Almost 20 years ago - in April 1997 - the Institute of Masters of Wine hosted a symposium in Perth, Western Australia, entitled, ‘The Communication “Chord” - Wine in the 21st Century’. I remember it well, because I was invited to give a brief presentation on a then little-known, three-year-old phenomenon called the internet’. While some members of the audience were quite excited by what they heard, many were unconvinced that it would have any significant impact on their businesses.
This week, I gave a similar talk – including a section on Artificial Intelligence – to a similar group of senior executives from retail distribution companies across Europe.
My presentation began with a question to the audience: How much had the arrival of the smartphone affected their lives? Hugely, they all chorused. How long had that particular bit of technology been around? Yes, just ten years. The iPhone is actually only a few months older than my daughter, and I might not be alone in admitting that my distress at losing either in a shopping mall would not be too dissimilar.
Given the impact other more recent initiatives such as Uber and Airbnb have had, it seemed reasonable to suppose that we should be bracing ourselves for a few more shocks to our systems.
None, I suggested, will be more dramatic than Bots, a term that was as unfamiliar to most of the wine professionals as the internet had been to many of the attendees in Australia two decades earlier. Bots are the digital assistants like Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, Google’s Now and Facebook’s Messenger M that are already well on their way to making all of us feel at least a little like Beyoncé, Ronaldo or Rupert Murdoch. All three of those ultra-wealthy individuals can afford lackeys whose only role in life is to answer their every whim. Soon, so will we. Twenty-four hours a day, 365 days per year, and at almost no cost at all.
Anyone who has already installed Alexa in their living room can ask ‘her’ to tell them what the weather will be like tomorrow, draw the curtains, dim the lights, play some Bach on the hi fi and order a takeaway meal. She doesn’t come with a robot who’ll make a pot of tea and bring it across to you, but give Amazon time and she certainly will.
Thanks to its ‘knowledge’ of your habits and tastes – and those of people close to you that have been revealed in your and their use of Facebook’s social media platform – Messenger M will, as a video clip I showed illustrated, remind you that it’s your wife’s birthday, arrange to send her a bunch of her favourite flowers, book a table at your regular restaurant and arrange the taxi to take you there.
One day, you could say “M”, “Siri” or “Alexa” – they and others will all be competing to be at your command – “Get me a case of 2009 Petrus”. And within moments the Bot will reply: “Farr Vintners has 12 bottles at £36,000. Shall I order them for you?” But of course, like Beyoncé you might be more likely to say “M, get me some red wine”. The response to which might then be “Would you like the one you had last week?” or “I could get you the one your friend George was talking about” or “what’s the budget? I’ll get you something I know you’ll enjoy.”
Which will obviously hand rather a lot of decision-making and purchasing power to the digital assistant. And that’s what Mark Zuckerberg is banking on. In 2015, when justifying his $2bn acquisition of WhatsApp alongside hefty investment in the apparently similar Messenger app, he said his ambition was to “enable people to have good organic interactions with businesses”.
Facebook’s biggest competitor in this field, the Chinese giant Tencent’s WeChat, is already ahead of him. It not only has over 800m daily users, it also has, in the words of Andrea Ghizzoni its European director, “Almost 95% of global [luxury] brands [including] Burberry, Mulberry, Valentino, Zegna, Prada… Two years ago, the number was 50%, and last year 75%, so the growth has picked up recently.”
Of course, there are plenty of readers of this column who’ll say “people won’t want to trust a robot. They’ll prefer to make their own decisions”. But that only reminds me of the doubters who argued that people would never trust Wikipedia over a ‘proper’ encyclopaedia.
As the CEO of Pizza Hut ruefully said when recently explaining why Domino’s famous speedy delivery service was more successful than his brand, “Easy beats better”.
Robert Joseph
