In this week's lessons from the AI + Innovation Stage, host, Livia Bernardini, writes about an ice cream, a Fiat that used to break down, and a woman who finally got through to her about video.

Last time I confessed I was too chicken to ask the LLM what it thought of me (and still haven't done it) and today there are more confessions to make. So let's get on with it. But let me first talk to you about more amazing speakers I had the chance to welcome as Chair of the AI + Innovation stage this year, and how they are winning in the age of AI.

Win with humans

Let's start with the easy answer. Reddit is smashing it and Hanna Walker gave the least complicated reason for it on stage: real people still want answers from real people. Obvious when you say it. Less obvious in a summer where my eleven-year-old told me "ask Claude, mum". So it was refreshing to be reminded that real humans still make the difference online.

Which is why the AI Agony Aunt session worked so well. Alessandra Di Lorenzo, Patrick Williamson and the rest of the panellists sat there taking actual questions from actual people and answering them there and then, no deck to support them. A real surgery, and the only session of the three days where nobody on stage prepared.

Childhood memories

If you ever have to bring an icon back from the dead, the Cornetto team did it properly. And as an Italo Brit I am delighted they did. Elif Terzi opened by admitting how ironic it was to be standing on the AI stage with a campaign that had nothing to do with AI, and I loved her for it. Who wants to talk about AI when you can talk about delicious ice creams?

The team at Wall's ice cream were offered the sensible thing, which was to test the three versions of the possible remake of the iconic song against a synthetic audience to see which one would have worked best. They said no, went to a sync agency and instead walked round the office asking every British person of the right age which one sounded right. Because you can test a song for quality, as Elif put it, but you cannot test whether it is a hit, and a hit is a childhood memory.

It worked to the point that the public got impatient and they had to release three days early, which sounds fun and was apparently a crisis room, twenty thousand earned posts and four front pages later. I am personally grateful to the team as they revived my childhood memories.

And I am a bit of a softie when it comes to big Italian brand comebacks, as in 2007 I was part of the team that relaunched the Fiat 500 globally, including in the UK, a market where Fiat had spent years standing for Fix It Again Tony. We changed that quite drastically and I still drive a 500 in London today. Still parking it appallingly.

Culture you can't get around

Martin Karaffa and Christina Habib's session was the one I would send to anybody doing global work, and I suggest you do the same. Culture, subculture and market context decide whether your creative works, and whether the stereotype that flatters one market will offend the next. Generations move differently again.

With my own multi-market scars, I found Martin and Christina's presentation not only fascinating but essential for any marketeer approaching global challenges.

Culture wins, as it has always won. AI does not change that, it just gives you more confidence to be wrong on a larger scale, with the remote possibility of deeply offending someone along the way too.

And then Chelsie

Chelsie Hall from Sprinklr made the case for video so thoroughly that there was nothing left for me to argue with. Which was irritating, given how much work I have put into my excuses.

When Chelsie delivered all of her brilliant insights and rationales while heavily pregnant, on a stage that felt like a greenhouse, the least I could do was honour her words, listen properly and get over myself. And so I will do my best to stop chickening out on the video side, thanks to Chelsie and to MAD//Fest who have kindly uploaded the video of my session, so the decision has been taken out of my hands and maybe, just maybe, I will be a step closer to making some video content shortly. Baby steps.

What's next

Somewhere between Reddit, a comeback driven by fans, a culture argument and two women on a hot stage, the how turned out to be a who. That is where we go next.

Send me a message on LinkedIn, or come and say hi at Intuition Edge. Still not having asked ChatGPT or Claude what they think of me, but working up to it.