Omnicom’s newest data scientist hire is a chatbot—kind of.
To arm its network of agencies with more data and analytic tools, Omnicom-owned Annalect is launching an internal chatbot called Annalect Utility Bot Interface (or AUBI) that spits out deep troves of data faster than the agency’s team of data scientists can handle. The idea is to make Annalect’s data more readily available to anyone within Omnicom—from creatives, media buyers and strategists—that works with Annalect.
“Chatbot technology has arrived as a form of artificial intelligence to facilitate automated exchange between a user and an entity,” said Slavi Samardzija, global CEO at Annalect. “We said how about we build a chatbot to bridge this gap between a super powerful data scientist and an end user—a strategist, a creative director, a planner, a buyer.”
Here’s how it works: Once staffers log into Annalect’s platform, they can use the AUBI app. From there, AUBI prompts workers to answer a question about what they’re looking for. At launch, AUBI can perform a handful of tasks that previously required a lengthy process of manually coding data. So, a creative at BBDO or media buyer for OMD, for example, could use the tool to dig up data that crunches which websites consumers use.