MarTech360 Interview With Amir Jirbandey, Head of Growth & Marketing at Papercup

Our greatest challenge at the moment is educating the market on what makes an AI dubbing company premium; on how to choose a provider that is going to localize your content to the quality it deserves.

Amir, can you tell us about your professional background and your current role at Papercup.

For the last decade and a bit I’ve been growing SaaS companies by owning and rolling out their go-to-market strategies. Integral to this – formulating key company propositions, and optimizing paid and organic channel processes, inbound, account-based, product and content marketing.

For Papercup, my team works on all of the above so we become synonymous with AI dubbing.

How does Papercup differentiate itself from other AI-powered language solutions?

We have three main points of difference: firstly our AI voices are specifically designed for video, which means that we’re constantly optimizing the expressiveness of our voices for this format. Video end users have completely different expectations for expressiveness – only super realistic voices, which we deliver, will do compared with, say, a home voice assistant, which can be satisfactory for its end user with robotic delivery.

Secondly, the systems built by our ML team create totally unique voices because they’re trained on proprietary speech data obtained by recording voice actors in our in-house studio. This is a key point of differentiation as many of our competitors solely plug in third party, generic voices or use other techniques, like voice cloning, that reproduce an individual’s voice, which plays in more complex ethical territories.

Quality is our final and arguably most important key differentiator. We understand that AI is incredibly useful for time and cost saving, but that it requires a human touch to ensure it’s of the highest possible quality. For this reason, we have what we call a ‘human in the loop’ process, whereby real translators check that the output translation and delivery is indistinguishable from real human speech.

How AI-generated voices can help companies personalize their marketing messages? How/companies are using AI-generated voices to enhance customer experiences?

People are 76% more likely to buy if information is in their native language. There is a common misconception that personalisation always has to be based on granular first-party data, and while this is true of digital advertising for instance, there are easy wins to be had when it comes to the personalization of marketing material, in our case video, for different markets.

This comes hand-in-hand with enhancing the customer experience through localizing at key stages in their journey to the desired outcome – be that purchase, subscribe, advocate etc. If customers are able to access information in their native language they are more likely to engage more fully, retain information more readily and therefore reach the desired outcome sooner, with less friction and also means they are more likely to return.

What are some of the benefits of investing in localizing their products or services, and how can they measure the ROI?

The main benefits of AI dubbing is that it saves a huge amount of time, is much more affordable and simple to implement than other forms of dubbing and has higher engagement.

Papercup presents huge workflow streamlining benefits to companies currently using and investing significant management and resource energy in managing lots of different providers for different parts of their localization process i.e. one company for transcription and translation, another for subtitling and dubbing etc. Its ease and affordability have lowered the dubbing barriers to entry; dubs were previously done in the studio with voice actors but this option was only open to companies with large budgets.

AI dubbing ROI is measured depending on the ultimate goal of the content type. We work with companies distributing their content on YouTube and other social channels, so in this instance – ROI is measured by an uplift in views, watch time and completion rates on YouTube, which ultimately equate to revenue. We’ve seen clients 12x their views (compared to when they just localized with subtitles) by having the AI dubbed version available on their separate language channels, or now with YouTube’s multi-language audio tracks feature – dubbed versions on their main channel.

Also read: MarTech360 Interview With Rishi Mallik, SVP of Growth and Marketing at Workato

How do you see Papercup evolving in response to the changing needs and demands of the global market?

We’re always improving the expressivity of our voices and this will remain our topmost focus. Our total addressable market grows with every improvement to expressivity that we make, and the end-user experience improves.

There is currently huge global demand for optionality. People want to be able to consume content in their native language, across different platforms; they’re being savvy and dipping in and out of brands and services. In this climate, we see AI dubbing as critical to meeting the demands of the global market for optionality, but also reaching the wider global audiences that are the key to the success for those that distribute content on social channels.

There is a huge spotlight on AI at the moment, so it will be important for us to highlight and maintain transparency about how our voices are created, and to continue to shape the conversation around how AI can help clients automate and augment their existing processes.

What advice would you give to other marketing leaders which helped you personally?

Focus on positioning and messaging before you move to the tactics. This will ensure the longevity and cohesiveness of your project and ensure that the company works together to build on the core proposition in their respective areas.

What is the biggest problem you or your team is solving this year?

When we started out, there weren’t really any notable competitors in the space. Now there are lots of AI dubbing companies popping up. Our competitors don’t operate an end-to-end service like we do, or they use pre-made voices with low levels of expressivity across many languages and they tend not to have real translators checking the quality of the new dubbed voices, or if they do – the translators are working with third party voices.

In short, our greatest challenge at the moment is educating the market on what makes an AI dubbing company premium; on how to choose a provider that is going to localize your content to the quality it deserves.

Is there anything that you’re currently reading, or any favorite books, that you’d Recommend?

My favorite book is Banco by Henri Charrière which is unrelated to the field but it’s important to be able to switch off. One I always comes back to is April Dunford’s Obv!ously  Awesome: How to Nail Product Positioning So Customers Get it, Love it, Buy it. One that I’m looking forward to reading, but am yet to order is Ben Smith’s book, Traffic.

Thanks, Amir!