Digital marketing is experiencing a transformative shift to automated, personalized marketing and prescriptive, machine learning recommendation engines. Wire Stone is a leading provider of integrating marketing solutions and experiences, maintaining client relationships that span many years and, in some cases, decades. Wire Stone is uniquely qualified to assist marketing leaders and decision makers at every level of the various industries we work with: technology, telecommunications, automotive, aeronautics, sports retail, financial, and others. We're a unique mix of strategists, creatives, programmers, data analysts, engineers and architects--obsessed with the art and science of crafting integrated approaches and optimizing meaningful connections that few agencies can match. Wire Stone's Data Science team provides intelligence products and services to some of the world's largest and most innovative companies.

There's an awkward moment at the outset of every new technology when marketers and agencies begin spasmodically craving it. This craving is often blind to whether the investment would solve a business challenge or if that money would be better spent by letting junior staffers roast marshmallows on a giant burning pyre of cocaine. To date, much of the conversation around chat bots has been focused on replacing rote customer service for existing clients and "driving loyalty," as spurious as that phrase has been shown to be by the good folks at the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute. So we're going to look at something different: four ways that chat bots could increase marketing effectiveness outside of giving existing customers a better experience. In short, how could chat bots be used to actually grow a brand and reach new customers?