Are we doing this again with Artificial Intelligence?
On March 10, 2000, a five-year dotcom bubble bursts on the Nasdaq Index. Even blue-chip tech companies lost more than 80% of their market value and it would be 15 years before Nasdaq would see that peak again. “The dotcom bubble, also known as the Internet bubble, grew out of a combination of the presence of speculative or fad-based investing, the abundance of venture capital funding for startups, and the failure of dotcoms to turn a profit. Investors poured money into Internet startups during the 1990s hoping they would one day become profitable. Many investors and venture capitalists abandoned a cautious approach for fear of not being able to cash in on the growing use of the Internet.”
At the height of the dotcom hype, organizations were changing their name (not just the domain) to include this suffix, i.e. Acme.com. This attempt to differentiate almost became silly and the butt of jokes.
Increasingly, this pundit is seeing a similar thought process when it comes to artificial intelligence. The new marketing moniker/domain is now Acme.ai. We predict .ai identification will end in flames as did .com. This is not to say artificial intelligence will go away but that it will become mainstream, just as the Internet did not fade into marketing oblivion. Online business is now just the way we do business and access to it is available to all at a marginal cost that approaches zero.
Branding
Much of this section is adapted from our report prepared for a United Nations Agency.
The concept of the Brand is well established in marketing literature and practice. The Brand is a messaging vehicle that seeks to position all consumers and stakeholders “on the same page.” As discussed herein, it is a powerful construct and may be of useful to the nuclear power sector as it seeks to embody an AI Culture into all stakeholders.
The theory of the Brand Wheel is addressed herein. To address the Key Themes and concerns raised during the conference, it appears that “AI Culture” may need to become a “Brand.” Strong Brands generate a powerful emotional response!
For example, a positive brand such as BMW’s “the ultimate driving machine” (at least in the USA) transcend other issues such as the high cost of maintenance of these automobiles. Negative branding often can never be overcome as the Coca Cola Company learned when they launched “New Coke” in 1985. This company almost ruined a long-standing strong brand!
Construct
We put forth a Brand mental model for debate within the industry. In this section, the construct or set of organizing ideas for consideration are developed.
In accordance with the theory, the AI Culture Brand Wheel (High Level Framework) is composed of two major categories:
Facts & Symbols or those components of the Brand that address the “hard” and often more measurable aspects.
- What the Product, Service, or Solution does for ME
- How I would Describe the Product, Service, or Solution
Brand Personality addresses the more emotional side of the Brand
- How the Brand make ME look
- How the Brand makes ME feel
Populating the Wheel
The Groups (developed in a workshop) in the following diagram are believed to be representative of major issues the sector faces. It follows that any marketing message to stakeholders should address their concerns.
These four quadrants were populated with over twenty Groups from the Affinity Diagram process. This is a high-level approach to populate the wheel with the almost 200 AI Culture issues (variables) identified from participants.
The following table shows the Groups by Brand Wheel Quadrant and the Rationale behind the categorization. The focus is on the individual person and how he or she relates to the AI Culture Brand. By extension, how individual stakeholders feel is how their organization or group feels about the Brand.
The Brand Wheel is an easy-to-use model that helps organization position themselves in crowded market segments.
Graphically, these Groups are shown in the following figure. Seven Groups fall in the top two quadrants as more tangible variables (Fact) by nature and four in the Personality quadrants. One can surmise that a Brand such as Systemic AI Culture would require substantial “technical” support to be credible.
The intangible Groups can be considered the Brand emotional delivery mechanisms. Collectively, the Systemic AI Culture Brand can be considered a key aspect the industry Go-to-Market strategy—selling Systemic AI Culture.
Similar to the way an Affinity Diagram adds high value to the team doing the work, developing the Brand Wheel adds significant value to the process itself. Figures and charts are visual representations of concepts that are highly appealing. The Brand Wheel is one method supported by the Affinity Diagram to capture a large set and sometimes conflicting issues into a model individuals can grasp and internalize.
Finalizing the Brand
A brand Tag Line would be helpful to etch the construct into the minds of all stakeholders. For example, High Reliability Management used the concept of Mindfulness—the practice of maintaining a nonjudgmental state of heightened or complete awareness of one’s thoughts, emotions, or experiences on a moment-to-moment basis, also such a state of awareness (situational awareness).
Concluding Thoughts
To be clear, branding is not the end game in marketing but one of many prongs used to achieve strategic advantage and greater shareholder value. It is a convenient framework that captures the essence of who the organization is. This approach is immensely more successful than simply attaching .ai to the organization name, hoping for differentiation. Any competitor can do exactly the same thing.
Earn your value the old fashion way, with viable products that solve problems, customers, profits and return to shareholders. Forget about the hype!
Is your organization taking Rudyard Kipling’s advice to his son, “If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you, if you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
but make allowance for their doubting too!”
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See our Economic Value Proposition Matrix® (EVPM) for additional information and a free version to build your own EVPM.
The author’s credentials in this field are available on his LinkedIn page. Moreover, Dr. Shemwell is the coauthor of the 2023 book, “Smart Manufacturing: Integrating Transformational Technologies for Competitiveness and Sustainability.” His focus is on Operational Technologies.
We are also pleased to announce our forthcoming book to be released by CRC Press in June 2025, Navigating the Data Minefields: Management’s Guide to Better Decision-Making. This is a book for the non-IT executive who is faced with making major technology decisions as firms acquire advanced technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI).
“People fail to get along because they fear each other; they fear each other because they don’t know each other; they don’t know each other because they have not communicated with each other.” (Martin Luther King speech at Cornell College, 1962). For more information on Cross Cultural Engagement, check out our Cross-Cultural Serious Game. You can contact this author as well.
For more details regarding climate change models, check out Bjorn Lomborg and his book, False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet.
Regarding the economics of Climate Change, check out our blog, Crippling Green.
For those start-up firms addressing energy (including renewables) challenges, the author can put you in touch with Global Energy Mentors which provide no-cost mentoring services from energy experts. If interested, check it out and give me a shout.
