Personalized Marketing using AI in South Africa
Context
Consumers increasingly spend most of their time on social platforms – interacting and engaging with each other and brands. However, the only mechanism brands had to reach their consumers was via sponsored/promoted posts. But the true power of social media lies in conversations. Christopher bridges the gap by detecting relevant consumer moments and communicate their brand messages in a relevant manner which adds value to their consumers on social media.
Solution
Christopher is an artificial intelligence software that enables brands to engage in relevant consumer conversations in real-time, when it is relevant, to drive engagements, action and awareness. This is achieved through sophisticated data-profiling and hyper-personalized responses to organic conversations taking place on social media.
Impact
As mentioned by the managing director of Christopher Africa, in one of the interviews, Instead of “push marketing”, where brands advertise based on their own marketing schedule without the consumer’s input, we created a mechanism of “pull advertising” where the consumer creates the opportunity for the brand to advertise, i.e. where the brand advertises only when it is most convenient and relevant for the consumer; not the other way around. Additionally, AI adoption through Christopher Africa helped decrease fake news about COVID-19 in Gauteng with no resulting rise in panic and fake news. While it’s a relatively small sample size, these results ought to be hugely promising for government communicators nationwide.