Original story

SatWeb - simultaneous transcript 21.10.2015

Speech at Multimedia Advertising XV World Congress, Venice

(Sissy Hunter, Marketing Director, Sony Europe)

Madame Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, virtual friends!

It is a great honour for me to deliver the opening address at what is probably the most important congress in the Federation’s 15-year history. I assume that I have been chosen because our company is largely responsible for the development of the technologies that are currently under threat from the authorities. Now, if ever, is the moment for a determined response, if we are to overcome the fears and dangers that face our industry.

Our latest product shows splendidly what can be done with the latest in information technology. In field trials, FourSale has regularly and almost embarrassingly outperformed even the best videophone sales reps. As I’m sure you are all aware, FourSale is a highly developed personality imitation of a telephone sales representative, which can be transmitted to viewers via the advertising channel of their multivision units. A huge database of human behaviour models has been integrated into the programme. Particular attention has been paid to the ways in which the individual covers up the fact that he or she does not understand everything that is said to him. FourSale is capable of interpreting accurately the customer’s areas of interest from eye movements, is able to react correctly to even the slightest positive gestures, and is designed carefully to present an optimum onscreen image blending innocence and interest in the customer’s needs.

I do not need to tell you that some members of the EU Commission have voiced the opinion that programmes such as FourSale work on the subconscious and in this way force people to buy the products that they are shown. This is of course inflammatory nonsense. In fact FourSale only performs in the same fashion as the door-to-door brush or encyclopaedia salesmen many of us have seen from old movies and newsreels. I hope that nobody would claim that in selling from door to door such things as consideration of the customer’s needs, a friendly smile, and a shrewd grasp of sales psychology were somehow “dangerous”. If multimedia advertising is now to be regarded as “threatening” or “manipulative”, we are taking a large step backwards - a step of a hundred years and more - in the development of the noble art of marketing.

The views expressed within the EU are of crucial importance to us, not least because marketing has long been in the throes of a crisis of a different kind. Consumers are able by means of the search-agents to bypass the conventional means and channels of advertising. The passive advertisement of the past - one in which there is no interactive discourse with the client - is dead and buried. The cold hard truth for us is that today the most effective sales channels to be found are the official statements and test results issued by the consumer protection authorities, and we all know very well that such officials are not the most marketing-friendly individuals on the planet.

Friends, we are under attack. What weapons do we have with which to defend ourselves? They are entertainment and the ability to please - to entertain, and to please. I suggest that in the months and perhaps even years to come, we must all pay especial attention to the helpfulness and the pleasing aspect of our advertising. Let us ensure that FourSale and other similar programmes contain as much as possible that is entertaining for the viewer, that rewards his attention and his willingness to enter into conversation. We MUST do this, even at the cost of our margins on the sales we score. I firmly believe that we can turn public opinion around to our side, if only our artificial personalities are sufficiently entertaining and liked by the viewers.

Friends, I would like to stress above all that at this critical moment in our history we must all BELIEVE in the future of multimedia advertising, and focus our efforts on optimising results in the long term. Success will not come overnight, and it will not come without hard work, and cooperation, putting our shoulders to the wheel. In closing, let me quote to you some words that I recently discovered from a history file covering a period nearly 100 years ago. They belong to a song, a battlecry of the time, and they embody exactly the sentiments of international unity that we must carry in our hearts as we march into the future:

“So comrades, come rally And the last fight let us face…”

Thank you very much.

Hannula I. & Linturi R. 1998: 100 Phenomena. Yritysmikrot Oy, Helsinki 1998. Copyright notices ISBN 952-9508-18-2

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