How can AI be leveraged in community engagement?

At IAB’s recent HK C24 event, under the theme ‘Impact AI—The New Marketing Paradigm’, marketing professionals unveiled the real impact of AI-generated content on their work.

In a content marketing panel about building customer loyalty and growing business through community engagement, moderated by Charlene Ree, CEO and founder of EternityX, panellists talked the pros and cons of AI.

Karen Cheng, head of social at 9Gag, mentioned that while many people discuss AI, not enough attention is given to how AI actually performs in creating content. “Does it guarantee good performances? It doesn't,” she said.

According to Cheng, repackaging content into AI does not necessarily mean better engagement or better conversion, as human creativity is still needed for the prompt.

However, Cheng is still pro-AI as it keeps her team more efficient and working more quickly. “We can create more content at the speed of light, but it doesn't help with performance at the end of the day,” she said.

Panellist Frank Luk, creative strategist at Meta, Greater China, believes that AI is like the new Photoshop that’s helping creative and content work. He maintains that while AI may eventually take over creative tasks such as copywriting and video creation, true creativity will always stem from the innovative minds of people.

In the case of Netflix, Joann Ngai, head of marketing partnerships for SEA and Greater China, mentioned that AI has indeed helped to improve consumer recommendations and post-production work. She emphasised the importance of AI in scaling and working more efficiently.

“So when we're subtitling one piece of content into 70 different languages, how can you use AI to make that process faster? It’s not just about replacement, it’s an element that can drive efficiency and scale,” she said.

Qianyue, head of global business solution at Xiaohongshu or Red, emphasised that Xiaohongshu serves as a platform connecting businesses and people. According to her, AI is a tool that can enhance efficiency but cannot replace the human element at either end. She stressed the importance of focusing on quality content, targeting the right audience, and influencing users with excellent products and services through word-of-mouth marketing. The key measurement metrics that  Xiaohongshu uses is brands’ assets per capita on the platform, penetration into groups, content penetration, and overall search ranking.

Another key element for content marketing is community building. Luk from Meta believes that brands should focus on not just their products, but also on understanding and addressing the concerns, values, culture, and language of their users. To him, content marketing is now rooted in culture, and Meta leverages AI to leverage culture and create content at a faster pace.

Cheng from 9gag mentioned that in the world of Web2, building a community is akin to mass distribution. However, for her team, it is more about identifying the core fans first and designing marketing strategies to speak to those people.

Netflix places fandom at the centre of its content marketing strategy. According to Ngai, fandom can be large or small, and the platform also emphasises local cultural relevance. “What happens at the local level is that every local marketing team is empowered to select the shows and movies that they feel are going to be most relevant to their particular market and then put their marketing budgets behind that,” she said.

Meanwhile, Xiaohongshu's data and insights reflect that the platform categorises users with three to five different labels, indicating behaviour changes in both the lifestyles of users and their consumer habits. For example, the app team found that the same group of people who are working to lose weight are also the ones indulging in late-night snacks within this community. Through these data and tags, community stickiness and word-of-mouth marketing help brands succeed on the platform.