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‘Artificial intelligence meets marketing’ with the virtual marketing strategist

Step Change Marketing, the consultancy behind the Wankers Don’t Work Here recruitment video, is claiming a world first with the creation of a website where marketing problems are tackled by a ‘virtual marketing strategist’.

Promoted as a tool to help businesses identify growth opportunities in nine questions and under 15 minutes, the technology has been billed as where “articial intelligence meets marketing” with “a choose your own adventure” approach to strategy.

The user is asked a series of questions, and is guided through the program by a video image of the consultancy’s lead strategist, Ashton Bishop, and general manager Jeff Cooper.

On completion, the user receives an email with a top-line strategy for growth, and commentary on their responses. The final page asks the user if they would like Step Change to review the report, or share the program with a colleague.

“You’ll never fully replace human creativity and strategic thought – although never is probably an over-claim,” said Cooper. “The Virtual Marketing Strategist is designed to showcase the way we think and stimulate potential clients in looking at things in different ways. If they see value in this as a free intro the idea is they’ll like to engage us further at a Stump the Strategist event or retain us to help them solve a problem.”

“The funny thing is that the more value we give away the more clients seem to pay us, and not the other way around,” he added.

The idea had been incubation for around two years, and took six months and cost $67,000 to build. The technical infrastructure, information flow, user journey, user interface and report content were all created inhouse.

“We see this as the start of consultants and infoprenuers needing to embrace digital and provide value first. You can’t just show-up and sell nowadays,” Cooper added.

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