Artificial Intelligence is not optional: Execs on stage at Ad Week – Brand Innovators

Artificial Intelligence is reshaping marketing, but worries about the technology replacing creativity and inspiration are overblown, according to leaders at Brand Innovators’ Marketing Leadership Summit. 

“AI has transformed the way a lot of us work,” 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. 

AI has the ability to take the data compiled in an organization’s brand book and turn it into a “brand engine for all business functions, ” said Chelsey Susin Kantor, co-founder and co-CEO Brand.ai. A brand book is “kind of a dark art” to the rest of the organization, and those other functions didn’t 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. 

“Innovation is the sharing of that collective knowledge,” said Federico Salvitti, VP of Growth, at MINT. AI can gather and orchestrate “all the micro decisions that are made every day,” and help the CMO delegate tasks, freeing the executive to focus on more important strategic goals, said Salvitti. 

Freeing marketers from drudge work is the greatest contribution AI can make to the organizations, said speakers in the Summit’s AI and Digital Innovation track. By roughing out first drafts of creative, AI can break through writer’s block and by versioning multiple executions of existing creative—to accommodate personalization or different markets—it leaves room for creatives to work on other things. 

“Chat GPT is that first draft” that gets the humans past the procrastination that they may call writer’s block, said Herzog. 

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. “It never gives the output I’d like, because great creative is human-based,” she said. But those renditions are useful to communicate and model concepts to the artists who can produce the creative quality that’s necessary for the brand, she added. 

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. 

“It doesn’t replace your DNA,” he said. “It’s only going to guide you as the most useful tool you’ve ever had.”

Indeed, AI remains a tool, not a replacement for marketers, said speakers. The insiders warned leveraging AI can’t 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.

“AI enables growth,” said Jeanniey Walden, CMO of Rite Aid. “But that growth is people-centric,” she added. 

Humans will always play a role in AI, providing the “why” 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 “creativity with precision” but he warned that AI is most useful to figure out the core concept in creative, not make the ultimate call. “AI doesn’t make choices. It gives you options,” he said. 

Ultimately, marketers can use AI as a collaboration partner, said Kantor. “We have all of these answers,” she said. “We need to be the ones with taste and curation ability.” 

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. 

“Everyone’s using it,” said Bacelar. “Wake up.” 

AI has to be placed within the organization’s 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. 

“It has to serve the strategy that you already have in place,” Bacelar said. Merely jumping on the technology without thinking through the strategy piece is short-sighted, she explained. 

Another potential pitfall is looking at AI as merely a cost-cutting tool to automate tasks and reduce headcount, said Nafman. “If the goal is ‘cheaper,’ I don’t think that’s the best thing,” he said. “Cheaper is not always better. Better is better.” 

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. 

“AI is not going to take your job,” he said, “but someone who knows AI will.”