In this interview, Dr. Jochen Tham, Head of Digital Experiences at ZEISS Medical Technology, explains how AI is setting new standards in marketing through local activation and personalization, how the targeted interaction between humans, AI, and automation can be successful, and why process optimization is crucial for the successful use of agentic AI.
Mr. Tham, how will AI change marketing? And where do you see the greatest opportunities? AI will not only radically accelerate marketing, but also make it significantly more effective. For example, in the way content is created, distributed, and used. For a company like ZEISS, with different segments, independent country organizations, and very diverse target groups, this is a real game changer. In the past, the focus was strongly on centralization. This was important in order to set digital standards and build scalable systems. The next step in development is now local enablement with the help of AI. The vision: country organizations, even those with small or no marketing teams, will be empowered to generate content themselves – tailored to their target groups, highly personalized, and yet brand-compliant. Until now, the path from centrally developed campaigns to implementation in the markets was often long and complex. It sometimes took six to twelve months before a rollout could start locally. The tone, language, or content focus did not always match the local market reality. Although the countries were closest to the target group, they did not have the resources to create content themselves.
And how exactly does AI solve this problem? Generative AI breaks this dilemma. Today, we provide central content as a basis that can be dynamically adapted using large language models. Countries access this content via a secure environment and create target group-specific texts via an online briefing, which then generates defined prompts for the language model – in their national language, in their tone, but in line with global brand management. This brings enormous speed. Campaigns can be localized and personalized in real time. And ultimately, that is precisely the goal: to move from a generic to a personalized target group approach.
We already access basic data via our systems and can, for example, evaluate the names and areas of expertise of the specialists we approach. However, true personalization will only happen when we better integrate marketing and sales in the long term. AI can be used here to filter and pick up on the necessary trigger points: Is the customer ready to buy, or could they be tempted to switch? Can we make targeted, proactive offers, such as extending a service contract? We still have a long way to go, but in the long term, we will be able to provide targeted sales support. AI will enable us to be present at the right touchpoint with the right offer at the right time in a data-driven and personalized way. And that is precisely where the great opportunity lies.
Over the past two years, you have built up an AI-supported marketing hub. How can complexity be reconciled from a customer and company perspective in a multinational corporation with different regional requirements? Complexity is definitely a key issue for us. We are talking about seven business areas, 33 country organizations, highly complex products, and a highly diverse B2B target group that in many cases requires targeted, tactical campaigns. And the tool landscape is also growing. Many colleagues in the markets are literally drowning in the density of tools and technologies, which continuously requires new skills. This leads to overload – whether in the search for suitable content or in the use of advanced marketing automation systems. To resolve this complexity, it is not enough to introduce a chatbot or train a generative model on a few texts. Our answer is therefore a holistic approach: we look at the entire flow—from content creation to delivery—and focus on technology where it brings real added value. This does not have to be AI at every point. In many areas, clean, well-thought-out automation is enough to make processes more efficient and scalable. This is exactly where the Marketing Hub comes in: as a bridge between central control and local activation – data-driven, intelligent, and with a clear focus on simplification.
The full interview with Dr. Jochen Tham can be found in our whitepaper "Road to Agentic AI. The Fascination of Automation."