On August 15, 2026, in Ho Chi Minh City, PMAX participated in Conviction 2026 – the Vietnam Digital Asset and AI Economy Forum. The event brought together more than 80 speakers and 210 partners, focusing on ongoing developments in digital assets, artificial intelligence, and the practical application of technology in businesses.
During the panel discussion titled “Marketing in the AI Era: From Customer Engagement to Business Growth,”Mr. Nguyễn Việt Anh, Chief Transformation Officer at PMAX, shared his perspectives on how AI is transforming Marketing, the role of humans, and the factors that determine the effectiveness of AI adoption in businesses.
As AI becomes increasingly widespread, the advantage lies in how businesses use it
According to Mr. Việt Anh, AI is gradually becoming a widely accessible capability. Therefore, the question is no longer whether businesses adopt AI, but whether they can use it more effectively and apply the technology to the right problems.
This shift also directly affects how work is organized. As AI becomes more deeply integrated into workflows, the role of humans will gradually shift from directly executing tasks to designing, building, and improving systems.
Mr. Việt Anh emphasized: “Deep human expertise remains central to the AI adoption process. An AI Agent can only be truly effective when it is designed by someone who deeply understands the problem, knows how to identify the right inputs, control quality, and continuously improve the system.”
Therefore, competitiveness in the AI era does not come from technology alone. The difference lies in a company’s ability to combine AI with deep expertise and a sufficiently strong operating system that can continuously improve the quality of its outputs.
AI transformation must begin with the right problem
Drawing from his experience working with large enterprises, Mr. Việt Anh stated that one of the first steps in AI transformation is “choosing the right question to answer.”
“Sometimes, we search for an excellent answer to the wrong question, and that still does not solve the problem,” Mr. Việt Anh shared.
According to him, businesses may invest significant resources in producing a good answer, but the outcome is unlikely to create value if the original problem has not been correctly identified. Therefore, AI adoption should begin with the business problem before moving on to technology selection.
This is also how PMAX approaches transformation challenges alongside businesses. Rather than starting by looking for areas where AI can be applied, PMAX focuses on identifying the problem that needs to be solved, the outcomes the business wants to achieve, and where AI can provide support throughout that process.
Once the problem has been clearly defined, AI can then be combined with the appropriate data, processes, and expertise to deliver tangible results.
Having more data does not necessarily mean having enough data for AI
Another factor emphasized by Mr. Việt Anh is data. For many large enterprises, data is often in a state of being “both abundant and insufficient.”
Businesses may possess substantial amounts of data without fully extracting its value. At the same time, organizations may still lack the critical signals needed to solve a specific business problem.
Therefore, the focus should not be on continuing to accumulate more data. Businesses need to determine which data sources are truly necessary, connect them to the right problems, and bring data back into the decision-making process.
Alongside data, human expertise must be present throughout the AI adoption process, from defining inputs and evaluating outcomes to improving the system. This is essential to ensure that AI operates based on practical knowledge of the industry, customers, and business objectives.
Scale only becomes an advantage when businesses are capable of learning
Large enterprises often have more resources to experiment with AI applications. This gives organizations the opportunity to test multiple hypotheses, gather results, and improve their operations through each round of experimentation.
However, scale can also make the transformation process more complex. When departments operate according to different priorities or there is a lack of alignment among senior leaders, lessons learned from experiments are difficult to translate into organization-wide change.
According to Mr. Việt Anh, businesses need to establish a continuous learning mechanism in which the results of each experiment are evaluated and fed back into the next operating cycle. Resources enable businesses to conduct more experiments, but their ability to organize and learn ultimately determines whether those experiments can be transformed into long-term capabilities.
The role of Marketing Agencies is also being redefined in the AI era
AI is being applied increasingly extensively by both businesses and advertising platforms. Many operational activities across advertising platforms have already been automated, raising questions about the value that Marketing Agencies need to create in this new context.
According to Mr. Việt Anh, PMAX’s role is to create additional value and complement the capabilities of businesses and technology partners, with one of its key differentiators being the ability to view Marketing from a cross-platform perspective. While each platform can optimize deeply within its own ecosystem, businesses still need a holistic view to effectively connect multiple channels, data sources, and business objectives.
In addition, accumulated data and experience also become important inputs for AI. Technology can accelerate processing, but the quality of the results still depends on the data, context, and expertise provided to the system.
From a measurement perspective, Marketing must also move beyond evaluating the performance of individual channels to analyzing the cross-platform picture, creative effectiveness, and the extent to which Marketing investments contribute to business outcomes.
AI needs to become part of a company’s Marketing capabilities and be managed as an organizational capability
The central message throughout Mr. Việt Anh’s presentation at Conviction 2026 was how AI connects with business problems, data, people, and an organization’s learning mechanisms. This also serves as the foundation for AI to generate meaningful business impact in Marketing.
With its positioning as a Total Marketing Partner, PMAX continues to support businesses in connecting strategy, execution, data, and measurement, applying AI to the right Marketing challenges to improve the quality of decision-making and create meaningful impacts on business growth.
As AI gradually becomes a widely accessible capability in the market, the advantage will belong to businesses that know how to define the right problems, leverage the right resources, and build systems capable of continuous improvement.
About PMAX
Founded in 2016, PMAX is a Total Marketing Partner that supports businesses in building comprehensive Marketing ecosystems, connecting internal resources with a network of strategic partners to improve Marketing investment effectiveness and create meaningful impacts on business outcomes.
PMAX provides six solution groups:
- Total Marketing Consulting
- Total Brand Communications
- Total Media
- Total Lead Generation
- Total MCNs Powerhouse
- Data & Tech
After 10 years of operation, PMAX has partnered with more than 700 brands, built a team of over 250 professionals, and received more than 40 domestic and international awards.
Contact us today for a detailed consultation:
- Website: pmax.com.vn/contact-us
- Email: [email protected]
- Hotline: (+84) 28 7300 1778