Salesforce Integrates AI-Powered Image Recognition for Twitter

Press Release (ePRNews.com) - Washington DC - Aug 11, 2017 - Salesforce CEO Mark Benioff had called the still struggling social media company an “unpolished jewel,” a “great brand” and the proposition of acquiring it “a once in a lifetime opportunity.”

At the end of the day, Salesforce investors quashed the idea, but that hasn’t stopped Salesforce from finding ways to deliver value gleaned from Twitter to its customers.

Introducing Einstein Vision for Social Studio

Consider that earlier this week Salesforce introduced a new tool, Einstein Vision for Social Studio, which integrates AI-powered image recognition directly into its Marketing Cloud’s social media marketing solution. And the “social media” that Salesforce leverages at this point is — you guessed it — Twitter.

“We have a close relationship with Twitter, the API is ready,” Rob Begg, VP product marketing for social and advertising products at Salesforce, told CMSWire.

Brand Insights Generate the Wow Factor

From a high level, Einstein Vision for Social Studio identifies images on Twitter to help brands glean insights about customers and to meet them where they are. There’s a new type of “wow” factor available, “an opportunity to surprise and delight consumers who have never mentioned a brand’s name,” explained Begg.

What’s more, brands will be able to get insights about how and where their products are being used, as well as consumer interests, likes, and needs in cases where a brand’s name is never even mentioned. Begg gave the example of a customer at a restaurant who tweets a picture of a burger and a comment about it not tasting great.

AI-Powered Social Media Image Recognition

Cindy Zhou, vice president and principal analyst at Cupertino, Calif.-based Constellation Research, told CMSWire that, “One of the challenges in marketing is to measure brand awareness impact at physical events. Marketers can quantify impact based on the reach and frequency of their logo and other images posted on social.”

Opportunities for customer service can be brought forth as well, according to Zhou. “Brands can get in front of potential service issues,” she said. “For example, posts from customers about defective products can alert service agents to reach out to those customers proactively to resolve or it possibly even lead to a broader recall.”

Zhou said that this new capability has been brought forth via the technology Salesforce acquired through its MetaMind buy. Both she and Begg indicated that Twitter was the first implementation of how Salesforce would leverage AI-powered image recognition on social media.