About 80 interested participants from academia and the business community attended the event, which was jointly organized by HNU (Prof. Andrea Kimpflinger, Halyna Schweizer, Prof. Dr. Wilke Hammerschmidt, Prof. Dr. Ulrich Bihler) and the Ulm/Neu-Ulm Marketing Club (Thomas Scheer).
A central theme was the growing influence of generative AI on how companies and brands are perceived. While companies can shape their own communication through advertising, websites, public relations, and social media, generative AI simultaneously processes a vast amount of digitally available information and uses it to create its own representations. This also changes the role of marketing and communication: In addition to the messages that companies themselves send out, the digital traces that others leave behind about a company are becoming increasingly important.
AI in Brand Communication, Sustainability Communication, and Knowledge Management
Two keynote presentations and a workshop report shed light on various aspects of this topic: Prof. Dr. Ulrich Bihler, adjunct lecturer at HNU and honorary professor of communication studies at the University of Hohenheim, highlighted how purchasing decisions and brand images are increasingly shaped by the responses of generative AI systems. Wolfgang Berger of DFGE explained the impact of the EU’s guidelines on empowering consumers for the green transition (EmpCo) on corporate communication. In a workshop report, Sven Spöde of the Zeiss Group examined how companies can strengthen their knowledge base for the use of AI.
Panel Discussion: Critical Thinking Remains a Core Competency
To mark the 25th anniversary of the Information Management and Corporate Communication degree program, the organizers hosted a special panel discussion: HNU President Prof. Dr. Julia Kormann, Judith Walter (Zeiss Group), Melanie Gömmel (The Goodforces), and Daniel Hauke (Hauke GmbH) participated in a panel discussion on the impact of technological developments on communication and the world of work.
There was agreement that, as automation capabilities increase, the skills that are difficult to automate—such as selecting, organizing, and critically evaluating information, and using it to make decisions—become increasingly important. The ability to produce content more quickly does not automatically translate into higher quality. Given the growing volume of information, professional judgment is therefore becoming more important.
25 Years of Information Management and Corporate Communications
For a quarter of a century now, the IMUK program has been bridging the fields of communication, management, and technology. IMUK graduates Silas Wagner and Semir Hadzic demonstrated how this can lead to concrete collaborations between the university and the business world: In their award-winning theses, they addressed practical communication issues and combined academic approaches with concrete challenges from the business world.
HNU President Prof. Dr. Julia Kormann emphasized the importance of such collaborations: “In these times, universities and the regional business community have a great opportunity: when both work together on a common goal, and in the end, each is better off, knows more, and is one step further along.”
About HNU Connect
Through HNU Connect, Neu-Ulm University regularly brings together representatives from academia and industry to discuss current developments in marketing and corporate communications and to strengthen the transfer of knowledge to the region.
