AI, the Metaverse and 3D Billboards: the Tech These CMOs Are Most Excited About

You can add "Keeping on top of the rapidly changing tech space" to marketers’ to-do lists. It's an ongoing struggle for marketers: where to invest in tech experimentation when budgets are tight and getting tighter. Without that ability to experiment, brands can get left behind. Equally, too much time spent minting NFTs for an uninterested audience is a chronic waste we see too often. And while it's true that many CMOs have their sights set on generative AI, there's a lot more to it than standing up a chatbot. With that in mind, we asked several of Adweek’s 2023 Brand Genius honorees which tech they are directing most of their energy toward in 2024 and how they separate inflated expectations from the more meaningful and impactful strategies to drive revenue. Perhaps not surprisingly, many roads lead back to gen AI.Julia Goldin, chief marketing and product officer, the Lego Group We are using new technologies to find ways to bring our brand to life through different immersive touchpoints, allowing us to engage with and reach new audiences like never before. The worlds of both digital and physical play have long been co-existing and converging, and [real-time, 3D] creative tools such as Unreal Engine and digital spaces such as the metaverse, present incredibly exciting opportunities to evolve our marketing model in new and immersive ways. Unreal Engine is already helping us create marketing assets with dramatically improved performance and render speed, allowing us to transport content seamlessly from one platform and multiplying our marketing power in an incredible way. The world saw just a flavor of this with our 3D billboards for Lego DreamZzz in New York, London and Tokyo this year, and we have a lot more to come. The metaverse has the potential to transform marketing and how we engage with our audience as a brand. It allows brands to connect with audiences by combining imagination, innovation and engagement, moving beyond the boundaries of a conventional digital platform. The idea of transcending the traditional limits of marketing and bringing Lego bricks to life for customers in an entirely new and immersive way represents an exciting world of possibilities and a way for us to bring builders of all ages and passions closer to our brand.Ramon Jones, CMO, Nationwide Nationwide is testing generative AI’s learning models to drive efficiency across our business while accelerating the content generation process across our marketing organization. Our team is mindful of the potential ethical dilemmas using gen AI could create, recognizing the inherent potential for bias and errors. These challenges make human partnership in content creation a must. Generative AI should be viewed as another tool to help meet our evolving needs, not as something that will replace human creativity. Marketers not utilizing this capability will be at a disadvantage. Here Are the 2023 Adweek Brand Genius Honorees Vikrant Batra, global CMO, HP We believe technology works best when it augments human intelligence and ingenuity. In 2024, we will leverage AI (large language models, prompt engineering, natural language processing) to digitize and automate high value, high velocity, “last mile” marketing actions, such as translation, image and video generation, auto-generation of demand generation and demand capture campaign content, social media listening and engagement, chatbots for product discovery, localization of content and a whole lot more.Patricia Corsi, global chief marketing, digital and information officer, Bayer Consumer Health More than implementing, as we started on AI for some years now, I am interested in scaling it up and across to other functions. During the past four years areas like the supply chain have been completely disrupted. Using AI to support the reinvention of this area is complementary to the marketing AI revolution, as it all happens to the service of consumers. Using AI for efficiency only is a missed opportunity. I am extremely interested in continuing to learn the immense possibilities, implications and risks of generative artificial intelligence through pilots and use cases.Soyoung Kang, CMO at beauty brand eos As a leaner organization, we’re both thoughtful about where we invest and simultaneously highly reliant on technology to help our teams operate more efficiently and effectively. Like most marketers, of course, we’re keeping an eye on the future of generative AI and its applications, particularly for social media and content creation. But our near-term focus is on two immediate areas. First, driving direct and third-party ecommerce revenue growth with tools that enable faster, more seamless, data-driven conversion. Second, we’re investing in campaign and asset management tools for better collaboration internally. This story is part of the Power of Tech Marketing special feature.