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Artificial Intelligence is reshaping marketing, but worries about the technology replacing creativity and inspiration are overblown, according to leaders at Brand Innovatorsâ Marketing Leadership Summit.Â
âAI has transformed the way a lot of us work,â said Alison Herzog, Head of Global Corporate Marketing at Visa. Marketers are putting the technology to work in a wide swath of functions, such as adapting existing creative to improve personalization, crunching data to make decisions easier or roughing out first drafts to break though creative blocks.Â
AI has the ability to take the data compiled in an organizationâs brand book and turn it into a âbrand engine for all business functions, â said Chelsey Susin Kantor, co-founder and co-CEO Brand.ai. A brand book is âkind of a dark artâ to the rest of the organization, and those other functions didnât have the bandwidth before to check that communications were brand-appropriate. Now, AI can power software that enables brands to strategize and create better brand experiences, so teams such as sales can use the brand book effectively and become better ambassadors for the brand, she said.Â
âInnovation is the sharing of that collective knowledge,â said Federico Salvitti, VP of Growth, at MINT. AI can gather and orchestrate âall the micro decisions that are made every day,â and help the CMO delegate tasks, freeing the executive to focus on more important strategic goals, said Salvitti.Â
Freeing marketers from drudge work is the greatest contribution AI can make to the organizations, said speakers in the Summitâs AI and Digital Innovation track. By roughing out first drafts of creative, AI can break through writerâs block and by versioning multiple executions of existing creativeâto accommodate personalization or different marketsâit leaves room for creatives to work on other things.Â
âChat GPT is that first draftâ that gets the humans past the procrastination that they may call writerâs block, said Herzog.Â
But AI-generated creative is not a replacement for what humans produce, said Liz Bacelar, founder of the Global Tech Innovation Team at Estee Lauder. âIt never gives the output Iâd like, because great creative is human-based,â she said. But those renditions are useful to communicate and model concepts to the artists who can produce the creative quality thatâs necessary for the brand, she added.Â
Joseph Janus, Global Chief Executive Officer & Chief Marketing Officer, of streetwear brand WeSC said his organization uses AI on a daily basis for content creation and personalization. It makes personalization possible, as well as enforcing brand guidelines across 47 countries the brand does business in, as well as adapt to multiple languages.Â
âIt doesnât replace your DNA,â he said. âItâs only going to guide you as the most useful tool youâve ever had.â
Indeed, AI remains a tool, not a replacement for marketers, said speakers. The insiders warned leveraging AI canât be simply about saving money by eliminating manual processes and reducing headcount, but needs to be a part of a strategy that fits into the objectives of the brand.
âAI enables growth,â said Jeanniey Walden, CMO of Rite Aid. âBut that growth is people-centric,â she added.Â
Humans will always play a role in AI, providing the âwhyâ that guides decisions requires human input, said Joshua Nafman, vice president, digital, data, & AI marketing, at Diageo. The liquor company has been experimenting with using AI for content creation that combines âcreativity with precisionâ but he warned that AI is most useful to figure out the core concept in creative, not make the ultimate call. âAI doesnât make choices. It gives you options,â he said.Â
Ultimately, marketers can use AI as a collaboration partner, said Kantor. âWe have all of these answers,â she said. âWe need to be the ones with taste and curation ability.âÂ
Speakers warned marketers need to take the reins on this technology now. Future-proofing is a matter of learning about AI and experimenting to avoid the threat of obsolescence, and for their organizations, the imperative is to set processes and guidelines for AI use, because employees are already experimenting with the technology.Â
âEveryoneâs using it,â said Bacelar. âWake up.âÂ
AI has to be placed within the organizationâs strategy, said Bacelar. The process has to start by looking inward and assessing how the goals and strategy of the organization intersect with the technology, she said. She suggested talking to stakeholders to identify key concerns and pain points and incorporate them into a plan and guidelines for responsible AI use. For example, they should bar the use of AI in human resources decisions.Â
âIt has to serve the strategy that you already have in place,â Bacelar said. Merely jumping on the technology without thinking through the strategy piece is short-sighted, she explained.Â
Another potential pitfall is looking at AI as merely a cost-cutting tool to automate tasks and reduce headcount, said Nafman. âIf the goal is âcheaper,â I donât think thatâs the best thing,â he said. âCheaper is not always better. Better is better.âÂ
Creatives will always have a place, and the fear that marketers will lose their jobs to AI is a myth, said Sharad Vivek, vice president, partnerships, at Jacquard.Â
âAI is not going to take your job,â he said, âbut someone who knows AI will.â