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Marketing Agencies: Don't play with AI. It could make you look dumb.

Name: Marketing Agencies: Don't play with AI. It could make you look dumb.
Uploaded: 2018-01-30T17:42:15+00:00
Duration: 45 s
Channel: Bob London
Description: Bob London shares his personal experience with a marketing agency’s AI chatbot named "Allen," which was promoted as a cutting‑edge B2B marketing feeling…

30 Jan 2018 · 1 min

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Bob London shares his personal experience with a marketing agency’s AI chatbot named "Allen," which was promoted as a cutting‑edge B2B marketing feeling machine. After clicking a banner ad, he discovers the landing page offers no real information and the bot fails to deliver meaningful interaction. London describes the journey as both amusing and frustrating, using it as a warning to agencies that showcase AI without ensuring it works: such missteps can make the agency look foolish and waste valuable resources that could have been spent on client work. He urges agencies to prioritize functional, high‑quality AI implementations over superficial hype.

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If you're in marketing like I am and you saw a banner ad that said, "Meet Allen, B2B marketing's first feeling machine," you'd probably click on it like I did. I didn't really see anything on the landing page that talked about Allen, so I went to the menu and there, sure enough, was "Talk to Allen." The rest of this is my somewhat frustrating journey with Allen, this marketing agency's AI bot. If you follow the whole thing through, it's kind of amusing, but it's also sad and it's a warning if you're an agency and you're trying to show that you're forward-thinking and innovative and you're using artificial intelligence in the form of a bot, then you better damn make sure it works. Otherwise, you're going to look very foolish. I shudder to think how much time the agency spent developing this at the expense of doing something excellent for their clients. I'll let you decide for yourself.