On the latest episode of Campaign Middle East’s On The Record podcast, Katib Belkhodja, the Director of Customer Centricity at Al-Futtaim Automotive, sparks an interesting conversation on the role of marketers in an AI-integrated environment.
In conversation with Campaign Middle East, Belkhodja discusses how to prepare marketing teams to use AI advancements effectively to positively impact both brand and business outcomes. He shares details on how AI is revolutionising sales for car brands, dealerships, and OEMs, as well as the skills gaps that need to be addressed within the industry.
Beginning the conversation with a focus on a ‘Beta Forever’ mindset, Belkhodja says, “In this life, whether it is professional or personal, everything is constantly changing. When it comes to digital marketing – and with AI – it’s even more true. In my view, it’s about constantly educating ourselves, and being abreast and updated with the latest changes.”
He added, “If you look at the past 15 years, marketing has changed massively from traditional models of sending a message on billboards or on television when it was all about going big with a big story. Then, it developed with more precision marketing as we had access to a lot more data. We began targeting customers in a more meaningful, contextual and hyper-personalised manner. AI is only putting that on testosterone. Therefore, the role of the CMO is about how you can use AI to augment scale, productivity and efficiencies but, at the same time, keeping humans at the core of holding the output of AI accountable.”
Before discussing the prevalent skills and knowledge gap within the market, especially in terms of AI, Campaign Middle East also discussed the say-do gap between intent and adoption within the market.
Commenting on the state of the current market, Belkhodja said, “The adoption of AI and GenAI – based on its current capabilities – is very low. There was a survey conducted on approximately 700 marketers and agency professionals and only 22 per cent showed a high intent for its complete adoption. Yet, what’s interesting is that out of this 22 per cent who should high intent, only 30 per cent of them had adopted AI. This is only in terms of adoption.”
“Then there’s the discussion about the knowledge gap. The survey asked the same set of people whether they know what AI and GenAI is. While more than 50 per cent claimed to know what GenAI is, only 14 per cent were able to get at least 2 out of 5 questions about GenAI correct on the survey.”
During the podcast, Belkhodja also responded to questions on the need to shift the marketing budget from fixed cost – in terms of production or creativity – into a consumer-facing budget such as media buying.
“There is a notion of future, near-market and in-market audiences,” Belkhodja explained. “You rarely have the possibility to produce enough content in order to hit the message home on a future audience – an audience likely to buy in 12 months; a near-market audience – likely to buy within six months; and an in-market audience that is now – within the next 30-45 days at a level where you’re able to create awareness, consideration and conversion. In order to have that capability, you need to have a huge marketing budget in terms of media and in terms of production.”
He added, “AI solves the production part, so you can create a lot more assets, a lot faster, at lower cost, so you can reallocate all that money into the media part. So, the conversation that we need to have with the CFO in order to hit concrete business objectives is very straightforward.”
For more such insights from a very intriguing conversation, watch the full video above or click the link here.
CREDITS:
Guest: Katib Belkhodja, the Chief Customer Centricity Director, Al-Futtaim Automotive
Host: Anup Oommen, Editor, Campaign Middle East
Videography: Mark Mathew, Creative Content Producer, Motivate Create
Studio and production: Ahmed Abdelwahab, Studio Manager, Motivate Media Group
