AI is future word of mouth marketing for Unilever-owned Schmidt’s Naturals

Industry Contributor 27 May 2019 - 2 min read

AI is future word of mouth marketing for Unilever-owned Schmidt’s Naturals

By Paul McIntyre - Executive Editor

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Tags: unilever, AI, customer service, Schmidt's Naturals, Justin Bieber, marketing, Google, Facebook, data

Unilever-owned deodorant company Schmidt’s Naturals is harnessing AI to handle all of its customer service – and sees it ultimately moving the brand from cost per action models to word of mouth, from a robot, all while gathering more first party data. (Digiday).

Key points

Schmidt’s Naturals piloting AI customer service for now, but CEO Michael Cammarata claims platform will be used by other Unilever brands
Cammarata says Google/Facebook data that marketers have become dependent upon will not be available in future, so first party data paramount
‘Alexander’ AI monitors social media and starts unprompted conversations, does the work of “20 people”, says Cammarata
“You don’t want to try something new on your billion-dollar brands. This is a smart move for Unilever to test and learn fast on a smaller brand so they can apply it to the bigger brands.” - consultant Allen Adamson
Brand also announces collaboration with Justin Bieber

Cammarata's comments on the rush for first party data in the face of incoming market and regulatory change will ring true for all marketers. Meanwhile, Justin Bieber influencer marketing combined with AI customer service is a novel form of acquisition. But it could prove a smart way of testing Schmidt’s AI’s capabilities: Bieber has 113m Instagram followers – roughly 10% of all the people reportedly using the platform. The move also provides a foil to those that suggest brands are turning away from celebrity and scale toward micro-influencers.

Proponents of ‘conversational commerce’ suggest brands are wasting their money on websites and apps and should instead divert resources towards “AI and machine learning and start thinking about how conversations and dialogues are the new web design”.

Unilever, it appears, is taking note.