AI for Marketing and Product Innovation: Powerful New Tools for Predicting Trends, Connecting with Customers, and Closing Sales, reviewed

By @SimonCocking review of AI for Marketing and Product Innovation: Powerful New Tools for Predicting Trends, Connecting with Customers, and Closing Sales, by A. K. Pradeep, Andrew Appel and Stan Sthanunathan.

AI for Marketing and Product Innovation offers creatives and marketing professionals a non-tech guide to artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML)—twin technologies that stand poised to revolutionize the way we sell. The future is here, and we are in the thick of it; AI and ML are already in our lives every day, whether we know it or not. The technology continues to evolve and grow, but the capabilities that make these tools world-changing for marketers are already here—whether we use them or not. This book helps you lean into the curve and take advantage of AI’s unparalleled and rapidly expanding power. 

How do we use AI and ML in ways that speak to the human spirit? How do we translate cold technological innovation into creative tools that forge deep human connections? Written by a team of experts at the intersection of neuroscience, technology, and marketing, this book shows you the ins and outs of these groundbreaking technological tools.

While this book says it is written for the layman there are points in the text where you do begin to wonder what sort of layman they have in mind. From a neutral perspective we would say there are points where this book goes too deep into the tech. We enjoyed reading it, but we would contest that statement. The title itself also slightly over promises in terms of who this book might really be suitable for. Overall we imagine the likely scenario is the manager, CEO, founder, head of office will buy this, read it briefly and hand it over to the developers to get the most from it. This is of course fine, but equally it might fall between two stools in terms of which audience this book is intended for.

Overall we did find it interesting, with some insights, but we think this book could have benefitted from an overall literary editor to drag the tech heavy insights and work it all into a more accessible and readable context to reach a wider audience. This would also enable the authors to have a wider impact too. They have clearly identified some correct and relevant strategies, but a clearer roadmap is needed to articulate how the reader can apply them to their own businesses.

Their quote of Sebastian Thrun on page 119 is probably more apt than they realised for this book

“Nobody phrases it this way, but I think that artificial intelligence is almost a humanities discipline. It is really an attempt to understand human intelligence and human cognition”

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