For decades, human faces have been used to build trust and aspiration for brands – celebrities, influencers, founders, even mascots. Human faces clearly have distinct advantages as celebrities and real-life influencers. But as marketing becomes always-on, hyper-personalised and spread across dozens of platforms, human brand ambassadors come with some real limitations. They can be expensive, inconsistent, finite in availability and sometimes risky.
This is where AI brand ambassadors are beginning to play a serious role. An AI brand ambassador is basically a computer-generated character which is energized by artificial intelligence which works as the face and voice of the brand. These are not gimmicky chatbots or sci-fi experiments. They are often photorealistic digital personas which feel real and can speak for brands, engage customers and deliver content at scale. Increasingly, global brands are discovering that AI ambassadors can do many things humans simply cannot and do them better.
Why the usage of AI Brand Ambassadors is growing?
Human brand ambassadors have played a powerful role in marketing over the years because they bring fame, credibility, cultural connect, real emotion and have often delivered significant brand lift. However, they can also bring with them a fair bit of unpredictability.
Their availability can be a challenge given how busy they are. There is only so much that they will do within the contractual terms which are often a bit rigid. There could also be the odd scandal that can force your brand to scramble for cover to avoid reputational risk.
Much of this is avoided when you use AI Brand Ambassadors. They are available round the clock, across markets and time zones. Their tone, messaging and behaviour remain consistent, regardless of scale. Additionally, they can be fully owned by the brand crafted to stand for just the right values and persona that the brand wants to be represented with. Categories which require a lot of trust, education, clarity and consistency rather than short term flair AI Brand ambassadors can serve as a great ally to the brand marketing & customer engagement process.
This would especially apply to categories like finance, healthcare, travel, technology, education and similar others categories where trust and constant customer education is important to building the brand and its relationship with users.
The Brand owned vs third party AI ambassadors
Brands today are using AI brand ambassadors in two distinct ways:
Brand Owned AI Ambassadors – These are digital personas specially curated for a brand and defined to fit perfectly into the brand’s tonality, values and its customer proposition. These often play a multi-dimensional role in the brand’s ecosystem, customer service, web and app presence, social and other content channels.
Technology companies and service brands are increasingly using such ambassadors as guides, explainers and companions rather than pure promoters. AI Brand Ambassadors like this are often born for a specific role and then keep growing to acquire other roles for the brand and can become full-fledged brand representatives. The best thing about this approach is that brands have complete control and can build these ambassadors for the long run.
Third party AI Influencers – The other way in which brands use Virtual AI Brand Ambassadors is like how brand influencers are used. Here brands use Virtual AI Influencers who have acquired a significant following to ride their popularity for Campaigns and content creation. The most famous example has been ‘Lil Miquela’, a virtual influencer who has partnered with brands like Prada, Calvin Klein and Samsung. Her success comes from her human like behaviour & cultural participation rather than being always salesy. There are countless other examples of Virtual AI influencers and their use by brands as influencers.
Roles for Brand Ambassadors beyond Brand Promotion
AI Brand Ambassadors are now taking over roles across service, content and even lower funnel sales closure. Customer service has been a value-added role for AI Brand Ambassadors which lifts the customer experience to be a warm and personal experience significantly superior to the traditional chatbot. In complex categories, AI Brand Ambassadors are being used to educate users and customers by simplifying complex subjects into conversational, easy to digest content. From a Brand Promotion standpoint AI Brand Ambassadors have become content creators who appear in videos, social posts, explainer videos, performance marketing campaigns, etc. When it comes ecommerce environments, they tend to help customers discover products and compare options sometimes in real time.
Global outlook
There are quite a few examples of brands that are using either their owned AI brand ambassadors or using Virtual AI Influencers. These initiatives have worked when they have been sensitive to the consumer role & emotion that they address rather than just being looked at as a technology solution. Some examples are of campaigns using owned or 3rd party Virtual AI Influencers
1. Henkel Consumer Brands operates over 25 different Agentic AI Agents across 11 countries and covers at least 10 different products. These Agentic AI Agents deliver consistent, multilingual service. For example: Persil Stain Bot (Henkel): An AI agent used by Henkel to provide 24/7 expert advice on stain removal.
2. Loctite Product Advisor, this brand is operating within the adhesives division and this AI Agent assists in choosing the right product.
Closer home we have Naina Avtr : A photorealistic influencer from Mumbai who has worked with Nykaa, Pepsi, and Puma. We also have Radhika Subramaniam: India’s first bilingual (Tamil and English) AI travel influencer. In most of the successful cases, the audience experience and engagement mattered more than the technology itself.
At Tidal7 too, we have had the joy of creating TACY for Thomas Cook which illustrates how an AI Brand Ambassador can be deployed meaningfully at scale. TACY has been created as a long-term digital asset rather than a campaign specific digital property. TACY has evolved from being a digital customer service assistant to becoming a photorealistic presenter of brand content, simplifying Thomas Cook’s offering into easy to digest content units while building on Thomas Cook’s trust and new age credentials. TACY is now used for long form storytelling, short videos, static creative and performance marketing creative and is only growing more and more influential.
What the Future looks like – in India and Globally
AI Brand Ambassadors are becoming more realistic, almost emotionally aware and more conversational. This is making them easier to relate to and interact with. Consequently, their role in the context of brands has been growing and is only likely to grow deeper. They are already handling customer service issues almost as well as humans, in fact, better in some cases. They will increasingly play the role of personalised brand companions, probably guide immersive brand experiences, and definitely play the role of educating current and potential customers.
In India, the potential is endless with a digital first population and with increasing comfort with AI across the board. The personalisation that AI Brand Ambassadors allow and their ability to present themselves fluently in local languages gives them a fillip. AI Brand Ambassadors are not for replacing humans. They are about extending a brand’s presence, personality and usefulness in a world where attention is fragmented and expectations are high. For brands that invest thoughtfully, they may soon become as familiar and trusted as any human face ever was.
(Views are personal)
