Summit delivers provocative look at AI as a tool for marketing industry

An audience of more than 160 students, alumni and faculty packed a lecture hall at Rutgers Business School-New Brunswick and spent most of a recent Friday at the annual marketing summit entitled, “Transformative Marketing: Reinventing for Success.”

The event kicked off with a presentation by Nicola Grant, Mastercard’s senior vice president of global brand and advertising, on AI’s impact on marketing, included panel discussions, networking, rapid fire demonstrations on selling and wrapped up with a panel discussion

“It’s one of the most exciting times for marketers ever,” Grant said, noting the “warp drive” pace of change and the evolution of communities without borders. “Anything you can imagine is possible with AI. We have to take hold of it and make it work for us.”

Grant explained the influences of both Reddit and TikTok and the power of artificial intelligence to create more personalized content. 

In a series of evocative videos, she demonstrated how Mastercard is putting AI to use in its card design studio – allowing companies to offer their customers personalized cards for digital transactions and using TikTok for innovative new campaigns like “Inside Abracadabra” with Lady Gaga. One video explained a pilot for Mastercard’s Small Business AI, a new chatbot capable of sharing more “responsibly produced, diverse content” culled from the wisdom of entrepreneurs.

In response to a question from the audience, Grant maintained that entry-level jobs were not being cut because of new technology. “You’re the most connected to the culture. You all have minds,” she said, addressing students in the crowd. “Why wouldn’t I want you co-creating and making the great ideas.”

Professor Yla Eason, who organized the first summit seven years ago and attended the latest on Nov. 14, said the event was created to extend student learning beyond the classrooms at Rutgers. “Students hear the perspectives of authentic marketers from substantial companies about what’s important in marketing now,” Eason said.

Professor Phil Cohn, who organized this year’s summit, also described it as an important way to expose students to trends and other relevant information about the industry. 

The summit’s focus on AI complimented Rutgers Business School’s efforts to incorporate instruction about the technology across all academic areas so students have knowledge and experience working with AI when they go into the business world. It also reflected the strength of Rutgers Business School’s corporate partnerships and its ability to foster corporate engagement.

Technology, AI specifically, was also part of the conversation during two of the event’s first panel discussions. Rutgers Business School marketing professor Chris Ribeiro, who moderated one, asked his panelists to describe a use case in which AI delivered powerful results. The panel was composed of Adobe evangelist Eric Matisoff, Greg Willis, vice president of global sales at LinkedIn, and Siddarth Gopinath, CEO of Azuraa Insights.

Ribeiro also asked them to explain how people in their companies were responding to the massive changes taking place. “It’s amazing how things have changed,” Matisoff said. “The conversation three years ago was dicey.” Now conversations are different, more about ideation, he said.

“We’ve entered the era of AI,” Matisoff said, “and users are more excited than scared.”

All three panelists emphasized during the conversation that questions still surround AI – it’s scalability for instance – and the continued need for human involvement. “AI helps functional research. It flattens out nuances,” Gopinath said. What it won’t do, he said, is question things. “Human understanding is still necessary,” he said.

Those sentiments were expressed again during a second panel discussion when panelists discussed AI’s shortcomings interacting directly with customers as well as its potential to help build brands.

The panelists – Ed Filippazzo, chief privacy officer at American Express, Rutgers MBA alumnus Rohit Sood, chief revenue officer at Sorcero, and Lisa Pillette, president LPH Holdings and former CMO of The Fossel Group – spoke about the importance of ROI and ethics. “The tools have changed. The theory still holds,” Sood said.

The discussion about structure and process in the 21st Century marketing department was moderated by Cohn, a marketing professor who teaches professional selling.

In response to a question about how students can prepare to differentiate themselves in a competitive industry, the panelists advised students “not to be myopic. “Keep doing things,” Fillippazzo said. He urged students to work with AI and be able to demonstrate how they used it to complete a project.

And when the discussion turned to AI, Filippazzo suggested that while the technology might help future marketing professionals manage things, the marketers will still be developing the strategy. And Pillette went even further. She described the iconic Burberry’s use of AI in a billboard campaign as an example of how AI can “unlock” creativity.

Still, she said, “there is no replacement for soul.”

-Susan Todd