During any recession, or financial quarter which experiences negative growth, advertising and promotional opportunities are likely to suffer. As I have recently joined 3rd Time Media as the New Business Development Executive I was intrigued to discover how the recession had affected the marketing world.

What I discovered was that although consumer confidence was affected by the recession, the economy will always have the fundamental requirements of supply and demand and through that, commercial advertising will always be essential.

During the recession 3rd Time Media continued to provide quality online creative for its wide range of clientele as well as employ me with the responsibility of promoting the business and increasing opportunities. This is an exciting challenge that demonstrates the companies’ and my personal ambition for growth.

This blog coincides with the end of the recession which has been well documented. In many news and media websites the office of national statistics reported a 0.1% increase in growth in Q4 2009 and although this was weaker than expected, it demonstrates that throughout 2010 both consumer and commercial confidence will grow.

Confidence, both consumer and commercial, ensures that there is sufficient time and money spent on marketing and it is through this increased confidence that I have already booked a few meetings in 2010 with some internationally recognisable brands ensuring that the year starts as it means to go on!

Javid, our in house developer, has designed a new CRM system for me to use daily in house. It is an easy to use, efficient CRM, which enables different parts of the sales cycle from lead generation and data entry through to booking meetings to be detailed and logged correctly. It has ensured all the correct information is always at hand leaving me more time on the phone. It is for this reason, as well as the ones above, that I feel that 2010 is going to be a fantastic year!

Research is being undertaken at 3TM on the usefulness of creating applications that use Artificial Intelligence as part of their pursuit of cutting-edge web technology. Trends on the Internet may be suggesting that people out there are simply starving for “cool” items that recognise their senses and requirements. Evidence supporting this is the worldwide adoption of features on websites that provide a hint of sensual/intellectual recognition. A few examples are:

• Website Personalisation
• Search suggestions
• Various games on Facebook
• Question/Answer bots

On a conceptual level currently, 3TM are embarking on a path to revolutionise their methodologies with the use of AI in the future. Although AI principles have already been applied to many software packages in the past (e.g. Natural Language Processing), the web still has a long way to go. Very simple AI principles can do very complex things. Since one of 3TM’s specialties is to deliver results by enhancing customer-experience, they are now looking at making use of these clever principles to create an enjoyable web experience whilst boosting customer interaction and customer loyalty.

Imagine each web page you visit would act as a friend, who understands your wants and needs. It remembers from your past and acts accordingly. This already exists in many places without users realising it. However, 3rd Time Media may be planning on designing processes that take this approach to the next level, by making use of learning algorithms that not only look at users’ last actions, but also their previous actions as long as they’ve known the web site, or partnering websites. So if your actions vary in different moods, the application will understand what to present to you, depending on the mood it detects from you. Furthermore, the application will comprehend the responses of other users, in order to make early judgments for users with similar moods.

To do this effectively, a combination of client and server-side technologies are going to be used. These will be common technologies that will not require users to obtain any extra software. Simple elements of those common technologies will be used to filter through variables that can produce enough data to negotiate content, styles and events for users.

Example: Change colours, styles, fonts, images, events depending on user actions.

However, it must be noted that the boundaries here stretch much further than personalisation. A more business-oriented goal of analysing users’ actions is conversion. Artificial Intelligence at 3TM can potentially help a great deal in this aspect of business. User Interface design and usability are ever-changing concepts, especially across different industries. But imagine a website that changes its look and functionality depending on user-response and conversion whilst remembering all of its old states, applying them where ever appropriate.

A few examples of applications that 3TM believe may be possible without the need of staff intervention:

• Swap images to see which ones are more enticing to users and turn those users into customers
• Decide whether to show “VAT” price or “ex VAT” price depending on how likely it is that a potential customer is going to buy/trust.
• Swap special offers or trial versions depending on user and user mood.
• Exchange copy wording depending on an estimate of each user’s cognitive variation.
• Provide variation in branding to gain trust from distinctive parties depending on their geographic location and status.
• Email marketing and Email style variations, depending on user and likelihood of customer interest.

Dangerous? Ridiculous? Trial and error or Challenging? Has potential? Can it enhance conversion? Can it attract new customers? Can it help retain existing customers?

3TM believe that the potential of making a positive change to sales and customer retention is fairly strong in this arena.