Nathan Rosenberg, Chief Brand & Marketing Officer at Virgin Voyages, said his company has increased open rates to 30% on email marketing with click through rates of 20% since deploying Gemini Enterprise AI agents working with his copywriting team.

Virgin Voyages was cited as one of the flagship customers of Google Cloud's Gemini Enterprise when it was launched in October. Virgin Voyages said it deployed more than 50 specialized agents on Gemini Enterprise and has more on tap.

Speaking on a webinar for analysts, Rosenberg said "Email Ellie," the first agent deployed on Gemini Enterprise, combines the knowhow of Virgin Voyages creative team with hyper-personalized marketing outreach. The AI agent is trained on internal brand frameworks and automates Virgin Voyages tone, which is cheeky much like Rosenberg. In addition, Email Ellie has cut campaign copy creation time by 40%.

"At Virgin globally, we're very focused on human experiences and our people," said Rosenberg, who noted that Virgin owner Richard Branson consistently says that "if you actually take care of your people, they will take care of your customers, and your customers will basically deliver the results."

"The most interesting thing in the relationship with Google is that they're a clever group of people who are very techy, and we're a human-centered organization," explained Rosenberg. "There's this perfect blend that says this isn't about the technology. Don't get me wrong. It's really helpful for us, but we don't start the conversation about technology. We start the conversation with what is the problem we're trying to solve, and how do we really understand what the customers want, and how do we deliver that?"

Rosenberg, who quips he barely knows how to use a copier, said a meeting with Google Cloud to talk Vertex AI and Gemini made it clear there's potential for his teams. "I hate the phrase of AI native, because it's really AI supporting," said Rosenberg. "But we have changed our entire organization. The advantage is when your people start to understand how it frees them up from the day-to-day drudgery and allows them to deliver incredible experiences."

While the Virgin Voyages buildout with Gemini Enterprise still in progress, Rosenberg had a set of lessons learned. Here's a look:

  • Think about outcomes more than saving money. "The problem with the AI conversation is that it is always about saving money or reducing headcount," said Rosenberg. "That's not what it's about. Rather than reducing our creative headcount we increased it. We've realized the tools are allowing us to scale. I have to keep going to my CFO and say I need more people because that's where the work is really being delivered. Understand what AI can do for you and how it can humanize contact more than you realize."
  • 50 AI coworkers. Rosenberg said his set of AI agents are viewed as coworkers that can take away the tasks that eat up human time. He said Virgin Voyages is using Gemini Enterprise to surface terms and conditions and ship changes to free up creative teams.
  • Frameworks matter. Rosenberg said Gemini Enterprise's guardrails and frameworks enable his team to focus. If a framework effectively eliminates distractions and prioritizes work then there's a structure creative teams can scale. "At first it was chaotic because some of us never worked with agents. We weren't sure what to do with them, but with manifested agents in a structure the team was blown away in a good way," said Rosenberg. "I don't tell the team what to build or you should solve this problem. They are working out what agent they want to partner with and naming it.”
  • Cultural returns. Yes, Virgin Voyages has hard returns, but one cultural benefit is Rosenberg's teams have more time to focus on efficacy of campaigns in a way they couldn't just 7 months ago. His team is looking at synthetic personas, asking questions and testing content with probabilistic scoring. "When they come to present work to me, I can't win the argument anymore because it's been tested," he said.
  • Ownership. Rosenberg said departments within companies should take ownership of AI and the tools it has. "As a marketer, it is the most exciting time ever to be in marketing, because this revolutionary AI is owned by marketing and sales more than technology people. The tech folks are there to help make the dreams come true," said Rosenberg.

Rosenberg said Virgin Voyages plans to scale its set of AI agents. "It is working so much so the copywriting team ended up producing at least 15 new agents to help them on a range of different things that are based on the incredible experience," he said. "What I love for our business is that AI isn't about cost cutting. It's about driving revenue and growth through mass personalization at scale."

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Business Research Themes

Data to Decisions

Roles

Chief Information Officer, Chief Marketing Officer

Tags

AI agents, Artificial Intelligence (AI), google cloud