Integrated AI solutions in focus at the Brand Roadshow 2025

Marketing, advertising and branding are in a state of upheaval. New technologies, rising expectations and ever faster cycles demand new answers. Artificial intelligence promises efficiency, precision and personalization - and is already changing how brands communicate with target groups. The Brand Roadshow 2025 the Serviceplan Group offered insights into current developments, specific use cases and showed how AI can be integrated into strategy, creation and implementation. It also became clear that without human judgment, creativity and attitude, technology remains a tool - no more, but also no less.

The need for AI integration in marketing

Felix Bartels, CMO of the Serviceplan Group, opened the roadshow and emphasized that there is now a broad awareness of the use of AI. After a phase of trial and error, it is now clear that there is a need for full integration of AI applications along the entire value chain - there is no way around it. As he said in the m&k video interview, the Serviceplan Group, with its House of Communication and its traditionally integrated way of working, has an advantage when it comes to implementing AI applications effectively and achieving the greatest possible leverage. Bartels can look back on over fourteen years of experience at Serviceplan in various positions in marketing and business development - including supporting the internationalization of the group.

Advantages of AI in marketing: speed and strategic focus

According to Bartels, a key advantage of AI is the speed and automation of cognitive hard work. The use of AI gives marketing experts and their clients valuable time to focus more on strategy, sustainable success and creative differentiation. Bartels sees the greatest added value in leaving the routine cognitive tasks to AI and investing the time gained in insights, creation and that certain something that makes a brand unique.

At the same time, Bartels pointed out internal challenges - in particular the need to convince and train the 6,500 employees worldwide in order to establish the new AI tools in everyday life. Understanding and training are needed to integrate these tools into daily processes - an ongoing task for the company.

The development of AI agents

Oskar TrautmannManager AI & Agentic Strategy at Plan.Net Studios, presented the rapid development in the field of AI agents. Especially in the segment of Large Language Models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT, the technology has developed dramatically over the past three years. He himself would not have expected to be able to talk about possible applications in 2025 that are a reality today. AI agents, powered by LLMs, would be able to automate any type of service. Trautmann referred to Bill Gates, who predicted back in November 2023 that agents will revolutionize the way humans interact with computers - comparable to the transition from command input to graphical user interfaces. AI agents act like specialized software units that are controlled by prompts and combine different tools to perform tasks efficiently. According to Square Capital, the market for agents will grow massively in the coming years, far outstripping the traditional software-as-a-service market.

Application examples and the role of humans

Using examples from the travel industry (Lufthansa) and the automotive industry (Porsche vs. Audi/Tesla), Trautmann showed how agents can create highly personalized offers within seconds and automate competitive analyses. For example, the response time of a travel agency to specialized customer inquiries could be reduced from days or weeks to just a few minutes. For Porsche, the automated competitive analysis made it possible to monitor competitors' communication strategies on a daily basis. Despite these efficiency gains, Trautmann emphasized that people, with their values and creativity, remain indispensable. Strategists, creatives and analysts are still required to check AI results, avoid errors and contribute the decisive creative depth. It is important to develop an open attitude towards new tools and to use your own specialist knowledge in a targeted manner for high-quality prompts. The exchange of knowledge must become more intensive - older employees contribute their experience and younger employees their technological expertise.

AI in market research

Anja Reimer, Business Partner at NIQ/GfKhighlighted the role of AI in market research. Consumers are less interested in the technology itself, but rather in simple solutions that make their lives easier. Successful brands are characterized by resilience and future proof and use AI specifically to align their products more closely with consumer needs. The Future Proof Score developed by GfK measures how confident consumers are that a brand will be able to overcome future challenges. Reimer presented AI-based tools from NIQ/GfK that enable innovations to be screened quickly and new product ideas to be tested efficiently - including the AI Screener and the Concept Check. The latter works by entering various concepts into an AI system, which generates realistic synthetic answers based on a sound database - and derives recommendations for the most promising ideas. Reimer emphasized the importance of valid data as the basis for reliable AI applications in order to avoid so-called hallucinations. Using examples from Coca-Cola and Bosch, she showed how established brands are using AI to remain fit for the future and create new experiences. Coca-Cola, for example, used AI for the limited edition "Coke Y3000" and the Christmas commercial, while Bosch uses AI in almost all of its products and is the leader in AI patent applications in Europe. Consumers expect more creativity, productivity, personalized online experiences and improvements in many areas of life from AI - and are willing to pay more for it.

AI in the creative workflow

Raul Serrat, Chief Creative Officer at Serviceplan Suisse AG, discussed the impact of AI on the creative process in the m&k video talk. AI is a helpful tool in "consumer communication" - for example in the adaptation of content. However, humans remain irreplaceable when it comes to developing unique, emotional ideas. Creative excellence means touching people and making them want to engage more deeply with a brand - something that AI cannot achieve in its current state of development. While AI is helpful in reproduction, the initial idea remains crucial in order to have a real impact. The danger of a mere, emotionally gutted copy is real - what is needed is a conscious approach to the new possibilities and a sensitive balance between AI and human creativity.

An end-to-end AI-driven marketing process

Using the example of a high-protein product from Ehrmann, the roadshow presented an end-to-end, AI-supported marketing process consisting of the Insides AI, Creative AI and Activate AI phases:

• Competitive AI: Automated competitive analyses by specialized AI agents that deliver results in just a few minutes that used to take weeks. The vision of an "agent marketplace" was hinted at, where customers can book specialized agents for individual tasks.

• Persona AI: target group analysis using dynamic personas in real time. Questions to the AI provide direct insights that strategists can then refine.

• Generate AI: Semi-automated creation and scaling of advertising materials based on data and playbooks. A "playbook creator" automatically aggregates information, while generative tools create suitable texts and images. Models and environments can be flexibly defined and combined. The assets can then be localized and adapted for different channels - human control remains essential.

• Activate AI: AI-based budget allocation, real-time analysis and campaign optimization. Tools such as the "Growth Investor" optimize the budget along all funnel phases. The "Analyser ID" provides real-time data on performance and gives AI-supported recommendations for optimization.

The solutions presented show impressively how AI increases efficiency (up to 30 % faster target group analysis, up to 10 % time savings in ideation and creation, up to 20 % time and cost savings in adaptation), reduces costs (up to 50 %, in individual cases up to 80 % lower production costs) and significantly increases the impact of marketing measures (20-30 % more advertising impact in the media).