| | FMCGs doing smart work on social: examples from Pampers, Cadbury, Liquid Death and more
FMCG goods like cereal, nappies, chocolate, tea, and even water are staples of our everyday shopping – but they might not seem like the most eye-catching products to promote on social media.
Amid users’ bustling feeds, and with only seconds’ worth of video or a few lines of text to play with, how can FMCG brands stand out and win over would-be customers? |
What we're reading this Friday
Google’s AI Overview feature suggests dogs have played in the NFL and non-toxic glue will prevent cheese sliding off your pizza
Yep, people out there on the internet are enjoying quizzing Google Search to see if they can confuse its AI Overviews. Two example responses were posted on X and have been going viral over the last couple of days. One user asked, 'has a dog ever played in the NFL?' and received a response that began, ‘Yes, dogs have played in the NFL’. Another person Googled 'cheese not sticking to pizza' and got an overview that included the sentence, ‘ You can also add about 1/8 cup of non-toxic glue to the sauce to give it more tackiness’.
Given one user traced the advice on getting cheese to stick to pizza back to a Reddit comment, this arguably raises questions about the weighting of Reddit by Google when creating these responses.
AI Overviews have been part of Search Labs for a while but rolled out across the US last week. A Google blog post on launch stated, “Sometimes you want a quick answer, but you don’t have time to piece together all the information you need. Search will do the work for you with AI Overviews.”
Google has commented on the searches that went viral to a number of publications, telling the Daily Dot that these were “extremely rare queries, and aren’t representative of most people’s experiences.” The statement said, “The vast majority of AI Overviews provide high-quality information, with links to dig deeper on the web. We conducted extensive testing before launching this new experience, and will use these as we continue to refine our systems overall.”
When Econsultancy’s Rebecca Sentance wrote about the Google and Reddit deal last week, her focus was on what AI summaries in search might mean for publishers (including Reddit). If users, in Google's words, don't have “time to piece together all the information” what could that imply about clicks through to a website source? But perhaps the bigger and related question Google is grappling with is how to square the unpredictable nature of LLMs with its mission to organise the world’s information.
Slack clarifies its privacy principles after GenAI misunderstanding
Salesforce-owned Slack has been at the centre of a minor controversy around unclear wording in its privacy principles that seemed to imply customers' data would be used to train its AI (Salesforce added new generative AI capabilities to Slack in February).
Despite a Slack Engineering blog post that stated "We do not train large language models (LLMs) on customer data", businesses and users pointed to wording that seemed to leave the door open for this training unless their organisation opted out wholesale via email. Ars Technica has more detail on the ins and outs of the issue - which had been highlighted by publications including Wired months earlier, but only came to widespread attention last week.
Slack has since clarified the wording in its privacy principles, and published a blog post that acknowledged, "We could have done a better job of explaining our approach, especially regarding the differences in how data is used for traditional machine learning (ML) models and in generative AI." While this may seem like a misunderstanding that got out of hand, it shows the mistrust many consumers have towards how tech companies are likely to treat their data when it comes to generative AI.
Related: Three marketing leaders on how they use GenAI
Are marketers moving fast enough to de-bias AI?
Marketers are clear about the problems with AI when it comes to copyright and customer data security, but are they ignoring the issue of bias?
Helen James writes for Marketing Week about visual content trained on datasets that may perpetuate unrealistic and stereotypical portrayals of women: “If, like me, you believe that too much data that’s supposed to be representative of women today is at best incomplete and at worst reductive, then it suggests that a lot of what AI is being used for in our industry is going to be off-base from the get-go.”
James concludes, “I’d also like to think that... we’re evolved enough – as an industry – to know when to limit the kinds of areas in which we choose to deploy AI for marketing campaigns.”
Related: Members can watch our Digital Shift chapter from last month - How disruptive is GenAI to agencies?
TikTok on the charm offensive?
TikTok has launched a program called Change Makers, featuring creators who “create a positive impact on and beyond the platform.” The creators receive support from the platform and a donation of $25,000 to a non-profit of their choice.
Techcrunch describes the programme as part of TikTok “shaping up its public image” as a ban in the US looms.
Members can download Econsultancy’s Social Quarterly report for more latest news from TikTok and other social platforms. |
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| The Marketing Capability Leaders Forum, May 16th
Waterloo, London, 9am GMT
At Econsultancy HQ, we’ll be hosting our Q2 meet-up for senior leaders in marketing and ecommerce. You’ll hear from a panel of marketing leaders as they reveal how they have navigated transformation, placing capability at the heart of their strategies.
Please note, the forum is invite-only, so registrations are subject to approval. |
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Effective Leadership in the Digital Age
This report draws on Econsultancy’s years of research into how leadership is changing in a digital world and offers useful insights and practical models for navigating the evolving landscape. |
The Future of Marketing: The AI Opportunity
Throughout this year’s Future of Marketing survey, AI was a consistent theme. As one respondent put it, “There is excitement and also anxiety…”
But precisely how many marketers are using generative AI, and where do they believe its value lies? |
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