As part of this year’s Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Marketing (AfM) conference at the TH Rosenheim, the new working group “AI & Brand(ing)” was launched. The AfM is the network of all marketing professors at universities of applied sciences in the DACH region.

The new working group will focus on the impact of AI on marketing teaching, practice, and science. More than 60 AfM colleagues want to get involved in the work of the new group in the future. Approximately 20 colleagues attended the founding meeting in Rosenheim, where they discussed the first work packages in detail. The following four keynote speeches highlighted different aspects during the founding meeting:

• Prof. Dr. Ulrich Bucher (Baden-Württemberg Cooperative State University Stuttgart): From classic to AI-supported: A comparison of two approaches to empirical research
• Prof. Dr. Carsten Baumgarth (Berlin School of Economics and Law): AI art infusion effect
• Prof. Dr. Mahmut Arica (FOM University of Applied Sciences for Economics and Management): Practical AI tools for marketing
• Prof. Dr. Gunnar Mau (Magdeburg-Stendal University of Applied Sciences): Chatbots as a touchpoint for students.

Prof. Dr. Carsten Baumgarth (HWR Berlin) initiated the AI & Brand(ing) working group and acts as its spokesperson.

Prof. Baumgarth and Dr. Steffen Schmidt delivered the keynote speech “Augmented Brand Intelligence by AI for practice AND science” at the 18th Global Brand Conference. The keynote speech presented the following five characteristics of Augmented Brand Intelligence:

(1) AI is accepted and integrated into brand work and brand research as a fully-fledged team member.

(2) The specific use case and not the features of tools form the starting point for augmented brand intelligence.

(3) Brand tasks, systems, and use cases require a meaningful combination of tools from different AI classes combined with human intelligence and expertise.

(4) Brand managers and researchers can only use augmented brand intelligence if they have extensive skills and expertise (e.g., mental models, data, creativity, critical thinking, and domain expertise).

(5) The Humans are responsible for the precise description of the task, the selection of the most suitable (AI) tools, the input request, the administration of the required data, and the interpretation and critical reflection of the AI results (“in-the-loop”).

The application of Augmented Brand Intelligence was then demonstrated for various practical (brand positioning) and scientific use cases (literature review, scale development, replication, science communication).
Finally, two hot topics were presented using AI agents and synthetic data.

The slides can be downloaded here.

AI is everywhere! But does it feel human, personal … and on BRAND?

Brand practice and brand science revolve around different orbits. The project “Building Brand” tries to connect these two worlds. Prof. Baumgarth is particularly pleased when these encounters result in concrete collaborations on exciting and relevant brand topics.

One such collaboration is the “AI Conversation Branding Study 2025” project with partners MetaDesign, eye square & Hochschule für Wirtschaft und Recht Berlin.

The aim was to analyze whether and how AI-generated chatbots can be designed as brand touchpoints in real time in a brand-oriented way. To this end, a mental model (OCEAN personality model) was used as a fine-tuning approach for ChatGPT, and experts and consumers were confronted with these chatbots in several studies.

The key findings are:

1. Chatbots ≠ cost center – they demonstrably boost brand strength.
2. OCEAN fine-tuning ensures a consistent brand voice – otherwise, there is a risk of brand violations and generic small talk.
3. Strong power brands? Need fewer fine-tuning, because their brand values and brand tonality are already embedded in the training corpus of the LLMs.

More information about the study and the opportunity to try out the approach can be found here.

Today, Dr. Steffen Schmidt and Prof. Dr. Carsten Baumgarth presented our concept of augmented brand intelligence in a three-hour workshop moderated by Prof. Dr. Klaus-Peter Wiedmann at the 24th International Marketing Trends Conference in Venice. We explained the collaboration of human and artificial intelligence for use cases from both brand practice and brand science. The slides can be downloaded here.

Research results should be available as quickly as possible. Our B*lab report working paper series, launched at the end of 2020, is designed to help with this. The sixth edition, which has now been published, presents the best work of master’s students from the “Advanced Brand Management” course from the summer semester of 2024. This special issue focuses on the connection between AI & Co and brand management. The three selected papers cover a spectrum from AI bias in the beauty industry to the perception of AI content and a discussion of the impact of AI on the working world in advertising agencies. You can download the issue here.

Together with Prof. Dr. Hyejin Bang (Kookmin University, Seoul), Prof. Baumgarth is the guest editor of a session at the Global Marketing Conference 2025 (Hong Kong) and an associated special issue in the “Journal of Current Issues and Research in Advertising”. The deadline for conference submissions is February 15, 2025. The complete call for papers can be found here.

AI is developing from a hyped topic to an integral part of brand management and brand work. Together with Dr. Steffen Schmidt, Prof. Baumgarth has been organizing the webinar format ‘AI Garage for Brands’ for about two years. Building on this format, various research projects, lectures, and seminars, the two hosts of the AI Garage for Brands have developed the concept of Augmented Brand Intelligence. This is characterized by the following features:

(1) AI is accepted and integrated as a full team member in brand work.
(2) The specific use case (e.g. brand positioning) and not the properties of tools form the starting point for augmented brand intelligence.
(3) Brand tasks, systems, and use cases require a meaningful combination of tools from different AI classes (causal, generative, and predictive AI) in conjunction with human intelligence and expertise.
(4) The human being is responsible for the exact description of the respective task, the selection of the appropriate tools, the input request, and the administration of the required data, as well as the interpretation and critical reflection of the AI results.
(5) Brand managers can only use augmented brand intelligence if they have comprehensive skills and expertise (e.g. mental models, data, creativity, critical thinking, and domain expertise).

A first article has now been published in the journal transfer – Zeitschrift für Kommunikation und Markenmanagement, which illustrates this concept using the example of brand positioning. The article can be downloaded here.

Prof. Dr. Carsten Baumgarth from the Berlin School of Economics and Law (HWR) visited Ho Chi Minh City (Vietnam) at the end of October 2024 to share current research and ideas on artificial intelligence (AI), brand management, and arts. During his stay, he gave lectures and participated in various events to promote exchange with students and experts on site.

Prof. Baumgarth gave his first lecture at the Ho Chi Minh City Open University, a partner university of the HWR Berlin, on the topic of “Augmented Intelligence by AI – Elevating Brand Management and Brand Science to New Heights”, in which he highlighted the integration of AI into brand management and brand science. He also gave a keynote address at the third ArtTech Fusion Festival at the University of Economics Ho Chi Minh City (UEH) entitled “Digital Brushstrokes: Unveiling the AI-Art Infusion Effect”, which dealt with the influence of the integration of AI-generated art in packaging, advertising, etc. on brand perception.

Prof. Baumgarth discussed brand and marketing concepts for a Vietnamese mattress brand at the UEH with students and enriched the ArtTech Fusion Festival as a panelist in a discussion round on sustainable art markets, in which he talked about the challenges and possible solutions for artists who do not (yet) belong to the 1% of top earners.

Michelle Marie Basak, a former master’s student of Prof. Baumgarth, has been awarded second place in this year’s INa Sustainability Award for her master’s thesis “AI and Co meeting the customer interface”.

The master’s thesis deals with the sustainability problem of the high return rate in online retail, especially in the fashion sector, which accounts for 75% of all returns in e-commerce. The thesis analyses the psychological reasons for returns in particular. It analyses how innovative technologies can reduce the likelihood of returns. Empirically, this positive influence of technology is demonstrated experimentally using the example of virtual fitting (AR technology).

Congratulations on this outstanding achievement!

Photo: Kathrin Heller

At the 17th AIMAC Conference in Lisbon, Carsten Baumgarth presented the first research results on the AI Art Infusion effect. The art infusion effect generally describes the phenomenon that integrating art into marketing (packaging, advertising, events, etc.) automatically improves the judgment of the product or brand. Interestingly, this effect applies to “beautiful” and “unattractive” art and has been extensively empirically confirmed. The objective of the research project is to analyze whether and how this general kind of infusion effect is valid for the integration of AI art. The first main findings of the project are:

1. AI-Art is perceived as art by consumers and is even rated more positively on average compared to human art.
2. AI art also triggers the art infusion effect.
3. The art infusion effect is less pronounced if consumers correctly and incorrectly perceive the integrated art as AI-generated.