Tommy Hilfiger Adds Innovative Chatbot Feature

With artificial intelligence moving forward and many companies hopping on board, chatbots have become a pervasive force in the retail industry. Consumers’ desire to receive instantaneous responses from their favorite brands continue to drive chatbot popularity and are thus pushing innovation forward.

One of the latest companies to begin challenging the chatbot status quo is fashion brand Tommy Hilfiger. The company recently unveiled its new chatbot for its customers — but there’s a catch.

Tommy Hilfiger’s chatbot is integrated into the company’s autoplay video ads. This means that while customers are viewing these advertisements, a chatbot will pop up over the video to provide an additional layer of engagement.

Following Facebook’s announcement involving chatbot integration into its Messenger platform at last year’s F8 Developers Conference, thousands of companies have been jumping at the chance to develop their own chatbots. As the hype of chatbots has gone mainstream, innovation was an inevitable occurrence.

Tommy Hilfiger’s new chatbot overlay into autoplay video ads pushes the boundaries of what brands can do with consumer interaction. It also raises the bar in terms of consumer engagement, potentially leading to higher customer retention rates — but only time will tell.

As artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and natural language processing continue to make strides, it’s likely that we’ll see more brands going above and beyond what’s currently possible for consumer interactions.