I spoke to a few of my newsletter subscribers about what topics they would like me to cover in future editions and this one was the most-voted topic by far. Enough people have talked about it but to distill down on things that might matter the most to people who are working in marketing departments or agencies in a practical way.
Let us first try and build a better understanding of how AI has been evolving and what future implications it might have for the human race. Jeff Hawkins says in his book “A Thousand Brains”
“Intelligence is the ability of a system to learn a model of the world. But, the resulting model by itself is valueless, emotionless, and has no goals. Goals and values are provided by whatever system is using the model. It’s like how the explorers of the sixteenth through the twentieth centuries worked to create an accurate map of Earth.
A ruthless military general might use the map to plan the best way to surround and murder an opposing army. A trader could use the exact same map to peacefully exchange goods. The map itself does not dictate these uses, nor does it impart any value to how it is used. It is just a map, neither murderous nor peaceful.”
It’s a brilliant way to understand the context of risks of AI as Ben Thompson writes on his website Stratechery. It can be great for many use cases, depending on what goals we have.
Back to our marketing world, AI in its current form can be used by almost everyone. It is definitely not a magic wand, nor it is a threat to take down your job in the short term. But you can improve your efficiency, get better ideas and save lots of time.
Let us look at some of its practical applications.
Brainstorming and Research
Chat GPT is an amazing tool if used in the right way for planners to do their research, gather information, run analysis and trigger their ideas. It is also great to start some brainstorming sessions.
Whether these are insights, creative ideas, or some cool image/graphics designed by AI. Start with it, and then tighten your process to fine-tuning it to build an actual piece of strategy, presentation or proposal. It can save tonnes of time, and hours of pain staking follow-up emails and meetings in an office.
Content for Performance Marketing
We live in a tough world of performance marketing running AB tests, Dynamic Creative Optimization campaigns, personalized creatives and landing pages, and conversion-centric campaigns. In turn, this requires hundreds and thousands of content pieces.
It’s a great application for AI as you can set up templates, brand guidelines and get machine to build versions for them for your campaign.
Customer Service and Analytics
We all know how bots are being used for a long time to run customer service, conversational commerce, find the voice of customer,s and other things. But now with generative AI, it can become much more easier and useful.
One of the good things you can do is run analytics on your customer chats to figure out actionable insights. A lot of companies want to do this but never got around to it because of many constraints. No more excuses eh?
Video and 3-D modeling
The tools available for generating videos and 3-D models are quite good but probably not up to the standards we need in advertising. But again, the tech is getting better with time, and this is already saving a lot of effort and time for people.
Especially again, for the sea of content required for digital media, this is a brilliant way to get the volumes in with human supervision.
Emails, Meetings, and Minutes
The biggest nightmare of agencies and marketing units. I have seen account managers drowning in this sea of non stop emails, project plans, getting everyone in a meeting room, writing minutes and actions items. Every agency should get all these processes automated and save valuable human hours for better things.
A Better you
We will see how generative AI develops into more use cases, and how do we get around legal issues. But one thing is for sure – you can become a better you at work with AI at your side.
How are you using AI in your work life? I would love to hear you out.
The views expressed in this article are personal, and not necessarily those of the author’s employer.
