From Insight to Impact: 4 Inspiring Ways AI Can Redefine Experiences

We are now nearly 3 years into the transformational effect AI has had on our lives, both personal and professional. In that time, we’ve seen some industries evolve more than others, with few unaffected. Marketing agencies and partners working to create brand experiences are no exception, with huge shifts in both efficiency, speed to market, creative ideation and execution all affected by the rise of AI. Here at Proof Experiences, we’ve been very deliberate in our adoption of AI tools into both our workflow and in the work itself. Let’s look at four areas where AI has transformed how we work and improved the experiences we create for our brand partners. 

EXPERIENCE DESIGN

The art and strategy of creating compelling and effective experiences, or Experience Design, has benefitted enormously from our ability to pull and bundle AI tools. Whether it’s ChatGPT aiding us in refining our approach to pitching and RFPs (including creating our own custom GPTs), or Notebook LM, insightly.co or merlin AI to help pull the most relevant consumer insights and research to the surface from a sea of information, AI is playing an important role in adding efficiency and bench strength to our approach to Experience Design. For the past few months our teams have also been using AI assisted notetakers like Fathom AI to ensure details and action items from meetings are clearly documented and accurately reflect what was discussed. In crafting experiences that are meaningful and also drive business results, the better the information funneled into our upfront thinking, the stronger the creative and executional outcomes will be. These tools have demonstrated a marked improvement in how we arrive at a strategic approach to Experience Design and that we as a team can feel good about as we move from idea phase into a proposal for clients, and ultimately a real-life customer experience that achieves the goals we set. 

EXECUTION

The value is clear in how some very common AI tools can help us in upfront thinking & planning, but AI has also become a daily part of our executional workflow as well. Generative AI has transformed image, audio and video creation forever with innovations like Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, Runway, KREA and others. Even industry standard Adobe Creative Suite tools have AI baked in now, so there’s no escaping adoption of AI for even the most AI-phobic Creatives. Our team has embraced these tools, which is more than half the battle; openness to change and curiosity are invaluable in getting the most out of these tools and in driving innovation.  

There is a danger for people using generative tools to rely on what AI spits out and call it a day. This isn’t a smart way to work, it’s not what we do, and as far as we’re concerned, borders on unprofessional. AI images and video are products of the data the AI models were trained on, including copyright and rights-managed works by real humans. Using these assets in public-facing brand work on behalf of your clients could open them up to liability, and frankly, it’s lazy. It’s not much of an issue if used internally or in mood boards, but it’s poor form to pass of AI generated work as the product of an agency. We have very clear policies in place to ensure that unedited AI borne of a generative tool is only used to aid in us creating original work for our clients. Besides, AI is no replacement for the collective expertise, lived experience and creativity of our unique team and their ability to channel that unique “sauce” into bespoke work that resonates. That’s what our client partners are paying for, and that’s what we give them on every project. 

ENGAGEMENT & PERSONALIZATION

Once we’ve designed and developed an experiential program and it goes live, AI can help to create memorable and meaningful moments that just a few years ago would not have been possible. We’ve already launched activations and events with branded AI photobooths and AI video holograms to the delight of audiences thus creating takeaways and memories that stand out and are shareworthy. Within the conference & event space, AI platforms like Zenus and Premagic can help streamline and personalize registration, event comms and the attendee experience upon arrival.  

The work required to create and launch compelling experiences will always rely heavily on human expertise, but AI will continue to play an increasing role in how we show up, and in how meaningful that experience will be for our audiences. 

ANALYTICS & INSIGHTS

One of the truly gratifying aspects of doing experiential work in comparison to other channels is our ability to see results firsthand and in real time. How successful were we? How relevant was our activation with the target? How long did they stay, and did they talk about it and share on their socials? Real time & post event metrics can instantly give us a picture of success, whether we hit our KPIs, and help to validate our approach. This is one of the few channels a brand can leverage to truly understand the return on their spend and get a brand temperature check on the hearts &minds of their consumers. AI tools for tracking and quantifying event metrics have exploded onto the scene over the last year and can help in painting a clear and quantifiable picture of how well a program performed. Tools like Premagic and Sparkit.AI do a good job of aggregating and analyzing attendee data, making for much more robust post-event reporting. Clients love seeing this data and the resulting insights – and so do we – to learn from and refine future programs, as well as providing insights into understanding specific audience behaviours and needs. 

So yes, AI can be extremely helpful at improving all stages of creating effective experiences, including upfront planning, ideation, creative execution, audience engagement and post-event analysis. When we first faced the prospect of incorporating these tools into how we work and what we create, some wondered if AI would replace us and/or take our jobs. Those fears have mostly been set aside today in our collective understanding that again, AI is just another tool at our disposal to be used to help create incredible experiences. 

It’s much more likely at this point, 3 years in, that humans who have naturally incorporated AI into how they work will replace the humans who haven’t.