Beyond the buzzword: What "artificial intelligence" means for marketing leaders, right now - WiderFunnel Blog

The other day, I was at a meetup of retail leaders in Vancouver. There were about 20 of us in a room, listening to experts present on the future of the industry. Topics ranged from conversion optimization to omnichannel retail, to digital marketing best practices and digital transformation. The presentations were strong, but one moment, in particular, struck me. Near the end of one expert's deck, he brought up a slide titled "Machine Learning and Retail". He chuckled and said something along the lines of "you can't have a presentation today without mentioning'machine learning', so here it is". With that statement, he quickly moved on and wrapped up. And I thought to myself, that is the definition of a buzzword. Business and marketing leaders, today, know that artificial intelligence (AI) is a topic of conversation. They know they need to know about it. They know they should plan for it. But over and over again, we see examples of leaders who don't understand artificial intelligence.