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5 AI Trends Every CEO Must Act On
Earlier this year, I shared takeaways from Mary Meeker’s Internet Trends Report, which showed how AI is reshaping business at a macro level. Building on that, Google Cloud’s 2025 AI Trends highlights five forces that will directly impact companies in the year ahead.
AI is no longer experimental. It is restructuring markets, reshaping customer expectations, and redrawing competitive boundaries. Here are five AI trends CEOs are preparing for now:
The Great Race: Staying Ahead of Consumers and Competitors through Product Innovation
Wed, May 25, 2016 — If you’ve ever watched the popular ABC-TV show “Shark Tank,” you know that Mr. Wonderful, Mark Cuban, and the rest of their millionaire and billionaire entrepreneurial assemblage are simply not interested in investing in any product that a) has a competitor copycat, or b) can be replicated by a consumer giant. If one of these two criteria is apparent, the deal is 100 percent dead on arrival, no matter how devoted or tenacious the entrepreneur may be. As Mr. Wonderful (aka seasoned entrepreneur and investor Kevin O’Leary) often says, we all have to “wet our beaks.” It’s a dog-eat-dog world, and regardless of whether our company is dealing with an investor or a customer, we are attempting to innovate in the middle of a quick, competitive age of consumer product innovation. Brands must utilize their consumer data and analytics, think ahead on product innovation, and interact with their customer base in an impactful way – or the competition will take care of it for us instead.
Making It Easy: Three Steps To Creating the Ultimate Customer Experience
Tue, May 24, 2016 — Why a commitment to consistent, small improvements in customer experience will lure customers back and cement customer loyalty over time Your nightmare has come true – someone has fraudulently charged a sheaf of frivolous, online purchases to your trusty Visa card. Luckily, the credit card company’s algorithms caught it and shut the scam down – but of course, nobody told you. You actually found out in a bustling grocery store on a Sunday morning, with a cart full of perishable food, two kids in tow, and a long, impatient line behind you. As a warm, gripping panic begins to squeeze your insides, you hope that a simple call to the card service center will be able to fix everything in a flash.
Communicating Your Brand’s Story Effectively
Wed, May 18, 2016 — Take a deep breath, brand builders – we are now more than halfway through the steep, yet fruitful five-step climb to building a winning consumer brand. By understanding the importance of an emotional consumer connection, and in taking the time to develop our positioning statement and branding promise, we’ve carefully, yet confidently, laid our brand’s foundation. Now, we have everything we need to tell our unique story and establish a mutually beneficial relationship with our target audience.
Sync Your B2B Sales and Marketing Strategies
Fri, May 13, 2016 — Once upon a time, many businesses thought of sales and marketing in a very black-and-white world–where salespeople were salespeople – and marketers were marketers. In this world, the customer’s journey (and, therefore, how you acquire customers) was well-defined and linear. The marketer built marketing plans to entice and interest the prospect, supported by ads, events, collateral pieces, and customer experiences. Once a prospect read the pamphlet, walked up to a snazzy-looking booth, or happened across an ad, the charismatic, bright-eyed salesperson would swoop in, perform deal-making magic, and put a lid on the transaction.
Position Your Brand: Three Questions to Power Growth & Profit
Wed, May 11, 2016 — In Step 1, we began paving our road to a winning brand strategy with the basics. We determined that in order to win in a competitive consumer marketplace, we must first establish an emotional connection with our target audience. We also decided that remaining focused on emotional motivators is the key to the development of that critical connection. It’s time, now, to make sure we are winning with our “head,” as well as our “heart.” For the second step in our quest, we’ll don our lab coats and, utilizing the data from our emotional motivators and target audience surveys, we’ll now engage our sales and marketing teams to develop our company’s positioning statement and brand promise. If we can nail this critical “statement of purpose,” we’ll effectively stand out from our rivals and drive our company forward in the process.
The Marketing Power of Three
Tue, May 10, 2016 — Variety may be the spice of life, but having too many choices turns people away. Our brains have evolved so that we perceive three main things about options presented to us, and the rest gets chucked aside. Give us only two choices, we feel torn. Give us four, we’re confused. Give us three, we pick one easily. Curious, isn't it? When we write about things, talk about things, look at things, we instinctively seek out three options. It's pleasant, this power of three. We don't feel forced to choose between two things and it doesn't feel overwhelming. It feels just right.
News Break: Lencioni’s “The Ideal Team Player” is Bigger Than Expected
Mon, May 2, 2016 — The beauty of Patrick Lencioni’s writings has always been how well they resonate with real business experiences. I suppose that’s a direct result of the real-life “fables” he creates for his books (the exception being The Advantage) that tease out a model for excellence that he shares in the later sections. In The Ideal Team Player – How to Recognize and Cultivate the Three Essential Virtues, Pat parlays perhaps his most simple and compelling framework yet; by showing how 1) humility, 2) hunger and 3) (people) smarts are the key virtues employees need to maximize their value for their team and company.
Positioning Your Brand to Make an Emotional Connection
Fri, Apr 29, 2016 — According to an old adage, it is implored that we of the human species should “help yourself before you help others.” While this strategy is particularly important in oxygen-depleted aircraft cabin emergencies and personal matters (but was not great for people like Bernie Madoff), it also represents the foundation of modern marketing strategy.
Conducting Your Orchestra: How to Achieve Opera-Sized Marketing Impact on a Sonnet-Sized Budget
Mon, Apr 18, 2016 — A funny thing happened on the way to the Orpheum: Today's flip-flop-wearing, short-attention-spanned public simply isn't looking for symphonic-sized entertainment like they used to. Ask any community orchestra conductor what brings out the most throngs these days, and they'll tell you it was the "Pops" performance of Star Wars music that far outplayed Beethoven.