Marketers have now accepted that artificial intelligence is as much a basic need as electricity, and are negotiating the tension of how much to delegate, working through emerging ethical and operational issues.
AI is now “table stakes” for marketing organizations, but a flood of AI-generated content, and the public’s reaction to it, is forcing marketers into a more philosophical discussion of where the technology can help, or not, according to speakers at the Brand Innovators AI & Marketing Summit.
“AI is not a strategy,” said Jason John, chief marketing officer, 1-800 Flowers. “You have a business strategy and AI supports that strategy.” He compared the rush into AI with previous mobile and internet rushes and warned the technology needs to be thought through in the context of each enterprise’s goals.
“If some CEO asks what our AI strategy is, walk away,” he said.
Amit Sharma, associate vice president, digital and direct-to-consumer marketing and media strategy at Church & Dwight
The rise of AI has led marketers into me-too thinking, where every platform and every vendor boasts that they are using AI, often without perfecting the thinking or quality behind it, said Amit Sharma, associate vice president, digital and direct-to-consumer marketing and media strategy at CPG company Church & Dwight.
“It’s a blanket thing,” he said.
A business that believes merely using AI is a differentiator is about as outdated as one that believes electrical power serves that purpose, said author Rishad Tobaccowala. The biggest opportunities and threats emerging from AI don’t necessarily come from making today’s businesses more effective, as was initially thought, but actually reimagining business, said Tobaccowala, the former Chief Strategist of Publicis Groupe.
But many marketers are rethinking operations in the wake of AI’s pervasiveness. Christina Nevoso, director of marketing excellence & brand building, North America, at Bayer noted the pharma company had missed first-mover advantages in previous marketing evolutions, and won’t let that happen now.
“We know AI is the future,” she said. “We realized that we need to get ahead of it, because if we don’t we’re going to be so far behind.”
However, working in a high-regulated industry, Bayer has to proceed carefully. It uses AI to amplify work, whether it’s content creation or brand strategy and positioning. This has allowed the company to build content at a rapid speed, sometimes 400 to 500 pieces of content per day for some brands, far ahead of what it could do only a year ago, she said. While still in the early phases of AI adoption, Bayer is experimenting and testing, leaning heavily on agency partners.
“We really have to trust the process,” said Nevoso.
“Not just more for more.”
Thanks to AI’s ability to iterate, consumers are faced with a slew of content, but its quality and impact are up for discussion, said speakers. Sharma asked for a show of hands of how many people have seen so much AI-generated creative they can spot it on sight, and seeing sea of hands, said people are fed up with AI content.
“We’re all inundated with content,” said Bryce Adams, SVP of partnerships at the influencer marketing agency Open Influence.
Julia Knight, director of product marketing at Citizen
“Copying and pasting the work of other brands is easier than ever,” said Julia Knight, director of product marketing at Citizen. This raises the bar for brands to make their work unique, and also increases the need for ethical oversight. The public-safety app is one of the largest investors of policy and fire radio content, so being truthful and ethical is important, she said.
Brooke Brown, SVP, head of brand & creative at U.S. Bank
The technology is increasing pressure on in-house creative teams to make better, more relevant content: “Not just more for more, but more for better,” said Brooke Brown, SVP, head of brand & creative at U.S. Bank.
The growth of agentic AI is forcing marketers to rethink the customer journey and how they engage consumers and focusing on those bots and chat agents. Indeed, many speakers noted that search advertising volume is dropping sharply as AI agents take over many functions.
When marketers at pharma company Boehringer Ingelheim found out a few years ago that bots were involved in healthcare “we were appalled,” said Katherine Freeley, head of media at Boehringer Ingelheim. But the company has accepted that patient education based on searching and clicking on links “will be gone” as consumers increasingly use agents to enter their symptoms and ask about medical conditions. “There will be no world with link-based search soon,” said Freeley.
“We keep thinking we’re going to have agents as marketers, but me as a person is also going to have an agent,” said Tobaccowala. And agents will be connecting with each other, with no human mediation.
In that context, data becomes even more crucial to success, because it fuels the best uses of AI, said speakers. Parsing data at scale and speed can lead to a more predictive way of working.
Cheryl Guerin, EVP, global brand strategy & innovation at Mastercard
Mastercard, which has been using AI for over 10 years in fraud protection and other risk management tasks, has found a number of marketing uses for generative AI recently, said Cheryl Guerin, EVP, global brand strategy & innovation at the company. It created an insights engine to assist its 10-person research team, which had been overwhelmed with thousands of questions across the organization. Now, it can give insights in real time about questions such as “How does Gen Z feel about sustainability?” and even generate presentation slides. By enabling this across the marketing organization, it has relieved the team and stopped a lot of duplicative research, said Guerin.
She also noted MasterCard created a paid-media tool to monitor social media “micro trends” around passions such as e-sports and entertainment and connected it with media buying to respond with messages to consumers within 15 minutes. The tool can predict trends that can happen in coming weeks and have content ready to reach the right person with the right message, Guerin explained.
Power tools for creatives
Many speakers noted the real promise of AI is not to create content at volume, but help marketers make choices between creative executions, media and strategies. “We’re building power tools for people who make creative content,” said John Elder, Co-founder & CEO of AI tech company Supergood.
Marketers are also reimagining social listening with AI, said Adams. Social media used to be a walled garden, and now brands can be smarter about using it, he said. Brands can test content and understand better the next steps available, a valuable help when dealing with user-generated content, he explained. “That tool set and that knowledge will enable us to make better bets,” he said. As an example, he noted Snapchat is building a tool that can boost content if someone is talking about a brand online, whether they are a signed influencer or not.
“I feel we’re like accountants that just started using Excel in the early 80’s,” said Elder, but added, “it’s really just a tool that helps you make things faster.”
In this context, data management is key, especially in a highly-regulated industry such as financial services, said Brown. U.S. Bank worked with Supergood on an AI-assisted research project that was able to identify quickly how its heritage brand was being undervalued and helped unlock value of its assets, she said.
“Having a data strategy is critical,” said Elder. “It’s just improving the inputs to your decision-making abilities.”
Brown noted AI lets U.S. Bank’s brand team validate their insights quickly and “allows us to punch above our weight” by moving forward fast with confidence. That gives the company an early-mover advantage “so you can move with the market in real time.”
Marketers’ biggest AI challenge right now is trying to keep up. “It feels like every three weeks there is a new AI tool,” said Knight.
“What we AI is going to do to all of us, we can’t even think about,” said Freeley. She recommended marketers stay curious about AI development. The pace of change is so fast, professionals need to give up trying to stay ahead of it, and just maintain flexibility so they can adapt to new tools and uses, she said: “You have to start preparing yourself for what the future is going to be.”
