Bigger the brand is the knowledge base is scattered at many levels. At the global level a brand can have tone of voice, market insights, brand assets etc however brands are much more nuanced than that because there is regional level information such as portfolio, product specifics, digital strategy etc. There might be even more fine grained information at very specific level may be at campaign , idea or even project level which deals with visuals , campaign insight, audience segmentation etc.
When a new creative agency, media agency, or brand team member is onboarded, navigating through numerous strategic and brand documents can be extremely challenging. Additionally, searching through documents to find small details, such as image dimensions, can become quite difficult. Maybe you’re juggling multiple brands, complex campaigns across channels, slow content velocity, clunky workflows, legacy infrastructure, inability to personalize and all of this results in inefficient use of budgets, missed deadlines leading to missed opportunities and frustration.
This is where Sitecore stream comes to rescue to transform your content-experience lifecycle with brand-aware AI, copilots and agents, and agentic workflows to work smarter, more strategically, and more securely.
To build a comprehensive brand knowledge base for Stream, we need to train the language model with essential brand elements such as tone of voice, logos, styling, visual guidelines, brand context, dos and don’ts, colors, and emotions that reinforce brand identity. This approach will enable the model to retrieve relevant information effectively.
Sitecore Stream is a suite of AI capabilities integrated within Sitecore products, revolutionizing how marketers handle their daily tasks in the digital age by improving efficiency in content creation, marketing operations, and project management.
Here's a breakdown of its key features :
Brand Aware AI: Brand Aware AI is trained to comprehend the core elements of a brand, such as its mission, vision, tone, and style. This ensures that any content created by the AI reflects the brand's unique personality and messaging
Copilot and Agents: Copilots that can help marketer in content creation, providing suggestions , brainstorm campaigns, briefs, press release content, social media post, generate AI powered tags, etc.
Agentic (AI Enhanced) Workflow: Sitecore Stream provides advanced AI tools that simplify various marketing tasks, including content creation, campaign brief development, and message personalization. This helps marketers manage multiple brands, orchestrate complex campaigns, and meet tight deadlines more efficiently. Streamline marketing process by automating repetitive tasks.
The brand-aware AI draws its foundational knowledge from:
1. Brand Knowledge -
Brand knowledge is built through a process called brand ingestion, where the system processes external brand-related documents in below three phases
Ingestion - learning about your brand by gathering and uploading all essential brand information from brand documents. These external documents might include tone of voice, text and image guidelines, values, and any other documents that define your brand identity and objectives.
Enrichment - refining the collected brand data by breaking it into smaller, meaningful information chunks using techniques like document chunking, summarization, advanced data processing, and extraction. This ensures that each piece of brand information is optimized for the LLM.
Indexing - organizing and categorizing the enriched content into structured and semantically searchable chunks. This step builds a foundational understanding of your brand by transforming unstructured information into an accessible format. This indexed content is stored in the brand knowledge database, enabling the Sitecore AI capabilities to efficiently perform similarity searches and retrieve relevant brand data for AI-driven interactions.
At this point it is important to understand the concept of RAG which is leveraged here. In the RAG architecture, user input is linked to search results retrieved from a knowledge database, such as a SharePoint site, documents, or web source. This combined information is then sent to a Large Language Model (LLM), which generates an output. This process is similar to asking ChatGPT to rephrase a paragraph, where both the input (the paragraph) and the desired result (rephrased keyword) are provided to the LLM, which leverages natural language processing to produce the output. Understanding this concept is crucial to get an understanding of how brand-aware AI works
2. BRAND kit -
The brand kit is a key component of brand-aware AI, built upon the foundation of brand knowledge. It is a subset of brand knowledge, containing core brand elements specifically tailored for marketers and brand managers.
The creation of brand knowledge begins with the brand ingestion process, where a designated marketing team member uploads key brand documents, such as brand books, playbooks, guidelines, and standards. These documents are then analyzed and transformed into a structured, searchable brand knowledge database. After brand knowledge is created, its essential elements are extracted and added to the brand kit.
The brand kit serves two main functions:
For marketers and brand managers, it acts as a quick-reference guide, centralizing access to core brand elements for easy validation and editing.
For the various Sitecore Stream AI capabilities, it serves as the primary information source. The AI tools first reference the brand kit to retrieve core brand elements. If additional information is needed, they then access the broader brand knowledge, ensuring efficient and accurate retrieval without scanning the entire database each time.
Best practices -
To ensure optimal results from Sitecore Stream AI capabilities, follow these best practices when uploading brand documents for ingestion:
Choose content based on your objective - upload evergreen, global guidelines to build foundational brand knowledge and a brand kit that remain relevant over time. This helps AI identify and understand the relevant information to use, ensuring on-target results.
Prioritize text-rich content - focus on brand documents rich in descriptive text rather than those heavily reliant on images. Text-rich content enables the AI to correctly interpret brand principles, values, and guidelines.
Use consistent in language - documents written in a consistent language and style help to avoid conflicting terminology or tone. This consistency helps the various AI capabilities to align with your brand in every generated output.
Use accessible document formats - ensure that brand documents are formatted for accessibility, with clear text hierarchy, alt text for any essential images, and are compatible with screen readers. Accessible documents help the AI accurately grasp the details in your documents.
Upload curated core content - choose the type of documents containing core information that defines your brand. Avoid non-essential materials, because excess content can dilute the message and result in output that doesn't fully reflect your brand. Always prioritize quality and relevance over quantity.
Generative copilots and agents are Sitecore Stream AI-capabilities designed to boost marketers' productivity by accelerating decision-making and task execution. Copilots guide decisions, while agents automate actions, enabling marketers to focus on strategy and execution.
Below are the Copilots currently supported :-
Brand Copilot
Content Copilot
Experience Copilot
Brand Copilot - Brand copilot allows marketers to strategized , brainstorm and ideate with brand aware AI using Brand Assistant. Brand Assistant is a brand copilot that provides marketers with end-to-end support for creating and managing on-brand content. Through natural language chat, it enables marketers to interact with their brand throughout the content lifecycle, answering a wide range of marketing questions.
Key Capabilities
Brand Aware Chat - interact with brand knowledge and the brand kit at every stage of content creation. Marketers can explore specific aspects of their brand, ask simple or complex brand-related questions, and use web searches for competitive analysis.
Brief Generation - generate the first draft of a campaign brief using AI by providing minimal input. The brief is grounded in brand information and serves as a foundation for refining ideas and ensuring brand alignment before allocating resources. Each generated brief includes a standard structure with predefined sections applicable to most organizations.
Brainstorming - create content using AI, grounded in brand information, by synthesizing information from multiple sources, the web and relevant documents. Based on the user’s query, the Brand Assistant triggers specific agents to retrieve and compile insights into a cohesive response. Users can refine and build upon the generated content, making it a collaborative ideation process with AI.
Content CoPilot - Enable marketers to collaborate with AI to generate the exact content helping them focus on impact instead of repetitive tasks. AI can create variant of content within specific component say - call to action or change the tone of voice to make it more formal.
Experience Copilot - Assist in providing alternative component that may fit the campaign page, landing page etc.
Effective project management begins with a well-structured plan to organize tasks, set priorities, and bring the right team members into the process. By defining clear goals, tracking progress, and supporting collaboration, teams can stay on track and meet the project's objectives.
With Sitecore Stream, agentic workflows enhance project management by combining project management with AI-driven automation. Designed for marketing teams, these workflows help orchestrate projects across teams and Sitecore products.
By providing a unified workspace tailored to the typical marketing campaign lifecycle, teams can easily view, create, organize, and manage project,tasks, and deliverables in a connected experience. For instance, tasks created in Sitecore Stream are accessible in other Sitecore products, such as XM Cloud, allowing marketers to manage their work without switching between platforms.
The project management and orchestration features include My day and Projects:
The My day landing page provides a personalized dashboard for tracking assigned tasks and project status, helping team members prioritize their work quickly.
Projects offers a centralized workspace for project management, enabling teams to collaborate, automate workflows, manage dependencies, and monitor progress with ease.
Key capabilities:
Centralized platform - create and manage projects, deliverables, and tasks, and monitor their progress in real-time from a centralized location.
Simplified task management - quickly assign tasks, update statuses, set deadlines, and track progress across multiple projects.
Improved transparency - keep teams informed and aligned with clear task assignments, real-time updates, and linked tasks for better accountability.
Enhanced collaboration - enable project members to comment on tasks, clarify requirements, upload attachments, share updates, and communicate in real time.
AI-driven automation - use AI to suggest tasks and deliverables, send automated notifications, and provide direct links that guide team members to complete specific actions within the relevant Sitecore product.
Sitecore Stream revolutionizes the way marketers manage and utilize brand knowledge. By leveraging AI-driven tools like Brand Aware AI and Copilot and Agents, marketers can streamline their workflows, enhance content creation, and ensure brand consistency across all channels. The Brand Ingestion Process and Brand Kit provide a structured approach to organizing and accessing essential brand information, making it easier to deliver exceptional digital experiences. Embracing Sitecore Stream's capabilities will empower marketing teams to make data-driven decisions, improve collaboration, and ultimately, build stronger, more cohesive brands that resonate with consumers worldwide.
A great Brand is driven by thousands of marketers working across nearly every country in the world. They collaborate closely with creative agency partners and content studios to build brands that consumers love. However, Marketers often find themselves navigating through a range of fifty plus strategic and marketing documents, which can be overwhelming. It is challenging to locate the right files brand guideline, logos, templates and other key materials spread across different systems. Especially when onboarding new agency or team members it becomes immensely painful to share category knowledge which delays planning and execution of great ideas.
Nestle partnered with Microsoft innovation team and Sitecore to leverage power of AI and have built a tool called brand assistant. Watch the video for more information - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6ffSq5ioTI