Meta’s head of top accounts and agencies for APAC, Tawana Murphy Burnett has said that AI will usher in an entirely new era of advertising, flipping the script on traditional media buying techniques and approaches.
Speaking to B&T at the Carlton Hotel in Cannes, Burnett said that agencies are completely rethinking how generative AI could change their business.
“It’s fundamental. It’s how AI can help if we went from a place where we were buying billboards and buying space, now we’re at a place where AI can help with outcomes,” she said.
“There’s excitement around how they do smart targeting, how they find the next batch of new-to-the-world for that brand. It’s using first-party data, our AI capabilities and helping to find audiences more smartly.”
Meta announced new AI features during the show in the south of France. Its Chameleon model was publicly released for researchers. This new model, it said, can understand and generate both text and images — unlike OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Sora models.
“The possibilities are endless,” the company said in a press release.
It also released a “multi-token prediction” approach to training Large Language Models (LLMs) — the datasets used to train AI models such as Chameleon or Sora. The multi-token prediction approach will see Meta train language models predict multiple future words at once, instead of one at a time, speeding up development, training and deployment — at least in theory.
It also said its JASCO text-to-music model was “comparable to the evaluated baselines considering generation quality while allowing significantly better and more versatile controls over the generated music.”
Its AudioSeal tool, which can detect AI-generated speech in audio files, was also being released under a commercial licence.
“Agencies love the ability to help clients build new capabilities, said Burnett.
“Emerging tools and technology can help them scale the good work and the good storytelling that they want to do but also brand voice.
“When it comes to large businesses and the brands, you have some that want to be fast followers and wait and see what happens [with the first deployers]. Last year at Cannes, there was more fear [around AI] with things like IP concerns and a loss of uniqueness but this year you have much more practical AI examples. It’s AI in the wild, so to speak, and it’s being applied to both the performance side and seeing the outcomes… and then there’s the practical application of it and those who want the first-mover opportunity.”
The former Pfizer and Intuit marketer said that based on her client interactions in Cannes, Coca-Cola and L’Oréal were at the leading edge of AI-driven marketing, while a global CPG firm was slightly more reserved.
While clients and the big tech platforms are certainly excited about AI, including Elon Musk, most of the creatives at the show were distinctly unperturbed by the emerging technology.
Cyril Louis, executive creative director of LePub APAC, told B&T: “Once everyone has access to the same tools, we will arrive at a plateau where we will see a sea of the same work and we will have clients that will want to pay for more creativity.
However, Burnett said her Asia-spanning role meant that she spent most of the last year trying to “unpack” generative AI with agency leaders.
“There’s a lot of opportunity to learn. Korea has been leaning in on education and government, in particular. India is doing great work, like the Mondelēz campaign that has won tonnes of awards. People want to understand who did that work and how it happened.
“My role, and Meta’s role, has been evangelising what’s working now and then asking lots of questions,” she said.
One of the main questions being asked up and la Croisette was why the tech platforms, which previously existed primarily as surfaces to display adverts, are now getting involved in creating the ads that appear on their platforms and beyond.
“Our mission has always been about connection and connecting people and business, and providing the tools that allow the connection to be frictionless and seamless. We’ve given voice and tools to creators, that’s been a big focus for us for some time now, and all of that stems from the idea that we want to be a place where people can connect,” said Burnett.
If one thing’s for certain, it’s that Meta has provided a variety of opportunities for brands to connect with consumers — whether through increasingly optimised creative through its Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns or through potentially spurious influencer brand endorsements.
“We see the shift in consumer behaviour, particularly in Asia with one in three people connecting with businesses per week through tools like Whatsapp. I’m from New York, I wouldn’t have had my doctor reaching out to me on Whatsapp, you could probably barely get an appointment. But in Singapore, we have that relationship,” she said.
“Sometimes our platforms can be more prevalent in certain parts of the world. If you look at Japan, it’s certainly Instagram and now Threads. That’s very different to India where Reels is dominant. It can feel like we are pushing a certain agenda — I mean we certainly are a business — but we provide a suite of tools. With some of our larger advertisers, there is a longstanding relationship and every year it comes down to what are their objectives and priorities. There is always a foundation of best practices.”
Perhaps, then, the AI peddling at Cannes is not as insidious as some in the industry would have you believe. Perhaps AI will become just another tool in campaign production and in the media mix — in the same way that you might run a big 3D anamorphic billboard in one area of town and some smaller posters in another area. Perhaps the sun will come up tomorrow — despite the sun firmly setting on some small independent publishers.
