Private pixel puppets

AI has enormous potential to delight your customers if used wisely.

Andrew Carrier

May 25, 2025

Read on to learn why:

① Demand for video is surging but your team is ill-equipped to meet it.

② AI initiatives should be filtered through customer, brand and value lenses.

③ Jamie Dimon wears the heaviest crown on Wall Street.

④ Public blockchains are ready for institutional tokenisation.

⑤ Civilisation is crumbling under our very eyes; we can save it.

⑥ You’ll be tempted but you’re not actually going to travel without a phone.

⑦ Client engagement is the marketing metic that really matters.

📸 But first, flashback to the beginning of the month when I told you that investment products should be promoted by experts not celebrities. This week we learned that tennis player Andy Murray fancies himself an investment expert.

What's new

UBS has started replacing AI avatars of its analysts to delver research to its clients, the FT reports.

Source: The Financial Times, 19 May 2025

In short:

“UBS has started using artificial intelligence to turn its analysts into avatars, sending videos of the simulated bankers to clients in a move the lender said would free up staff to focus on more productive tasks.”
“The Zurich-based bank is using OpenAI and Synthesia models to create AI-generated scripts and avatars of its analysts following increased client demand for research in video format, UBS said.”
“The initiative, which UBS started to roll out in January, comes as large financial institutions increasingly experiment with generative AI tools to cut costs and boost efficiency. The avatars UBS is creating of its analysts are similar to AI deepfakes, or realistic AI-generated videos, audio or images of people. To create the AI avatars, UBS analysts go into a studio, where Synthesia captures their likeness and voice.”

Why it matters

Sadly, I don’t meet the criteria to be a UBS client - one lives in hope - but my knee-jerk reaction to this story was that it was a dereliction of the brand values one would expect of the storied Swiss bank. It feels like using AI to predict interest rate cuts is a more appropriate application of the technology than pixel puppets for private clients. After all, banking at this level is all about personal service, isn’t it? Well, yes. And no.

It was only a couple of weeks ago that we discussed the avatar of a CEO presenting annual results and I told you that with AI, just because you can doesn’t mean you should (a deeply misguided trend that’s spreading despite how it erodes trust, by the way) But, on reflection, UBS’ use of AI matters because it feels well judged. The technology is being applied in a way that’s genuinely beneficial to clients. Scott Solomon, head of global research technology at UBS, explains it best:

“It is helping you scale your video capabilities in a way that clients are asking you for, and ultimately saving you time to do your research and meet with clients.”

① In the age of TikTok, the client demand for video content has surged but producing video - even informal content filmed on a ‘phone - is time-consuming and often out of the comfort zone of staff who have an entirely other day job. What UBS has done is find a way to meet that demand in a way that’s premium (the groundwork they’re doing with Synthesia to capture their team’s likeness and voice is impressive) and frees up their analysts to focus on the higher-value task of actually doing their jobs (i.e. researching) then discussing their findings with clients directly. The UBS brand continues to look innovative, premium, and client-focused. Everyone wins.

What to do about it

Take action

② AI truly is a bicycle for the mind and you ignore it at your peril. Cost and time-saving efficiencies and - more rarely but ever-increasing - opportunities to delight your customers abound. You should have AI firmly in your mind when considering product development, marketing, customer service and almost every element of your operations. But filter the ideas through three lenses:

Customer: Does your AI initiate improve the customer experience? Or will they look at it and long for the way you used to do it?
Brand: Is your AI initiative in keeping with your brand values? Or is it chipping away at the things that differentiated you in the first place?
Value: Are you actually improving on the status quo? Or just showing off technology for the sake of it?

Get help

Two ways I can help you: 1) hire me as a full-time member of your team; or 2) use InMarketing, an advisory service for senior leadership teams in finance and tech.

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Top stories

The other articles that are worthy of your time.

FINANCIAL SERVICES

Will Jamie Dimon build the first trillion-dollar bank?

③ Jamie Dimon wears the heaviest crown on Wall Street.

“In most of the markets in which it competes, JP Morgan ranks as America’s leading institution, or a close runner-up. It boasts a market capitalisation of $730bn, or 30% of the total among America’s big banks, up from 12% when Mr Dimon took charge at the start of 2006. The gap with competitors has grown larger still since the covid-19 pandemic. JPMorgan has 317,233 staff, nearly twice as many as in 2005. Its share of American deposits has doubled to 12%. America has never had a bank of such size.”
“The bank is, Mike Mayo of Wells Fargo - the most prominent JPMorgan analyst - says, the ‘Goliath of Goliaths’ and the best he has covered in his career; he expects it to be the first with a trillion-dollar valuation. Part of his argument is that advances in artificial intelligence mean investment in tech has grown in importance, and JPMorgan, which he also calls the ‘Nvidia of banking’, can afford more than any rival. The bank will spend about $18bn on tech this year, some 40% more than Bank of America.”
“Could anything halt JPMorgan’s ascent? Scale is no guarantee of success. At the turn of the century, another institution accounted for 30% or so of the market capitalisation of American banks. After a barrage of mergers and acquisitions, Citigroup was a titan. But its lead was eroded by a series of scandals in the 2000s, and a bad financial crisis. Today it accounts for less than 6% of the industry’s market capitalisation. By comparison, JPMorgan has been pretty scandal-free under Mr Dimon—with the exception of the ‘London Whale’ farrago, when a rogue trader cost the institution over $6bn.”

TECHNOLOGY

Big banks strike deal to move to solana blockchain

④ Public blockchains are ready for institutional tokenisation.

Source: The Financial Times, 22 May 2025

“A group of big banks and other financial institutions are stepping up their efforts to tokenise global stock and bond markets by using solana, the blockchain best known for hosting the memecoins of Donald and Melania Trump.”
“R3, a UK software group that has been developing blockchains for some of these big institutions, on Thursday agreed a deal with the Solana Foundation that will allow it and its customers to use the solana blockchain. The foundation, in turn, will make an undisclosed investment into R3, while its president, Lily Liu, will join R3’s board.”
“The deal marks a pivot in strategy for R3, which for a decade has aimed to tokenise securities by using ledgers that are shared out among a handful of approved institutions. R3’s corda private blockchain will be connected directly to solana to speed up transaction times, although users will not be required to put their assets on a public blockchain. Customers will be able to choose whether to move on to solana or keep them private within corda.”

MEDIA & MARKETING

Marked decline in semicolons in English books, study suggests

⑤ Civilisation is crumbling under our very eyes; we can save it.

“The semicolon seems to be in terminal decline, with its usage in English books plummeting by almost half in two decades – from one appearing in every 205 words in 2000 to one use in every 390 words today."
“67% of British students never or rarely use the semicolon. Just 11% of respondents described themselves as frequent users.”
“The form of punctuation has its staunch supporters: along with Charles Dickens, Mark Twain and Jane Austen, Abraham Lincoln stood strong on the issue. ‘I have a great respect for the semicolon; it’s a very useful little chap,’ he said.”

WILDCARD

How to travel without a phone

⑥ You’ll be tempted but you’re not actually going to travel without a phone.

“In today’s hyperconnected world, traveling without a phone seems impossible, or at the very least, pointless. But for those who’ve done it, the experience can be rewarding and rejuvenating.”
“Thinking of disconnecting for your next trip? Here are some steps to start.
- Decide your rules: Decide whether you’re bringing a laptop or tablet or nothing at all. If you’re bringing a device, write down a list of rules to govern your tech use throughout your trip.
- Navigating the airport: Without a phone to display e-tickets, you’ll need to rely on paper boarding passes. Most airlines will print them out for you at the kiosks free of charge.
- Getting your bearings: To orient yourself near your hotel or other lodging, walk in increasingly larger concentric circles outward. Use physical maps and expect mistakes. The beauty of phoneless travel comes in the hiccups, as wrong turns often lead to incredible memories.
- Taking pictures without a phone: Purchase a disposable camera or a digital camera for $50, and practice a philosophy of intention — take one picture of something you want to remember, then put your camera away.
- Handling emergencies: Real emergencies are rare. The emergencies you’re likely to face are practical ones, like missing a train. These may seem catastrophic in the moment, but with the right attitude they’re nothing more than speed bumps.”
“Remember in moments of stress: Everyone traveled this way just a few decades ago.”

Off cuts

The stories that almost made this week’s newsletter.

The last word

⑦ Charlotte Ransom, CEO Netwealth, on the marketing metrics for success:

Charlotte Ransome. Source: PWM, 22 May 2025

“Are clients staying? Are they adding to their portfolios? Referring friends? That’s what matters.”

Don’t settle for marketing.

Aspire to InMarketing.

Wishing you an influential week,

P.S. My summer holiday is booked. Now I just need to figure out what to read. I’m more likely to turn to J.P. Morgan for advice than the Chicago Sun-Times though.