Rose Herceg, president, Australia and New Zealand at WPP
My three predictions for 2024. Last year, when I wrote this piece, I named five. This time around, I’m settling on three.
1. The Gift That Keeps on Giving
Today, ChatGPT has about 185 million users, generates about $80 million a month in revenue and has just crossed the 10 billion all-time visits mark. That’s more than the number of people who live on this planet. Its subscription offer ($20 per month for GPT-4 - offering far greater accuracy) grows daily. We’re getting better at using it and better at doing what it is intended to do.
I watched someone build an entire government RFP response using GPT. What used to take them fifteen hours took them less than an hour. Then they got down to the real work: they made the language more nuanced, added their tone of voice, their unique offer and serious skills. They hacked away at clunky paragraphs and rewrote key passages. What this person once saw as a ‘mind-numbing exercise in procurement hell’ they now see as ‘pleasant, even enjoyable’.
What’s more, they won the bid.
The more we use AI, the more we’ll understand its natural place in our world.
I once watched a friend turn one of those five-dollar mass-produced chocolate cakes every supermarket sells into an exquisite masterpiece. She took a base and turned it into three-dimensional art. It was the best cake I have ever seen. I was almost sad to cut it. Anyone can buy a cheap, mass-produced cake. It takes real imagination and skill to turn the base of a cake into a work of art.
Ai is the base. The rest is on us.
2. The One Data Point You Need
Knowing useless stuff about your audience is both expensive and unnecessary. Knowing that one thing that makes your customer act is gold.
Every year on my birthday, I have the Peters Original Party Ice Cream Cake. I eat it whole (party for one), and I want for nothing else – some years I share some with my fiancé, others I don’t. Importantly, I buy only one a year – a habit I’ve been doing for as long as I can remember. And I’ll do it for as long as I live. So, why do I do it? It reminds me of my mum and dad throwing me a birthday party at McDonalds (where every migrant kid wanted to celebrate their birthday when they were little), where I got that exact cake. I’ve since purchased it continuously from that same supermarket brand.
Yet, AI and automation (and every other piece of tech) haven’t worked this out.
This is precisely what first-party data should be all about. We all have the one thing that motivates us to act. Patterns and algorithms only work if we ask the right questions. The only thing that the supermarket would need to do to get me to do all my shopping with them is to mention that cake. Give me a countdown of the month before my birthday in anticipation. I don’t expect them to offer me a discount or throw it in for free. What I want is for them to know that one human thing.
So, what’s that one question? I hope 2024 is all about that.
3. Healthcare Becomes Easy and Human
I write this while waiting for my annual health check-up. I take my health seriously; I think more Aussies should. Proactive people taking command of their health and longevity is the future.
Doctors are great. People listening to their bodies is better.
I see a future of Aussies listening, reading, researching, and learning. Not dismissing what their body is trying to tell them. Using AI to take complex medicinal language and turn it into simple English. The entire healthcare industry is poised to transform.
The role of the doctor, as we once understood it, must change as well.
The informed patient is the future.
The next complete reinvention of a category will be healthcare. It has started slowly, but it will pick up speed in 2024/25.
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