Celebrities turn to cognitive to boost customer engagement

This story is sponsored by IBM

Given an opportunity, we’d love to interact with famous personalities; be it in the field of sports, entertainment, music or business. But not all of us can talk to celebrities personally. There are millions of fans spread across the world making it difficult for celebrities to handpick a few and ignore others and to have a personal conversation.

But in the age of social engagement where user engagement has touched a new high, can celebrities ignore the fan base?

Technology has improved to such an extent that there are tools that can help celebrities interact and engage with every fan, and give this interaction a unique personal touch. Chatbots powered by artificial intelligence are the future of engagement between a fan, a brand, or a celebrity.

For instance, Christina Milian, the American singer, songwriter and actress, uses chatbots to interact with her fans on Facebook and build her popularity. Milian, instead of posting on social media once in a while by carefully selecting a time to post, now uses chatbot to interact with fans anytime and anywhere. American record artist, Ryan Leslie gives every fan his phone number. Surprisingly, instead of a million unwanted phone calls, he’s earning more money with deeper intelligence about his listeners. Chatbot simplifies the task for celebrities and provides them with great user analytics.

There are several start-ups that are building customised platforms to suit the needs of different celebrities. Mumbai-based SuperFan.ai, the product of Hero Labs Infotech Pvt Ltd, is one such, which is leveraging technology to create personalised bots and increase one-on-one engagement with the audiences.

This approach helps celebrities deliver the right message, at the right time, to the right audience, using the SAAS- based celebrity endorsement platform that manage their social media accounts and ad campaigns. A machine learning ability allows celebrities to use predictive capabilities to help them respond to and engage with their audience instantly.

SuperFan.ai’s AI capabilities are backed by IBM’s Bluemix^TM cloud platform. Superfan.ai uses IBM Watson^TM APIs like personality insights, natural language classifier, alchemy analytics and sentiment analysis to improve responses from bots and allow a machine to reply using conversational English.

“Bluemix is relatively easy for us and everything is available at the click of a button. Initially, we were able to handle 10 customers at a given point of time but with Bluemix we are now handling 10 times the number. It has also improved our go-to-market by 10 times,” says Snehal Dhruve, co-founder and CEO of Hero Labs Infotech Pvt Ltd.

With the younger generation ignoring emails, and with social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter not always being a reliable way to connect with fans, SuperFan.ai builds a strong bond between celebrities and their fans.

According to market estimates, the global chatbots market was valued at $88.5 million in 2015 and is anticipated to witness a significant compound annual growth rate over the next five years. ¹ The report further notes that Asia-Pacific Chatbots market is expected to see robust growth sparked by increasing usage of messaging applications in countries such as India, Malaysia, South Korea, Japan, Indonesia and China.

To learn more about how start-ups in India are leveraging cognitive capabilities using the IBM Cloud, signup for the IBM India Onward event.

Featured image sourced from the Facebook page of Shah Rukh Khan