Hello Ara Debuts User Engagement Tool

Hello Ara, which conducts research through conversations rather than surveys, has officially launched a 360 degree AI-based methodology called #Explore, to help brands engage 'future users'. A discussion of the approach won best paper at ESOMAR Congress 2022, held in Toronto last month.

South Africa-based Hello Ara uses a wide range of approaches - including panels, social media, SMS, WhatsApp and QR codes - to enable people to express themselves freely in their own words, chat, and share voice notes, photos or videos. The firm uses personalized chatbots to enable these conversations at scale, with this and TikTok analysed using structured and unstructured natural language processing and image AI tools, 'rooted in human understanding'.

The new #Explore combines traditional research techniques with separate AI systems for image, audio and text, to provide a deep understanding of audiences who are younger than 30. The methodology provides deep thematic analysis along with practical actions on how to be more relevant and aspirational.

Hello Ara co-founder Karlien Kriegler (pictured) says #Explore uses a persona based chatbot, Kia, to hold conversations with 18-to-24-year-old social media users. During these conversations Kia also gathers the 'handles' of the influencers that the respondents follow, with a focus on TikTok. The TikTok videos are then downloaded and then multiple AI techniques, including audio analytics, speech and image analysis are used to identify successful and category-specific communication opportunities and patterns. Kriegler adds: 'It's as though TikTok shines a light on how this young audience expects to be communicated to. However, despite use of AI, we ensure human understanding is still at the heart of the analysis'.

Web site: www.helloara.io .