based platforms is the "digital human," a chatbot partnered with a lifelike avatar intended to add a visually relatable element to an interaction. Though Beck and many other business executives are not quite ready to pull the trigger on installing virtual tellers or advisors quite yet, several vendors are quickly emerging. The ecosystem that will enable their technologies to assume prominence is still in its infancy, but is growing quickly.

Additionally, vendors are branding their products to be readily identified as more than disembodied chatbots. New York-based Amelia (formerly known as IPSoft), for example, has trademarked the phrase Digital Employee for its platform, while Austin, Texas-based UneeQ's World Wide Web domain name is digitalhumans.com.

"We are fairly bullish on it," said Jim Lundy, founder and CEO of technology consultancy Aragon Research. "We've seen them in action. We are still in the very early innings and I say that because a lot of the bots that have been deployed thus far are terrible, but for every nine that are bad or average, there is usually one that is amazing."   ... " 

Is There a Need Apologetic AI?

 Now this really struck me.   As a useful consideration.  When humans do tasks they do apologize, sometimes appropriately, sometimes not.  Makes them more human.   Recalled we talked about doing this for one of our pieces of 'brand equity' that talked to consumers.   It was way out there on the limb of the decision tree.    But the reaction was removed.  Was it because of one of our many talks with our lawyers?  Maybe, but I forget.   Sorry.   

Apologetic AI Is A Somewhat Sorry Trend, Especially For Autonomous Cars  

AI developers are beginning to enable self-driving cars to apologize to passengers after driving mishaps, causing Lance Eliot to consider the implications. 

By Lance Eliot, the AI Trends Insider   

That’s the latest trend for AI that directly interacts with people. The notion seems to be that if the AI has to deliver unfavorable news or appears to have made a potential mistake, it ought to be civil about the matter and emit an apology. AI developers are either opting to include the apology-generating capacity or they are being pressed by system designers and managers to infuse the “sorry about that” capability.   

This might seem at first glance as a marvelous addition to an AI system and would presumably be valuable to construct. Sorry to say that the AI being apologetic has both upsides and downsides. 

Let’s begin by considering a context that will help to reveal the pros and cons of AI-powered apologies. Imagine that you apply online for a car loan and the AI system determines that you are not worthy, as it were, and promptly turns you down. The belief is that this would be an ideal moment for the AI to offer you a “heartfelt” apology.   

It might go something like this: Dear loan applicant, it is with great sorrow that I must inform you of the unfortunate news that your request to borrow funds to buy a car is hereby denied. Please know that you are not alone in having been spurned and accept this apology for any discomfort that might arise from this outcome. Sincerely, the AI system that reluctantly rebuffed your request.   

Do you think this apology will make the person feel any better about the AI-powered decision?   ... "

Robots Patrolling the Uncanny Valley

The notion of the 'uncanny valley', further and more widely examined.  Typically the idea has been applied to android robotics, that is robots or even visualizations that look much like humans, but are not.  That gives many people an uneasiness in interaction.   It can be expanded today to animals.  For example the robot dogs by Boston Dynamics, while obviously not dogs,  give some people a 'feeling of' large, potentially dangerous dogs.   A positive if you want them for guarding or patrolling.

 In general we don't feel quite the same way with large humanoid robots, who could have the same capabilities, but are not wrapped in the same animal skin we have a fear reaction to.  In general too 'AI' as a concept does not generate this fear reaction.  Our own experimentation with characters like Mr Clean, showed you could add smiles and positive interaction to cancel the uncanny reaction. 

Further in TechExplore:  Why robots and artificial intelligence creep us out   by Amanda Bowman, Texas Tech University ... ' 

Automation Anywhere Digital Assistant lets humans and Bots Interact

Seems quite an advance, allowing Bots and Humans to effectively Interact.  But we did a similar thing when we allowed our Mr. Clean bots to talk to human experts, designated as a 'concierge' for key and often narrow expertise.  The details about how such interaction, based on context will evolve, will be important.   People change differently than bots over time.   Will be looking at this much more closely. 

Automation Anywhere launches AARI assistant to let humans and RPA bots interac   By Maria Deutscher in  SiliconAngle

Automation Anywhere Inc. today debuted AARI, a digital assistant that will enable workers to interact with the robotic process automation bots used by their company and give them instructions.  AARI was announced during Automation Anywhere’s virtual Innovation Day event. 

Robotic process automation, or RPA, is a fast-growing category of software products designed to streamline manual back-office tasks such as data entry. Automation Anywhere is one of the leading players in the segment. It received a $6.8 billion valuation last November after raising a $290 million round led by Salesforce Ventures. 

Automation Anywhere’s RPA platform works by observing how employees perform a given task inside a business application and capturing their workflow. Then, the platform turns the workflow into a bot, a software agent that can perform the same task without any human input. Employees are thereby freed up to focus on more important work, while the chore that was automated can be performed more efficiently and with a lower risk of errors.

AARI, the digital assistant announced today, takes the concept a step further. Companies now can create bots not only to automate repetitive manual tasks but also to give their employees the ability to interact with those bots and harness them to make their own work easier.

A video on Automation Anywhere’s website provides an overview of some of the ways AARI can be used. An employee could ask a bot if they have any urgent emails and receive a natural-language response detailing the number of time-sensitive messages in their inbox, as well as how soon they require a reply. Workers can also ask bots to perform more complex tasks, such as sending an invoice to the accounting department for approval or verifying a customer’s postal address.

On launch, AARI includes a text-based “bot-to-human” interface for interacting with bots. Automation Anywhere plans to add a voice interface in the future to provide a user experience similar to that offered by consumer digital assistants such as Alexa or Siri.      .... " 

Updating the Uncanny Valley

We did related work with advertising and marketing engagements, fascinating area of behavioral interaction. 

Experiments reveal why human-like robots elicit uncanny feelings

by Carol Clark, Emory University

Androids, or robots with human-like features, are often more appealing to people than those that resemble machines—but only up to a certain point. Many people experience an uneasy feeling in response to robots that are nearly lifelike, and yet somehow not quite "right." The feeling of affinity can plunge into one of repulsion as a robot's human likeness increases, a zone known as "the uncanny valley."

The journal Perception published new insights into the cognitive mechanisms underlying this phenomenon made by psychologists at Emory University.  ... '

Shensheng Wang et al. The Uncanny Valley Phenomenon and the Temporal Dynamics of Face Animacy Perception, Perception (2020). https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0301006620952611 

Your Brand can Have a Voice

Way back experimented with the Mr Clean Brand using talk, voice and chat..   But the tech was not there to deliver voice and value.   Much closer now.   Will it work effectively to engage, sell?

Give Your Brand A Voice With Alexa

Voice interfaces have changed how people interact with technology and services. Customers use Alexa billions of times each week through hundreds of millions of Alexa devices, whether that be in living rooms, kitchens, bedrooms, cars, or on the go. They use voice in place of mobile devices, and in situations where they used no device previously.

We spoke with Australian and New Zealand brands to share their experience about building for voice. They’re reaching and delighting customers through Alexa devices, and helping to redefine the way their customers interact with their brands.

Hear how brands like Coca-Cola Australia explore the role of voice in the path to purchase, Australia's leading energy company AGL have seen “incredible” Net Promoter Scores from customers using the AGL Skill, and FOX SPORTS reached new fans with their sports news skills. Learn how Nova Entertainment is using Alexa to change the way people listen to radio, and how Australia’s #1 food site, Taste.com.au is using voice to transform the kitchen with their recipe skill. ... " 

Google Using Humans in Duplex too

Reminds me again of our early use of what we called 'concierge' methods for chatbot implementations.  That is, using a combination of logic-AI-learning and humans to provide exactly the right solution, based on context and complexity.    And then evaluating each interaction for later adaptation.  Make lots of sense to tune results to the right resource.  Below also, new hints about what Google is doing with Duplex.

Google Duplex is Using Humans to Make Restaurant Reservations and Not Just AI In Duplex.ai

The New York Times reported yesterday that Google Duplex is using humans to make restaurant reservations, at least in some circumstances. Google Duplex was introduced into four locations in November 2018 and then expanded to 43 states in March 2019. The service can make phone calls on behalf of a user to perform tasks such as making restaurant reservations, setting hair salon appointments, and inquiring about hours of operation for retailers. Making a restaurant reservation is the first of these use cases to roll out broadly and previous reporting confirmed the use of the Google Duplex assistant, an AI-enabled bot, to book tables.

GOOGLE DIDN’T REVEAL THE USE OF HUMANS FOR DUPLEX
However, there was never an indication by Google that humans were in the loop for any of these activities. Google stunned many observers when it demonstrated the service in May 2018 to its I/O developer conference audience. The humanlike sound and speech patterns were better than people expected and the AI appeared to be agile enough to manage even non-linear conversation as long as the domain, such as appointment setting, was limited. Google’s goal is to take care of mundane tasks for users so, in theory, a user would not care whether it is a human or an AI-based bot executing the activity. Using a human is an expensive way to complete the task. The bigger story is that Google was not forthcoming about the state of the technology.   By Bret Kinsella     ... " 

Talking to Eliza in Private

As a player in AI since nearly its beginning, I knew the story of Eliza, and quoted its value and its cautions many times.   In talks, development and training.   In the chatbots we built to join our brand equity.   Today in IEEE Spectrum, a very good piece on Eliza. everyone should know at least this much of the story of this early chatbot.  Especially how it taught us unexpected things about interactions between humans and robots.  (below an intro, complete article at link)

Why People Demanded Privacy to Confide in the World’s First Chatbot
In 1966, the Eliza program couldn’t say much—but it was enough
By Oscar Schwartz

Computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum with his chatbot Eliza, running on a 36-bit IBM 7094 mainframe computer. .... 

Between 1964 and 1966, Joseph Weizenbaum, a German American computer scientist at MIT’s artificial intelligence lab, developed the first-ever chatbot [PDF].

While there were already some rudimentary digital language generators in existence—programs that could spit out somewhat coherent lines of text—Weizenbaum’s program was the first designed explicitly for interactions with humans. The user could type in some statement or set of statements in their normal language, press enter, and receive a response from the machine. As Weizenbaum explained, his program made “certain kinds of natural-language conversation between man and computer possible.”

He named the program Eliza after Eliza Doolittle, the working-class hero of George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion who learns how to talk with an upper-class accent. The new Eliza was written for the 36-bit IBM 7094, an early transistorized mainframe computer, in a programming language that Weizenbaum developed called MAD-SLIP.    .... " 

Personas in Customer Service

What we did in the 80s .... but used an existing advertising persona that was already well know,  Then used a AI driven chatbot system to drive their interaction.   We built up a customer persona starting from an implied advertising persona.   Can work, if its done well.  I have mentioned that here a number of times,  see details at the tag.

Using personas to drive better customer service    By Paul Selby in CutomerThink

It’s done. Your customer service team has completed a six-month project to develop, test, and deploy state-of-the-art technology that was billed as the answer to drastically reducing call volume while delivering higher-quality service to customers faster. The go-live day is promoted to customers via email and a countdown timer on the main customer service landing page adds to the build-up. Everyone is excited by the profound effect this will have on customer service.

Day one … and there’s no noticeable change. That’s okay, this is going to take some time. A week goes by, then a month. Six months in and there’s some change, but nowhere near expectations. What happened?

It’s easy to jump on a new technology trend in customer service. Competitors could be delivering more advanced forms of customer service. A research company might be offering bold predictions for the future of customer service. And the ever-present pressure of rising customer expectations might play a part. Any one of these influences is enough to embark on building new customer service engagement and solution channels. But if you go to all the work to offer these new options and they aren’t being used despite ample evidence it should succeed, there might be a simple reason for its failure: customer personas weren’t considered.

Defining personas
Product design created the concept of personas in the 1990’s. They act as one or more fictional stand-ins for prospects or customers. Well-crafted personas have a story or “biography” that represents their goals and desires as well as challenges and limitations. These traits help guide the development of products and services that would be interesting and useful to them, ensuring greater success of the product or service.

Personas are constructed by examining the existing customer base for its traits (supplementing that information with research through additional conversations and surveys) and by interviewing prospects when a new product or service for a new target market is being considered. Qualities include behavior patterns, skills, attitudes, and environmental details–profession, hobbies, lifestyle, etc.–that influence their behavior. Fun fictional personal details are often added to add depth and to make them more relatable (such as giving them names and a picture). ... 
"
Using personas in customer service
Persona usage in customer service doesn’t vary much from use in product design. Capturing some additional details unique to how particular personas might seek customer service are the key consideration.  .... " 

Assistants Answering All Your Questions?

Good research being done here.  Good points made,  no they can't, but I think that they can be helpful in certain focused skill areas.    We had lots of experience creating these for certain skill areas for CPG, like cleaning.     Think also about having several levels of assistant, like a concierge model.  Which can lead to humans as needed.   Key is having supporting data, and common journeys established and maintained.

Voice Assistants Cannot Answer All Your Questions
Collin Colburn, Analyst  in Forrester Blog
Arleen Chien, Researcher

Let’s be honest: there is a lot of hype around voice assistants (or as we call them at Forrester, Intelligent Agents (IAs)). Marketers, agencies, and vendors alike are all excited about this potential voice search future. But have you ever had a voice search experience with an IA like the cartoon below?

We wanted to conduct rigorous research to understand just how “intelligent” these intelligent agents were when it came to answering commercial voice searches. We decided to:

Come up with 180 commercial questions… We specifically wanted to ask the IAs questions that were commercially applicable like “What’s the best water-proof mascara?” or “Where can I get advice on my 401k?”.

…Across six industries… We chose questions within industries that are most relevant to Forrester’s client base: CPG and retail, travel and hospitality, financial services and insurance, tech and telecom, healthcare, and automotive

And ask our questions to each of the four major IAs. We chose the four most popular IAs to test to see what their “answers” to our voice search questions were: Amazon Alexa, Apple’s Siri, Google Assistant, and Microsoft’s Cortana. .... "

Robots Persuasive?

An area we looked at in some detail.    Depends in part what we mean by 'robot'.  A physical representation of a person  or a screen image image.

Researchers explore what makes robots 'persuasive' to humans
by University of Toronto

The jelly bean experiment: PhD candidate Shane Saunderson conducted an exploratory study of persuasion strategies to observe which method would most influence a human’s decision. Credit: Shane Saunderson

A new study by researchers at the University of Toronto's Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering explores how robots persuade and build trust with humans. The research could guide the development of artificial intelligence (AI) in the next generation of socially assistive robots to aid in health care and other fields.

"My research aims to uncover behaviours and approaches that cause robots to be more persuasive to people," says Shane Saunderson, a Ph.D. candidate in the department of mechanical and industrial engineering. "That can manifest as body language, or verbal strategies to approach people."  ... "

Immortalizing Ourselves as a Chatbot?

We are still far afield from this.  Will we be able someday to chat with long gone people?   Made me think of TheBrain, this blog, Brand equities like Mr Clean?  None close.   I returned to a long ago employer and found my technology explanatory entries in a wiki we created ....  but they had removed all the bylines! ... So shall it be unless you are name-famous enough to draw a crowd.   Anyway, they are researching the idea below.

Soon you can immortalize yourself as an A.I. chatbot. But should you?   In Digital Trends by @lukedormehl

Until technology allows us to upload our consciousness to a computer when our physical bodies start irreparably failing, death is going to remain a real thing. But what if you could continue communicating with loved ones — or, at least, a reasonable facsimile of them — long after they’ve shuffled off this mortal coil? It might sound like an episode of Black Mirror (it is!), but it’s also the basis for a recently announced research project being carried out at India’s Shree Devi Institute of Technology.  ... " 

Wal-Mart has a Toy Lab

In a completely different domain, we asked the same question:  How can we get consumers to feel they are very involved with us,  are our special customer?   Special testers of product and experience?   Here the more recent concept of the 'unboxing video' is being used.   Plus some aspects of humor and scripted interaction.   Nice idea.

Can online unboxing videos turn Walmart into ‘America’s Best Toy Shop?’
 This article was written jointly by Tom Ryan and Matthew Stern. In Retailwire,

Walmart this holiday introduced an online shop, The Walmart Toy Lab, that invites kids to become a “Walmart toy tester” and play with 20 top trending toys from their computer or tablet.

“Like stepping into an interactive unboxing video, The Walmart Toy Lab lets kids take on the role of an official Walmart Toy Tester,” wrote Walmart in a statement.

Unboxing and toy feature videos have shown to be a huge draw for toy-shopping kids. Earlier this year, Walmart partnered with pre-teen YouTube star Ryan of RyansToyReviews, who in 2016 made a whopping $11 million off his unboxing videos.

The Toy Lab rollout comes a few months after Walmart’s announcement that it was branding itself as “America’s Best Toy Shop” with expanded toy aisles and assortments in its stores, an improved toy demoing experience in-store and exclusive toy-related content online.

At the Walmart Toy Lab microsite, an interactive video first introduces the game’s host, Burt, who guides kids through the toy-testing steps. Using a “Funtroller,” kids select toys to test and can choose to take a closer look, try their main features and watch other children play with them. Kids can also click the “Don’t Push” button and see Burt enter a dream sequence, hang upside down or otherwise face an “unexpected surprise.”  ... "

Alchemy.Codes for eCommerce Experience

Brought to my attention.  Via Procter & Gamble   Alchemy.codes  Much more at the link.  Note the mention of the Olay Skin Advisor, which I have written about here.  Recall P&G had previously tried startup style initiatives with Tremor, which utilizes consumer networks for brand engagement and efficient marketing.  Also relates to the Mr Clean and stain advisor work based on chatbot style AI systems.  All discussed here.

About Alchmy.codes:  (excerpts)

Our aim is to build disruptive technologies and business models that give our partners an unfair competitive advantage in the marketplace.

TRANSACTIONAL LEARNING EXPERIMENTS (TLES)

Thoughtful experimentation is in our DNA. We help you gauge new business opportunities through rapid prototyping and consumer feedback. Get to experimentation phase in days instead of months.

DIRECT-TO-CONSUMER 3.0 (DTC)
From strategy to execution, we provide everything that your brand needs to create a rich eCommerce experience. But we don’t stop at delivery - your Alchemy team will then obsess over growing your online business through constant experimentation, user testing and in-market iterations.

Our tried-and-tested approach enables us to provide strategic direction, data-informed designs, and thoughtful execution.

The voice of the consumer — ensures feature prioritization, roadmap management, and product success through critical KPIs (Key Performance Indicators).

Featured Work:    Olay Skin Advisor
Redesigned for excellence and rebuilt for performance, the new skin advisor has redefined the standard for brand engagement. We’re calling it, the gold standard.

Alchemy is reinventing the way that P&G brands connect with and deliver value to consumers.... "   

 i

Does Your Brand Need a Specific Assistant Voice?

One more time, we looked at this very question in great detail a decade plus ago. With our  'Mr Clean' brand.  And decided yes, it needed a specific voice, a culture, attitude, a backstory ... and more.   Like a brand had then.   It also had a primary role as a question answering assistant.  But could its voice then break through as valuable marketing?  Does that still work in TV ads?  Its different in assistants like Alexa or Google Home.  See my 'Mr Clean' tag below for more.  Its now more of a historical example, but much was learned.

Do CPGs need their own voice for Alexa?   by Matthew Stern in Retailwire

In the internet age, the term “brand voice” has come to represent a company’s look, feel and attitude, but with the advent of voice-based commerce, CPG brands find they need a literal voice — one distinctive enough to separate them from the pack. 

The challenge of branding audio in a way that sticks out as clearly as attractive packaging on the shelf was one that came up at this year’s Voice Summit, reported GeoMarketing. In order to differentiate in the world of voice commerce, the article foresees CPG brands having to take  steps such as:

Creating an audio branding element that is consistent with other aspects of a product’s branding, like its colors and logo;
Having an owned voice that differs significantly from Alexa (which may be seen as the “default” personality of voice commerce) à la Geico’s current use of its iconic Gecko voice to introduce its 

Alexa skill;
Creating unique audio logos;
Using brand-appropriate regional dialects and accents  ...  "

Digital Persons Emerge Again

Recall our long look at using digital personas to represent brand equities, including integrating a chatbot to represent useful information to the consumer.   Our consumers reacted well to this, but the interest faded.  That  also include a personality and image that places her in the 'Uncanny Valley'. 

ANZ has birthed its first "digital person". Jamie, an AI invention styled as a 25-year-old New Zealand woman, started work on Tuesday morning.

Jamie's first job is to chat with customers on the 30 questions the bank gets asked most often by customers.  Though "she" is capable of learning, it's "moderated" learning, so customers trying to teach Jamie swear words, or bad habits, will fail.

But chatting with Jamie for a few minutes results in her dropping hints that there's something more to her than a series of rote answers.  Ask her about her weekend, and she may tell you she enjoys ice dance. ... "