A journey into the unknown

AI is top of mind, on the tip of the tongue and a highlighted line item on every brand’s business, strategic and creative plan going forward. We are walking into something exciting – yet unknown, something full of possibilities – yet to be defined.

Metaphors for creative wonder – from Alice in Wonderland, to Charlie & the Chocolate factory or Narnia – have asked us to trust them to take us on some kind of fantastical journey into the unknown. All these invitations ask us to somewhat trust that something other than ourselves can take us on a journey. It’s an intuitive ask, not qualified or completely understood, a creative gamble of sorts that promises something wonderful will happen if we embrace it.

This is exactly where we find ourselves with AI’s role in the strategic, creative and conceptual process of building brands today.

We are asking ourselves, our clients and most importantly our consumers to take a creative leap of faith with us.

What makes people leap?

Technologists still cling to the belief that you just have to build it and they will come. While the adoption rate of ChatGPT private use is moving at lightning speed, for corporate AI solutions the evidence points in the opposite direction.

There are plenty of examples of companies trying to guide customers from the waiting queue in their hotline to the chatbot. Most companies tells their customers: “The remaining waiting time is 7 minutes, there are 4 people in front of you, but you can also talk to our bot.” Which, naturally no one does.

We discovered one company that managed to achieve a massive game-changer in the multimillion dollar field of chatbots. It simply changed the announcement to: “The remaining waiting time is seven minutes, there are four people in front of you, but you can also talk to our bot, WITHOUT LOSING YOUR PLACE IN THE QUEUE.” And this gave people the safety, triggered their loss aversion (hats off to Kahnemann) and increased bot usage by millions of minutes in the first year.

It's emotions, stupid

So let’s wind this little example back. It shows: it is in fact emotions that makes people take the leap to pick up and use AI. Rationally, nothing much changed. The bot is exactly the same. It just comes with a little extra feeling of safety. The safety of not having anything to lose. And that makes all the difference. It is safe to say that emotions played a significant role in the adoption of this bot. And – not surprisingly, emotions play a major role in technology adoption and buying decisions in general.^[1]

And, emotions always were human thing!

Now comes the tricky bit: our pride and our vanity. Not personally, but as a human race. Emotions are what makes us special. Emotions are what differentiates us from AI. Now that AI can beat us in chess since decades and since a couple of years also in ‘jeopardy’^[2] emotions are one of the last bastions that remain steadfastly human, and human only.

Well, the authors and more than 11,000 customers beg to differ.

We humans assume tech is doing the cold rational stuff. And the I in AI supports that. Emotions, on the other hand, are clearly a human thing.

And this is the mistake.

Probably AI is not as good as humans in feeling emotions (we don’t know that), but what we want to look into is how good it is at evoking emotions. Because evoking emotions is what makes people try new technology and hence try AI.

Strangely, this field of the emotions AI evokes is massively under researched (check also Cambridge and Columbia) – not a single study on emotional technology and what it means for tech adoption of brands can be found. Yet ignoring this field is – as we will show in the following – is a grave mistake.

What excites about AI - 11.5k answers.

We got a database of 270,000-plus excitement points, i.e. the rare moments where companies manage to excite people. And within we can split between those, where excitement was evoked by a human being, i.e. an employee of the company. Or, for example through a chatbot (i.e. AI). And then we can look at how they differ.

Most excitement today is caused by humans. But AI can do the job too.

The most basic observation is: human interaction is more often exciting than AI interaction. 21 per cent of the excitement points in our database are from interactions with employees. One per cent of the excitement points, though, are from an interaction with a chatbot.  This might be because humans are better at evoking excitement, but also because we still simply have more often interactions with humans.

Also when it comes to value, humans lead. The average value of an excitement points with an employee is with €53.3 significantly higher than the €31.4 perceived value that AI generates with the chatbot. When looking at the maximum promotor NPS (i.e. the NPS of these excitement points), the gap is already closing. Employees generate 20.2 points and AI 15.5 points.

Emotions are human... Some are just better evoked by AI

Humans are emotionally miles ahead when it comes to evoke feelings like order / everything is alright (+6.9 per cent). Or safety (+8.4 per cent) or care (+11.9 per cent). So clearly employees are best when customers want the company to take over control. And help them. And solve the problem. And one more emotions is much better evoked by humans: fun! So it still is more often fun to talk to humans than to talk to bots. So far, so expected.

What surprised us, is that humans are not better at evoking ALL positive emotions. It can’t be said, that emotional brands are ONLY humans. There are emotions that chatbots no only can evoke, but evoke better than … humans.

Especially emotions that don’t nanny people but empower them. That put them in charge. So using a chatbot still gives a feeling of freedom (+5.7 per cent more often than a contact with an employee) and (adventure, +5.8 per cent). This is still the novelty effect. But it also makes people feel special (+3.6 per cent) and – most interestingly – it gives people a feeling of strength (+5.6 per cent).

As emotional as it is intelligent – today’s AI

So at their best chatbots don’t replace human interaction. But they change the dynamic. They care slightly less for people. But they are slightly better at giving people the feeling of being in charge. This has implication for brands. First of all, when it comes to brand positioning. Those brands that want to give people a feeling of being in total control need to over-invest in human interaction. This gives the brand an air of authority. But also superiority. Those brands that want to empower their audience, are should consider how they can use technology and chatbots to do so. And also make them the topic of their conversation. While we only looked at these touchpoints, one thing is clear. Emotions are not just a human thing.

We don’t know everything about where AI will take us, it’s influence on daily life and certainly its impact on creative industries. However what we do know, is that the majority of people around the world are willing to embrace it and looking for someone trustworthy to lead us into the new creative frontiers it offers us all.

So, just as we were asked to fall down a rabbit hole, walk through a magical wardrobe and enter a chocolate world of pure imagination… AI is giving us an invitation to venture into the unknown with a promise of wonder that won’t disappoint.