How AI is supercharging creativity and customer engagement

The ability of AI to stimulate greater creativity and enhance the customer experience served as the focus of conversation for Tom Edwards (Managing Director, Consulting, Ernst & Young LLP), Nuno Leal (Principal, Marketing, Product and Data/AI, Consulting, Ernst & Young LLP) and Tashina Charagi (GAI Solutions and Operations Lead, Tripadvisor).

“AI is absolutely a catalyst for creativity. Organizations that adopt both the human and creative elements are seeing a significant impact,” says Edwards.

While AI technologies like generative AI (GenAI) and agentic AI are facilitating seamless operations across various departments — including R&D, marketing and sales, and supply chain — they are also revolutionizing the conceptualization and optimization of creative campaigns, providing insights that empower companies to deliver unique customer experiences.

“Travel itself is a fantastic use case for AI,” says Leal, emphasizing the transformative potential of AI in travel. “These models are extremely good at finding information [and] summarizing it, actually using text.” These capabilities are a crucial part of enhancing the trip planning process.

In this context, companies like Tripadvisor are leveraging AI to create innovative solutions that enhance every aspect of the travel planning journey. An AI-powered trip planning tool allows users to easily arrange their entire itinerary, even if they initially are unsure of their destination or activities.

Consumers “really wanted an easier way to plan their travel, but they also want more visual ways to figure out what their travel will look like when they’re actually there,” says Charagi. The planner allows users to specify preferences that it then leverages to generate a tailored itinerary. “You can say something like ‘Three days. I want it to be warm. I want it to be kid-friendly,’” says Charagi.

Another AI tool at Tripadvisor is helping transform the customer’s trip planning experience by enhancing the user review process. The review summarization capability enables users to quickly find feedback on specific businesses or destinations without having to sift through seemingly countless reviews on the platform.

Additionally, the integration of data and AI helps increase the likelihood that the feedback that users see — both on Tripadvisor and other platforms — comes from real humans rather than spam or fake reviews, Charagi added.

Offering such flexibility and personalization throughout the travel planning process is a game changer in an industry where customer experience can significantly influence future success.

In the marketing field, AI is similarly transforming how businesses analyze and derive valuable insights from vast volumes of customer information, even when it’s sourced from separate origins. The focus is shifting toward AI-ready data, emphasizing the integration of both first-party data tied to transactions and third-party information. By combining these data sources, businesses can drive media efficiency and position themselves to maximize the impact of their AI models, ultimately leading to more effective marketing strategies and improved customer engagement.

Across the marketing discipline, AI is driving a profound end-to-end transformation that shifts the focus from isolated tasks to a more unified approach, Edwards said. Previously, marketers homed in on specific functions, such as consumer insights, an approach that often didn’t translate effectively into media execution.

However, with AI, these various streams can now be integrated, enabling a seamless flow from generated insights to the development and delivery of creative concepts, he added. This integration enhances companies’ ability to scale personalization and create tailored content while also improving attribution — a process that was once labor-intensive and manual. And by leveraging algorithms, marketers can now optimize media strategies in real time, driving efficiencies and maximizing the impact of their marketing efforts.

In addition, AI has made strengthening customer engagement not only possible but also imperative. “Seeing the integration of AI and chat into how we buy helps to create a deeper connection with the consumer, truly understanding and supporting their purchasing journey,” says Edwards.

As AI continues to evolve, its potential to transform industries and enhance customer experiences remains boundless, paving the way for a future where personalization and engagement are at the forefront of business strategies.

“We’re on the brink of discovering more areas where our creative talent can play,” says Leal, sharing his forward-looking perspective. “AI will be part of our lives, so we better do it well and we better do it with creativity in mind.”

To learn more about how AI is disrupting fields like marketing and travel, watch the full video below.