Latest news with #Persado
Time of India
4 days ago
- Business
- Time of India
The 5% rule: What can you do that AI still can't?
By Abhik Choudhury This anxiety around AI taking our jobs isn't novel, it's just wearing shinier shoes this time. We've been here before when steam engines replaced horse carts, when ATMs replaced bank tellers, when Excel wiped out half of accounting. This time, though, it's not the blue collars trying to make ends meet but the white collar elite looking nervously over their ergonomic chairs. Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke recently said that the company has paused hiring for roles where AI can already outperform humans, adding, "You must prove that what you do cannot be done better by AI." The industrial revolution replaced muscle. The AI revolution is replacing method, and maybe even meaning. Machines haven't made humans irrelevant, they've forced us to evolve. And that's what's happening again. According to the World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report 2025, on one hand skills like creative thinking are one of the fastest growing while roles like graphic designers are one of the fastest declining. So to reiterate a much needed distinction, no, human intelligence isn't becoming irrelevant, it's just being upgraded. THE 5% RULE: EVOLVE OR BE EXCEPTIONAL Here's the uncomfortable truth: If you're not evolving, you need to be in the top 5% to survive. Everyone else? Relearn. Rethink. Rewire. Everything. AI doesn't care about your job title. And there is now enough research to confirm neither does your customer. They want output, fast . They want value, consistent . You may love craft, but the customer loves convenience. Be honest: Would you buy a smartphone just because one ad was made by Gemini and the other by Gitanjali? Back in 2019 itself, JP Morgan Chase tested AI written copy via Persado and saw a 450% spike in click-through rates. The tool analyzed millions of phrases to pick what would resonate emotionally with readers. Good three years ago WPP partnered with NVIDIA to build a generative AI-Enabled content engine trained in layout, typography and brand personality for their advertising briefs exclusively for art directors. These examples are from years ago. Today, the tools are leaner, faster, and trained on every brand brief since Mad Men aired. Recently a global agency head told me how pre pandemic they usually needed an average of 12 people before a campaign went live, now the number is already at 4. Just ask around, in the last two years how many full time, mid to senior level hires have happened in the industry and how many senior creative directors of the biggest names are working as freelance consultants now. And this is not to say creative legends are obsolete. If you're Stephen King, Gulzar, or Nolan, you'll always be in demand. But if your name isn't also your brand? You're not fighting AI. You're fighting other humans using AI better than you. So don't go to a gun fight with a sword. Especially when we are just figuring out the expanse of AI agents while almost fully liberated, self deciding Agentic AI's are on standby waiting to go live any day now. In the end, revenue never lies, and it's never sentimental. Really unfortunate but we've built a capitalist system that is supposed to reward results, not romance. So what are the next steps: Identify the 10% of your role that relies on deep human insight, nuanced emotion, or cultural fluency. Double your last 3 projects. What part was remarkable and not replicable?Study your audience more than your on your personal brand moat, become so synonymous with a niche that you are good enough to train the software with your experience. STOP BEING ROMANTIC. START BEING REFLECTIVE. Let's take journalism. If you're not using AI to scan earnings calls, summarize government reports, or verify PR spin in real time you're not post AI ready. According to UKG's 2023 Survey across 10 countries, 78% of CSuite expect automation in workflows by 2028. Earlier this year, Australia's CADA found itself at the center of backlash when it was revealed that their popular 11am–3pm radio show, 'Workdays with Thy,' was hosted entirely by AI, a synthetic face and Eleven Labs powered voice that went unnoticed for six months. It's still on air. And it's not just reporting. At McKinsey, an AI assistant named Lilli released in 2023 is trained on 100 years of internal consulting work. It scans over 100,000 documents and as per their own statement is used by more than 70% of its 45,000 consultants who use it weekly to surface insights and accelerate analysis. What did junior analysts once do in weeks, Lilli does in minutes. Now the partner can just ask Lilli: 'Why did Pepsi Co lose 10K dealers in March 2013?' And they will instantly get references, charts, and insights to draft it into a presentation or proposal. No digging through dead PDFs, old mail trails & 20 TB hard drives over a month. And here's the kicker: prompt performance is now quietly being used to evaluate junior consultants. Not just in consulting, but across industries. The $20 vs $2000 productivity debate is already playing out in every CFO's head. Now let's take a look at a completely different department: HR. IBM's AI models now claim 95% accuracy in flagging which employees are likely to quit using patterns in tenure, overtime, and promotion history. They saved $300 million by retaining talent before attrition struck. Tools like Humanyze now scan real-time sentiment on Slack, Teams, and some even deep dive into internal email analysis. They don't just predict disengagement, they offer action plans. 'This person is likely to quit in the next 60 days. Please take the following steps to retain.' That's not science fiction. That's Tuesday. The future HR won't just sense attrition, it'll trigger work flows. 'Change the project, schedule a 1:1, lower the workload.' So if the algorithm can sense burnout and enable preemptive retention steps before your boss can, maybe it's time to stop pretending it's still 2018. So what are the next steps: Learn prompt engineering. It's today's a macro course in understanding the basics of building & working with AI your own AI stack for daily work. Think of it as your second a weekly ritual: 'How did AI save me 7 hours this week and how can I use that time more effectively now?' THE EPILOGUE: SURPRISE THE ALGORITHM AI can now write poetry, generate illustrations, mimic brand voices, and compose video scripts in seconds. What it can't do is be weird. Or uncomfortable. Or irrational. Or beautiful in a way that makes no statistical sense. AI is trained on what is expected to be good. But it cannot carry the weight of a lullaby or the chaos of a forgotten love. In a world engineered for sameness, your rebellion is your art. Break the expected patterns till you glow as the glitch. And ask yourself before your next project, pitch, or personal brand tweak: 'Is this surprising the algorithm?' Want to thrive? Be the one AI can't clone (yet) because your voice, your vision, or your thinking still surprises the algorithm. And that's the t-shirt I would have gifted to my students entering the creative field: Surprise the algorithm. Because that, kind reader, is your 5%. The age of purely human output is gone. What we're in now is the hybrid era where the best of us will look increasingly like Iron Man, not Superman. Tech augmented, emotionally intelligent, and dangerously efficient. In ten years, this article might not just be translated, it could be psychographically rewritten for each reader. Same ideas, but delivered in the tone, lingo, and rhythm your brain likes best. Written by me? Maybe. Written by an AI trained on my brain? Almost certainly. (The author is chief strategist and founder of Salt and Paper Consulting. Views expressed are personal.)
Business Insider
6 days ago
- Business
- Business Insider
Ad giant Publicis is shopping for AI companies. Here are 6 targets industry insiders think could be on its wish list.
French advertising giant Publicis Groupe is flying high. Now, it plans to go shopping. Last week, Publicis CEO Arthur Sadoun said his company was "doubling down" on its AI strategy by "further accelerating on bolt-on acquisitions." Bolt-on acquisitions refer to targeted purchases that reinforce its existing companies and operations, rather than transformative deals that would shift Publicis into an entirely new area of business. Publicis, the advertising industry's top performer by revenue, has already spent around 600 million euros, around $705 million, on acquisitions this year, and has set aside a further 300 million euros for M&A in the second half. Across Madison Avenue, companies are grappling with how to harness AI to offer new services to clients while trying to prevent the tech from upending their existing businesses. Publicis said in 2024 it intended to invest 300 million euros over the following three years in its AI strategy, which centers on an internal platform called Core AI. What will it buy? Tristan Rice, head of the European M&A practice at advisory firm SI Partners, said Publicis would likely make some early, speculative bets on emerging tech. That would help it avoid an intense bidding war once an acquisition target scales up. The pitch to startup founders, Rice said, is that Publicis' client base can help fuel the growth of their business. The agency group would also likely put a long earn-out on the table with the aim of enabling the founders to realize more value from the sale over time, he said. Business Insider spoke with five advertising and M&A insiders, who shared their predictions on what Publicis could target. Here were a few themes: AI startups with expertise in creating agents to handle the workflow of marketing campaigns Companies that use AI to transform big data into useful analysis Other technologies that improve the efficiency and effectiveness of agency disciplines, such as content production or strategy They also named some particular marketing-focused AI startups they think could be on Publicis' radar. (This doesn't mean that Publicis is in conversations with these startups.) A Publicis spokesperson declined to comment. AI-powered ads could come from Persado or Superscale AI Brands ranging from Toys "R" Us and Coca-Cola to Kalshi have used AI to create TV ads, with mixed consumer responses. But generative AI tech has been constantly improving, helping to reduce the time and costs involved in creating campaigns. Karsten Weide, principal and chief analyst of W Media Research, said Persado might interest Publicis. The company automates the production of marketing messaging based on emotional triggers and other data. Founded in New York in 2012, Persado has raised $86 million in funding to date. Weide said Persado's tech could be combined with Publicis' Epsilon data arm to help it create more personalized and persuasive marketing messaging. Persado president Assaf Baciu said that while advertising companies would be wise to seek out AI solutions as a point of differentiation, the company has expanded its capabilities beyond the advertising sector into areas such as financial services. Elsewhere, Superscale AI could be an interesting fit for Publicis, said Andrew Buckman, chief growth officer of the adtech company Azerion. The startup pitches itself as a kind of "AI CMO." It allows brands to enter the URL for the product they want to sell and then can almost instantly generate a campaign for TikTok or Instagram using a library of realistic AI-generated actors and characters. Superscale raised a $5 million pre-seed funding round in June, led by the VC firm Creandum. Superscale cofounder Patrick Haede said that while the company was not considering being acquired, he understood why it might be identified as a potential target. "AI capabilities will fundamentally transform advertising in every possible way, especially in terms of content generation, in which we are building a leading platform," Haede said. AI agents built by Newton Research or Akkio could be of interest OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has said that 2025 will be the year that AI agents"join" the workforce, as companies embrace the trend. AI agents generally refer to virtual assistants that can complete tasks autonomously. Startups are betting that AI agents will be big in the advertising space, too. Ana Milicevic, principal of the digital consultancy Sparrow Digital Holdings, said Newton Research is "already making a lot of headway with agencies." It creates AI agents to handle data science projects and also works with brands and publishers. Newton Research's founder and CEO, John Hoctor, was behind the media-measurement company Data Plus Math, which was sold to the publicly listed data company LiveRamp in 2019. Founded in 2023, Newton Research has raised around $13 million to date, according to PitchBook. Newton Research declined to comment. Milicevic also said Akkio, which creates AI agents to help media agencies better understand their data, might be a good fit for Publicis. Founded in 2019, the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company has raised around $18 million in funding. Jon Reilly, Akkio's cofounder and COO, said the company is building an operating system that automates "grunt work" so agencies can win pitches, safeguard margins, and stay focused on strategy. "Agencies urgently need a next-generation AI operating layer to modernize their fragmented stacks," Reilly said. Speaking generally about the AI space and without naming specific startups, Eric Franci of the VC firm Aperiam said companies that create agentic tools for marketing workflow would be the category to watch for M&A. He imagines a scenario where AI agents could drive processes like ad optimization, campaign planning, and measurement. The result would be "faster turnarounds, better performance," and teams that focus on "higher value, client-success oriented tasks," he said. AI optimization and modelling from the likes of Cassandra or Prescient AI could provide value Ad optimization used to involve humans watching ad campaigns like hawks, and adjusting spend, targeting, and creative messaging depending on how the ads were performing. AI could automate a lot of these "hands-on-keyboards" tasks. Weide said Prescient AI, an ad optimization platform that predicts the return on ad spend for e-commerce ads, could be an acquisition target for the likes of Publicis. Miami-based Prescient has raised $20.9 million in funding to date. "It's exciting to be mentioned in such a critical area of growth," Prescient AI CEO Mike True said. "With some of the brightest minds in the field, we're now focused on advancing the technology we believe will define the future of compound, intelligent measurement," he added. Italy-based Cassandra could also be a contender for a smaller bolt-on acquisition, Azerion's Buckman said. It specializes in a marketing technique called MMM — marketing mix modeling — to help advertisers assess how much and where they should be allocating their advertising budgets. The company has raised 2.3 million euros, around $2.7 million, in funding. Cristian Nozzi, Cassandra's cofounder and CTO, said the company is close to achieving $2 million in annual recurring revenue, three times the amount it registered last year. He added that the company aims to deliver "incrementality measurements at scale and with little to no effort to every organization in the world, no matter the size or budget." In marketing, incrementality refers to measuring the impact an ad campaign has had in driving additional sales.
Forbes
09-06-2025
- Business
- Forbes
What's Holding Banks Back From AI—And How To Move Forward
Assaf Baciu is President and cofounder at Persado, which provides specialized generative AI used by some of the world's largest brands. The financial services industry is justifiably risk-averse. With consumers' and businesses' livelihoods on the line and stringent regulations in play, tech changes often aren't worth the risk. It's no surprise, then, that banks and other financial institutions have been slow to adopt AI. Still, customers are starting to notice banking's slow pace of innovation: In a 2024 Persado study, more than half of Generation-X, Millennials and Generation-Z consumers surveyed said they would consider switching banks for one that provided more personalized digital experiences. Since it costs banks, on average, $561 to acquire a new retail customer, maintaining loyalty is critical for stability and revenue. A cohort of trailblazing global financial institutions has heeded customers' call for personalization, driving billions in revenue using AI to generate high-performing marketing content. These results are promising, but many banks are still holding back. The largest U.S. banks realize more than $200 million annually in additional revenue, on average (with mid-size and smaller banks realizing between $20 million and $50 million in additional revenue each year), using purpose-built AI to generate and optimize marketing content, according to my company's research cited above. Retail banking customers are on board with AI as well: My company also found that 75% of consumers consider their banks' use of "AI to help understand their needs and preferences" to be acceptable. So, what's stopping banks from taking advantage of AI? AI can quickly make a significant, measurable business impact for banks and card issuers. Still, in highly regulated industries that handle the sensitive data of millions of customers, marketing teams face headwinds on the road to implementation. Banks want to be certain when adopting new technology like AI that there will be demonstrable ROI, their teams will be able to easily navigate and audit the solution, they'll remain compliant and customer data is safe. Let's assess the common barriers to AI adoption and how to address them: Your teams should be aligned on the goals of an AI implementation and how you will measure said goals. Identify the use cases you're looking to optimize with an AI solution and get signoff from key stakeholders on the most critical success metrics (e.g., demonstrable ROI, time savings or increased customer engagement) for each use case. From there, identify your baseline for a given use case, then use AI to generate alternative language so that you can test it with a select cohort of customers. Your marketing teams can then compare results and understand how to use AI to prompt higher customer engagement and conversions. A major distinguishing factor for meeting your AI goals is the data an AI solution is trained on. A specialized AI solution for marketing, for example, should be trained on (non-personally identifiable information) real customer interactions and can be fine-tuned to reach target customer segments. This ensures your AI has an immediately relevant foundation, knows its audiences and can refine copy to keep driving impact. Specialized AI solutions are not only grounded in a relevant knowledge base of customer interactions but also have guardrails to mitigate hallucinations or biased outputs. Banks can fine-tune these marketing solutions by uploading their brand guidelines and historical campaign data to ensure the AI is generating and optimizing content that is both relevant and aligns with content performance goals and brand voice. In turn, the AI, which continuously learns from the bank's own campaign insights—not broad models—serves as a companion for marketing to generate personalized content at scale. Marketing and legal teams will still need to check that AI outputs are compliant, relevant and on-brand, but this reserves 'humans in the loop' for final reviews and auditing the data that trains the AI. Legal and compliance reviews are critical elements of a review cycle for any piece of customer-facing content, but they often create bottlenecks for marketing campaigns, slowing time to market and delaying results. Generic AI solutions run the risk of exacerbating lengthy review processes, as they're designed for quantity—not quality. When identifying an AI solution, auditability, compliance and privacy should be top of mind. Analyze potential tools based on criteria like transparency, explainability, fairness, security and regulatory compliance throughout the entire AI system, from training data to evaluating outcomes. Advanced AI solutions have AI agents for each financial regulation (such as the FTC Act, UDAAP, ECOA, FSRA, C.A.R.D. and TCPA) and enable banks to upload and configure risk profiles and governance guidelines, trimming the number of review cycles and getting campaigns in front of customers faster. As regulations emerge or change, teams can upload new guidelines to keep the AI up-to-date. Capabilities like advanced encryption, granular access controls and automated threat detection can assuage privacy and security concerns. However, humans are integral to ensuring on-brand, compliant messaging, even when using specialized AI. These tools can facilitate greater collaboration between marketing and legal teams but, even in the absence of AI, consider how your organization can diminish the siloes between marketing and legal teams—and expedite reviews. Are there common compliance mistakes marketers are making? If so, explanations of these mistakes can help your marketing team learn and avoid regulatory trip-ups in the future. Paradigm-shifting advancements in technology will always inspire a mix of emotions: fear, curiosity and excitement. Printing presses were destroyed out of protest when they were first invented, but just like AI, the change they brought on was inevitable. Now, aware of the potential benefits of AI and tips for overcoming barriers and risks to adoption, bank marketers are at a crossroads. Success will come not from embracing AI with thoughtful, measured steps—balancing innovation with compliance, and experimentation with proven best practices. Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Do I qualify?
Yahoo
14-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Persado Wins Tearsheet 2025 Marketing Award for Best Product/Service Designed for Gen Z
Persado Motivation AI Platform Recognized for Impact in Personalization and Compliance NEW YORK, May 14, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Persado, a leading provider of AI-powered content compliance and performance solutions for marketing, has been named the winner of Tearsheet's 2025 Marketing Award for the Best Product/Service Designed for Gen Z. The Persado Motivation AI platform was recognized for its strength in generating and optimizing messages that drive engagement across key customer segments for top banks, while also safeguarding regulatory compliance. The Tearsheet Marketing Awards are the financial industry's top awards program focused on marketing, customer acquisition, branding, and growth. The awards celebrate the companies and professionals excelling in scaling their business, one customer at a time. According to Tearsheet, this year's winners prove that excellence comes from truly understanding what resonates with real humans. The "Spend Z" report from NielsenIQ projects that Gen Z (those born 1997-2012) will have the fastest growth in spending power, reaching $12 trillion by 2030—surpassing baby boomer spending by 2029. The segment are digital natives with a strong technology connection, but also a strong ability to detect communications that are manufactured for the masses. The Persado AI platform helps financial brands determine message intent and emotional context to create content variants that engage customers across digital channels, from email and SMS to web copy, social media, and more. It is the only purpose-built AI marketing content solution that drives significant revenue by drawing on a specialized dataset of real interaction and transaction data, leveraging performance insights from more than 17 billion customer interactions and insights gleaned from top banks. In 2024, Persado released a series of pre-built marketing segments that speed personalized message generation for key groups. (See examples here of authentic GenZ communications.) "Gen Z is an increasingly powerful customer segment that craves authenticity from brands. This CX expectation is an added challenge for financial services copywriters and marketers looking to balance content performance and compliance," said Persado Co-Founder and President, Assaf Baciu. "Persado's custom segments capabilities empower financial brands to 'speak' to important groups, while complying with fair lending laws & anti-discrimination rules. Banks and credit unions are using this specialized AI to create authentic, high-performing, and compliant messages at scale, driving significant growth." Using Persado, financial services companies enjoy a 40% average uplift in conversion rates, with the top finserv brands using Persado—such as NatWest, JPMorgan Chase, Ally, and SoFi—having collectively generated over $2.5 billion in incremental revenue with Persado in recent years. To learn more about how Persado generates personalized outputs and superior outcomes at scale, and without risk, visit our Financial Services page. About Persado Persado is an innovative AI-powered marketing platform that integrates high performance content generation and personalization with automated analysis and resolution of compliance risks. Iconic brands in financial services, telecommunications, retail, and travel sectors, such as Ally, Chase, Lending Club, NatWest, and Verizon, trust Persado to engage customers throughout their journey and across channels. Persado AI is trained on a specialized dataset of real interaction and transaction data from 1.2 billion consumers, which measures and refines language, emotional response, and customer engagement—so enterprise marketers can drive business impact at the speed of AI. For more info about Persado for Financial Services, follow Persado on LinkedIn. View original content to download multimedia: SOURCE Persado Inc. Sign in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
12-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Marketing AI Company Persado to Speak at Digital Marketing for Financial Services Summit West
Persado VP of Solutions Consulting on May 21 Panel About Strategic Approaches to Redefining Personalized Engagement in Financial Services, Meet with Persado in Ballroom SAN FRANCISCO, May 12, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Persado, a leading provider of AI-powered content compliance and performance solutions for marketing, announced that Persado will speak and exhibit at the Digital Marketing for Financial Services Summit West in San Francisco on May 21-22, 2025. Persado invites marketing leaders, media, and analysts to meet and learn about Persado in the West Ballroom. Persado will be available throughout the conference to discuss and demo AI innovations, including Persado Dynamic Email solution—a new AI solution for marketing and CRM teams, which manages the heavy lifting for campaign setup, content library creation, and launch. Financial services companies already using Persado for "always-on" personalized batch and triggered campaigns have elevated the CX, cut email operations time up to 75%, and seen 20% increase in conversions, on average. Attendees are also urged to attend the Persado panel session below on Wednesday, May 21. Details: WHO: Taylor Mahoney, VP of Solutions Consulting at Persado, will speak on a panel, along with Nidhi Daga, VP, Growth, JPMorgan Chase, as well as Will McGinnis Director of Sales, The session will be moderated by Erin McReynolds, VP, Marketing & Client Experience, at Fremont Bank. WHAT: The industry experts will discuss personalization and customer experience transformation during the session titled "Strategic Approaches to Redefining Personalized Engagement in Financial Services." They will share how to bolster your approach to personalization and CX to build loyalty, trust, and long-term customer value, as well as how to build deeper connections with your customers by reimagining personalization and transforming the customer experience through Generative AI-driven strategic innovation. They will also discuss the frameworks and strategic imperatives necessary to elevate customer engagement in an increasingly digital and competitive landscape, through actions such as: Designing a personalization strategy that aligns with customer expectations and business goals. Leveraging data and technology to create seamless, personalized customer journeys. Building cross-functional collaboration to ensure a consistent, impactful customer experience. WHERE: Grand Hyatt, San Francisco — DMFS Track A: Digital Innovation & Growth WHEN: May 21, 2025 from 12:30 - 1:15 PM PT ABOUT THE DMFS SERIES The 10th Annual Digital Marketing for Financial Services (DMFS) Summit is a series of market-leading conferences hosted in San Francisco, New York, Chicago, and Toronto. The conferences cater to the unique challenges facing the financial services industry and are attended by leaders in marketing operations, digital marketing, brand, customer engagement, growth, and other functions, who work at banks and credit unions, lenders, insurance companies, fintechs, and more. ABOUT PERSADO Persado is an innovative AI-powered marketing platform that integrates high performance content generation and personalization with automated analysis and resolution of compliance risks. Iconic brands in financial services, telecommunications, retail, and travel sectors, such as Ally, Chase, Lending Club, NatWest, and Verizon, trust Persado to engage customers throughout their journey and across channels. Persado AI is trained on a specialized dataset of real interaction and transaction data from 1.2 billion consumers, which measures and refines language, emotional response, and customer engagement—so enterprise marketers can drive business impact at the speed of AI. For more info about Persado for Financial Services, follow Persado on LinkedIn. View original content to download multimedia: SOURCE Persado Inc. Sign in to access your portfolio
