The French Riviera has seen any number of intellectual fads wash ashore over the decades, from the existentialists who once populated its cafes to the advertising executives who now populate its yachts. This year's prevailing philosophy, for at least the third consecutive June, appears to be artificial intelligence — though Benjamin Braun, the chief marketing officer for Samsung in Europe, would prefer the conversation move two letters down the alphabet.
"Everyone is talking about AI," Mr. Braun said in an interview during the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. "I speak a lot about EI — emotional intelligence."
The distinction, Mr. Braun suggested, is not merely semantic. Artificial intelligence, in his view, is rapidly becoming table stakes — a capability that will be available to essentially everyone. Emotional intelligence, by contrast, will become the thing that separates winning brands from their competitors.
"AI is a super tool," he said. "But what's really important is that, as a CMO and as a leader of a brand, you use emotional intelligence to differentiate your brand versus competitors."
Mr. Braun, who oversees marketing for the South Korean electronics giant across Europe, was not entirely pessimistic about the technology. But he did offer one of the more pointed assessments heard on the Croisette this year.
"I have, over the last year, seen way too much AI slop produced," he said. "Cost-efficient, I guess, but poor quality productions, which at the end of the day will harm your brand."
(One imagines the holding company chiefs nodding vigorously at this point, though perhaps not all for the same reasons.)
Samsung has built an internal creative operation called Studio AI, which combines artificial intelligence tools with human creative leadership — a hybrid approach Mr. Braun likened to a famous chess match. When Garry Kasparov lost to IBM's Deep Blue in 1997, he did not conclude that humans were finished. Instead, he partnered with an AI system and, by occasionally overriding its recommendations, won.
"His emotional intelligence, his ability to deploy lateral thinking and do things that are not known yet allowed him to have the upper hand," Mr. Braun said.
The analogy suggests that the question facing marketers is not whether to use artificial intelligence, but whether to let it use them. Mr. Braun, at least, seems to have made his choice.
Original story published in The Drum: "‘AI slop needs to stop’: Samsung CMO says emotional intelligence will define marketing’s next era | The Drum"