Real Time Actionable Insights For Personalisation In the Age of AI: ETBWS 2025
personalised campaigns
at scale. However, the volume of data generated in recent years has grown at an exponential rate. Meanwhile, marketing organisations have remained the same size or, in some cases, have even shrunk due to economic pressures. Marketers are quickly realising that, for personalisation to become the cornerstone of their customer strategies, they must implement AI-driven automation.
At the seventh edition of the
ET Brand World Summit 2025
, a panel of marketing leaders gathered to reflect on a defining imperative of modern brand building: personalisation in an AI-driven world.
The session, titled 'Personalisation in the Age of AI: Real-Time Actionable Insights 2.0', featured insights from Shiv Kumar, chief data and analytics officer, L'Oréal India; Nishant Kedia, CMO, Rebel Foods; Maneesh Mittal, senior vice president, Reliance Brands; Kavita Jagtiani, CMO, L&T Finance; and Gagandeep Gadri, EVP and global managing director, frog, part of Capgemini Invent. The discussion was chaired by Devesh Gupta, content lead for product and community, ETBrandEquity.
The focus in marketing has shifted from creativity as a siloed domain to creativity as a democratised capability, unlocked by AI but driven by the quality of human input.
'The system is available to everyone, but the real art lies in how you use it,' stated Kumar. 'Prompting is not just science, it's creativity. With AI in our hands, ideation becomes faster, but it's the human touch that keeps communication meaningful, trustworthy, and truly personalised.'
Personalisation is not merely a function of data, it is about making people feel genuinely delighted. At Rebel Foods, this principle came alive through a Diwali campaign featuring Saif Ali Khan delivering AI-powered, name-personalised greetings.
'Today, content must create its own distribution, and the only way to do that is by making someone feel personally delighted,' shared Kedia. 'When AI helps you send a greeting from Saif Ali Khan that says your name, that's not just personalisation, that's
emotional branding
at scale.'
Personalisation is not a new phenomenon. It is rooted in the timeless power of human interaction, something AI should complement rather than attempt to replace.
'Personalisation didn't begin with AI, it began decades ago with your neighbourhood shopkeeper who knew your name,' said Mittal. 'The goal today is the same: replicate human warmth in digital experiences. Technology can assist, but the heart of marketing is still human connection.'
Delivering real-time personalisation at scale requires a complete rethink not just of tools, but of teams, skills, and structures.
'The future of marketing isn't linear; it's circular, adaptive, and deeply human,' stated Gadri. 'To scale personalisation, brands must blend AI with creativity, behavioural science, and neurodiverse thinking. The question isn't just what AI can do, but how it reshapes our teams and their skills.'
At the intersection of technology and social impact, AI is being used not only to personalise experiences but also to expand financial inclusion, particularly for underserved communities in rural India.
'With AI, we're personalising not just communication but inclusion,' said Jagtiani. 'From using satellite images to assess rural housing to analysing digital footprints to extend credit, we're making finance contextual, fair, and accessible, because personalisation must empower, not exclude.'
While AI provides the infrastructure, personalisation remains a deeply human craft. From advanced analytics to heartfelt storytelling, from rural loans to luxury retail, today's brands must balance intelligence with empathy, and scale with soul. In an era where algorithms are everywhere, what truly sets a brand apart is how human it chooses to remain.
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