Ariana Stolarz, managing director of growth and product innovation at Accenture Song, knows that brand marketers are always looking ahead — but she doesn’t believe that’s always a good thing. While she knows trend forecasting is important, she believes there’s a lot to take away from what consumers are looking for right now and what current challenges need solutions.
“I feel like sometimes we are always creating for what’s next, and we’re not living in the present and the present has so much opportunity,” Stolarz said.
Stolarz sat down at the Variety Studio presented by Canva at Cannes Lions to talk about technology in marketing and how people can embrace the digital tools at hand. She touched on marketing for younger generations, and why it’s important to focus on consumers of all age groups and to consider spending trends for each subset of generations.
“Yes, of course I’m interested [in following trends],” Stolarz said. “Because at the end of the day those trends are showing us where we are going. So we need to understand that, in particular if we want to innovate and bring novelty into the world. But also, I’m really interested in how we can use these technologies to basically help improve the lives of everyone, including all different age groups.”
Stolarz also talked about AI, and how the wide spectrum of acceptance for this new technology is reminiscent of the early days of the internet.
“I started my career 25 years ago in the digital space and everyone was making the same comment, right? It’s like, ‘You’re working on the internet? What is that thing that is going to take our jobs?’” she explained. “Then, that created a whole new set of opportunities for all of us, and we started to live differently and we started to engage differently. We started to use some of the tools that now are so obvious and part of our lives that were not part of our way of interacting or entertaining just two decades ago.”
In a company like Accenture, she feels its important to stay open to innovation.
“People are saying, ‘Oh, AI is coming for us. It’s like the robots, it’s the end of the world,’” she said. “Or you have on the other side, ‘AI is going to change the world’ … Yes, if we use it responsibly.”
