Amidst the surging tide of digital technologies, the marketing field is undergoing an unprecedented and profound transformation. The rapid development of artificial intelligence is not only reshaping our ways of production and life, but also bringing disruptive impacts on marketing models, brand communication, and the realization of creative value. Traditional marketing concepts, strategies, and methods are gradually being replaced by new trends of digitalization and intelligence, presenting the marketing profession with both unprecedented challenges and opportunities.
Against this backdrop, Zhejiang University's School of Media and International Culture has teamed up with the Wuzhen Institute of Digital Civilization, the Digital Advertising Creativity and Innovation Committee of the Zhejiang Advertising Association, and the New York International Advertising Festival to jointly launch the Future Marketing · Wisdom Symposium series of conferences. Through this platform, we aim to bring together academic and industry elites to explore the development direction and practical paths of future marketing, contributing wisdom and strength to the innovation and development of the marketing field. This issue features the conference theme Digital Marketing Communication from the Perspective of Business Logic, and we are publishing highlights of expert keynote speeches and on-site discussions for the readers' enjoyment.
Strategic Media Approach of Zhejiang University in the Era of Intelligent Communication
Fang Xingdong
Executive Vice Dean, School of Media and International Culture, Zhejiang University
2024 marks the 30th anniversary of the internet in China, and the entire high-tech industry is facing a new crossroads. These 30 years have been a prelude to technological change and deserve to be systematically summarized. Over the past two to three years, we have organized many seminars to reflect on this period. The purpose of reviewing the past is not merely to study history, but to better face the future. I believe that the key issue in exploring the development of the entire industry lies in innovation.
Looking back at the development of the past decade, we were not adequately prepared for innovation. The emergence of ChatGPT has brought a major adjustment to the entire industry. Over these thirty years, the development of technology has generally followed a linear trend, adhering to the law of innovation diffusion, with each decade marking a stage in continuous progress. How we view ChatGPT varies—some approach it from an application perspective, while others focus on general artificial intelligence. However, from the perspective of our discipline, or from the essence of this transformation, I believe it is primarily a revolution in communication.
Many names and interpretations have been given to this transformation, but I personally believe that Henry Kissinger's term Gutenberg Moment 2.0 may be the most appropriate and accurate description. Kissinger was the first to examine this AIGC transformation from the perspective of communication. He pointed out that this change not only pushes communication to the center of human social transformation but also elevates it to a key hub that will determine the future of humanity. Therefore, for both the field of communication and marketing, the impact of this transformation may be the greatest, while also presenting the most opportunities.
In recent years, our research has primarily focused on analyzing the evolution of this transformation from a communication perspective. To date, the importance of technology in communication has never been so significant. While communication shapes the world, technology has dominated its direction, and today’s global communication is almost entirely driven by technology. The impact of technology on communication has long surpassed the realm of technological determinism. So, how will this transformation reshape the global order and change business models? These are the core issues we are currently considering at our college.
According to the latest data, approximately 50% of internet traffic is generated by machines, and about 32% of this machine-generated content has negative or malicious characteristics. This is the basic reality we face today. Over the next five to ten years, machine-generated content may quickly become the mainstream. Human communication has evolved from traditional mass communication and network communication in the 1.0 era to today's dominant social communication and the emerging intelligent communication. All of this indicates that technology-driven communication is evolving at a rapid pace. The entities and volume of information in communication are exhibiting an exponential explosion, forming the current basic pattern. Today, those who possess more GPU computing power have more influence. For example, Microsoft’s main competition goal for next year is to reach one million GPU cards, equivalent to a $20 billion hardware investment. The core of this war remains a competition in computing power. Chinese companies such as ByteDance and Tencent have performed well in this field, but their overall investment is still insufficient. Companies that lack sufficient investment may quickly fall behind in this wave of change.
In 2008, I met with Manuel Castells in his office, where the main topic of discussion was whether the internet had reached a critical point. We both worried that, regardless of whether the direction was good or bad, the internet might have reached a point of no return, where uncontrollable factors could outweigh the controllable ones. At that time, the tech wars had not yet erupted, and US-China relations were not as tense as they are today. My admiration for Castells stemmed from a statement he made in his Information Age Trilogy: Many of China's views on the new information society are taken from American ideological experts—futurists. These are business writers whose viewpoints are often unfounded speculations, based on a new form of cultural colonialism, extending the experiences of the United States to the rest of the world. This statement had a profound impact on me. Indeed, our judgments about social trends are often more based on imagination than solid academic research. Today, we can no longer rely on futurism but must use academic methods, especially empirical research, to explore and study the deep logic of societal changes.
During my conversation with Castells, he was also reflecting, especially on deep thoughts regarding the fate of nations. He mentioned, Artificial intelligence has changed the form of confrontation between nations. War has always been inhuman, but when artificial intelligence is combined with the military, humanity will be completely obliterated. We have not succeeded in mechanizing the world; rather, we have mechanized ourselves. Castells believed that this new phenomenon urgently requires a new theory to explain it.
The field of communication is currently in a downward trajectory, yet research in communication remains at the core of all social sciences. As former President of Xi'an Jiaotong University, Wang Shuguo, said: If universities remain isolated, they will fall behind social development! Look at the new technological revolution happening outside, its development has far exceeded the imagination of universities. Some companies' investment in new technology, the talents they attract, and their research capabilities, speed, depth, and breadth have surpassed those of universities. Therefore, the development of the school must fully align with the frontiers of industry, technology, and society to achieve a true breakthrough.
Our college has a long history, having evolved from the original journalism department of Hangzhou University. However, in the face of the tremendous challenges of today, we urgently need a disruptive innovation. The primary task is to transform the college from a relatively closed system into an open one. Compared to enterprises, the transformation of a college is no easy feat. The college has historical continuity, so our basic strategy is preserve the existing stock, and increase the new increment.
Our college will fully promote the technological and internationalization strategies, referencing the trinity model of Zhejiang University's Computer Science Research Institute. We aim to organically integrate the college, research institutes, and innovation alliances to create a sustainable development path. The core mission of the college is to achieve knowledge creation from 0 to 1; the laboratory will focus on basic research from 1 to 10, concentrating on industry and application; and the entrepreneurial alliance will focus on expansion from 10 to N, driving industrial development. Through this model, we hope to establish an industry cluster with scale effects within the next five years, facilitating positive interactions among the college, research institutes, and innovation alliances, and supporting the college’s overall upgrade and long-term development.
We are preparing to establish an Intelligent Media Laboratory, aimed at fully connecting with the broad and diverse media industry and showcasing the unique value of academia in the industry. The core concept of the laboratory is inspired by MIT’s Media Lab but is more future-oriented. It no longer focuses on traditional media research or merely on human relationships but instead concentrates on the relationship between humans and machines, exploring how to achieve more harmonious coexistence in the future. Meanwhile, we hope to build a completely new set of foundational theories in the intelligent era, as traditional journalism and communication theories can no longer meet the new demands of a human-machine integrated society. Furthermore, we will engage in in-depth discussions on fundamental historical studies, core industry patterns, and national-level infrastructure. On the infrastructure front, we aim to fulfill the academic mission and empower the industry, achieving close integration between academia and industry.
Currently, the development trend of the intelligent revolution is still unpredictable. Over the past 30 years, we have been exploring while moving forward, but we must recognize that we cannot fall behind the times. We need to keep up with trends, maintain flexibility in responding, seize future development opportunities, and lead the transformation in the intelligent era.
Curatorial Practice and Cultural Narrative: Reflections on the China Pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale
Wang Xiaosong
Vice Dean, School of Art and Archaeology, Zhejiang University
As the chief curator of the China Pavilion, I participated in the 60th Venice International Art Biennale this year. The Venice Biennale presents a new theme every two years, and the theme for this year is The Garden of Outsiders. This theme explores the impact of differences in class, identity, national culture, and language on individuals, leading to various barriers and divisions between people.
When we talk about the term foreigners, we often mean that they are outsiders who don’t understand Chinese culture. This reflects the relational dynamics in contemporary society. There are many barriers between people, which arise from various causes, and the theme explores why, despite the fact that all people are human, there are barriers everywhere and individuals are treated as outsiders.
I believe this originates from the Age of Exploration, in the 16th and 17th centuries. The global integration led by the West after the Age of Exploration, including colonialism, Western-centric views, and the resulting disparities between people, such as cultural identity differences, directly led to the fragmentation of human groups due to the collapse of shared social values.
However, the China Pavilion took a different approach. This year, we introduced the theme Beautiful Harmony and Diversity, which relates to the outsider theme in a comparative way. Beautiful Harmony and Diversity emphasizes harmony in diversity, highlighting communication among different ethnic groups, or outsiders. We stress the mutual learning between civilizations, dissolve the outsider anxiety, and reject the Western othering narrative.
As we all know, the Silk Road was never just a trade route for one country; it represented the common development of the countries along the route. We aim to continue to enrich the cultural exchange connotations of the Silk Road while reflecting on both the external and internal aspects of colonialism.
Through these concepts, we have constructed a theme called Collective.
Collective can be traced back to oracle bone inscriptions, which depict flying birds and trees, symbolizing birds gathering on the same tree, forming a collective. This also reflects the construction method of Chinese characters, which embodies the concept of collective through overlapping, tenon-and-mortise, and intersecting combinations. This idea represents the ideal of Great Harmony Under Heaven and Beautiful Harmony and Diversity.
By using the word collective, we formed the curatorial concept, which emphasizes the gathering of diverse identities, races, beliefs, ideas, purposes, media, backgrounds, and cultures across the world.
Since 2005, we have been working on a major project focused on Chinese art history at Zhejiang University. As a core member, I have been involved for nearly ten years. Over the course of two decades, we collected images of Chinese ancient paintings from 262 museums around the world, covering almost all institutions that house these works. We displayed traditional Chinese painting art, reflecting our cultural history. The exhibition strategy we considered at that time was to use part of the archive as the foundation, selecting 100 images of Chinese art lost overseas. We visualized the data and showcased the transmission history, illustrating the great ideal of overcoming cultural barriers through civilizational exchanges, transcending conflicts through mutual learning, and promoting coexistence over superiority.
We have explored the intersection of Eastern and Western cultures, which leads us to extend the concept of transmission — respecting history and tradition while injecting modern perspectives and vitality, giving contemporary meaning and value to traditional works. For instance, we invited seven contemporary artists to re-interpret traditional works in a modern context. One example is the use of the Walbert Atlas, which collects all images and allows for horizontal and vertical comparisons, enabling us to understand our position in history through these visual representations.
For example, Chen Jianquan from the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts takes a short video of the scenery at Mount Lu every year. Over 20 years, he has gathered all these clips, revealing subtle changes over time. Another example is Jiao Xingtiao, whose work was completed 20 years ago when China was rapidly developing. This rapid development caused environmental damage, and he used scrap copper and iron to create figures representing traditional Chinese characters. Wang Zhenghong, a contemporary artist, created a performance art piece referencing the famous ancient Chinese painting Birds of the Natural World, reimagining it by creating 10,000 birds. Each viewer could take home a bird as a memento, symbolizing the birds flying away.
Class Thinking, Intelligent Agent Socialization, and Value Alignment:
Three Core Concepts of Generative AI in Computational Advertising
Duan Chunlin
Professor, School of Journalism and Communication, South China University of Technology
I started researching computational advertising around 2014, and with the Software College, we established the Social Computing Research Institute. Our research has continued along the path of big data and computational advertising development. Today, we see that artificial intelligence has brought significant challenges. From the perspective of computational advertising, there are three stages.
The first stage is programmatic advertising, which we are all familiar with in digital advertising, digital marketing, or internet advertising. When we discuss computational advertising today, I want to highlight version 1.0, which is the programmatic advertising that automates ad placements.
The second stage is algorithmic recommendation advertising, seen in platforms like XiaoHongShu and Douyin. The algorithm is a black box for the platform. We can observe the creative insights and results, but the process of how content is recommended to us is controlled by the platform, which we call algorithmic power. In this stage, I believe it is still analytical AI. While it achieves automation, intelligence, and smart recommendations in advertising, it mainly serves to enhance efficiency.
However, computational advertising 3.0 refers to intelligent advertising, especially with the advent of generative artificial intelligence. This marks a revolutionary transformation in the creative content process.
Computational advertising, through big data analysis and intelligent technologies, has advanced from user insights and profiling to content creation, distribution, and performance evaluation, increasing the added value at each advertising node.
Artificial intelligence brings new opportunities, offering not just added value, but disruptive and revolutionary changes. Today, I propose three core concepts: class thinking, intelligent agents, and value alignment. I will now introduce these concepts within the framework of cognitive emotion and intention theory.
The first concept is class thinking. In academic terms, class thinking refers to the way intelligent agents adopt human-like thinking methods to solve problems and generate creative ideas. In this sense, intelligent agents have evolved into a new species with thinking, cognition, and learning abilities similar to humans. Unlike the previous robots based solely on programming, intelligent agents now possess social capabilities to a certain extent.
The framework of cognitive communication greatly enhances the complex reasoning abilities of intelligent agents. We are all familiar with large language models, where we can ask questions and receive answers. From a cognitive communication framework perspective, this allows machines to simulate human analogy-based reasoning. The concept of analogy reasoning in AI began in the 1960s, and it involves computer modeling, simulation, and experiments to generate new knowledge and learning systems through analogical reasoning.
The distinction between analytical AI and generative AI lies in the importance of databases. Today, the knowledge base is critical. The future of creative regeneration and integration relies on specialized knowledge bases. Thus, intelligent agents' class thinking is a key breakthrough for the new age of intelligent marketing — the ability to effectively utilize human and machine collaboration to generate significant benefits.
The second core concept is the intelligent agent. This is not a new concept. Minsky first introduced the idea of intelligent agents in his 1986 book The Society of Mind, where he brought social behavior into computer systems, referring to the individual components of these systems as intelligent agents.
Today, the concept of intelligent agents applies not only to individuals but also to two directions: B2B and B2C intelligent agents. Each person could eventually form their own intelligent agent. Thus, intelligent agent interaction and socialization will become essential.
Intelligent agent interaction and socialization are two different concepts. For example, voice interactions, text interactions, and spatial interactions are all types of intelligent interaction, which imply that intelligent agents possess social attributes. A companion robot, for instance, can read novels to me or listen to music with me. Through interaction, it provides emotional value, alleviating loneliness, thus having a social attribute.
Finally, the concept of value alignment is crucial. Intelligent agent socialization refers to the interaction and communication between humans and machines. But does the content generated by intelligent agents align with human values? This is a critical issue in discussions of universal values, brand values, and the values embedded in creative advertising.
Currently, intelligent agents are gradually aligning with human values, and many aspects are steadily improving. The book Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach first raised the issue of value alignment: how can machine-generated content, especially AI-generated content, align with human values?
Regarding the realization path of value types, one approach is full supervised fine-tuning, while another is reinforcement learning based on human feedback. Human judgment and references are crucial, and as we interact with intelligent agents, we continuously guide them. Therefore, today's intelligent agents belong to the agency phase, and the value alignment of social simulation reasoning in AI depends on high-quality human feedback.