I've been a marketing agency owner for three-plus decades (sometimes feels like three-plus millennia). While there have been game changers galore (the internet, social media, digital marketing and more), AI is the game changer of game changers.
Fight or flight? I choose fight with a little, "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em" mixed in. Yes, AI is VERY cool and makes things super-easy for people who are not natural creators and maybe short on time. AI also can make things less expensive for client brands that, to save some money, go the DIY route, removing the human – and the human's unique insights and talents – from the creative / media planning, etc. equation.
But, if everyone and every brand has or will have access to the same AI, shouldn’t that be more of a cause for worry than excitement?
Historically, agencies have competed on executing better than the others: Who could produce more and better creative, buy media more efficiently and effectively, optimize faster ... outperform the other guys? God bless the creators, the media mavens, et. al.! But now AI makes most of that nearly free and nearly instant gratification. Content generation ... bid management … audience modeling … writing many different copy versions quickly … with AI, what can be produced in in an afternoon used to take weeks or months.
Is AI a marketing Terminator, making skillful, human execution obsolete? Feels like it.
But if ... more likely, when ... outputs across-the-board all mirror each other, because everyone's using the same models on the same data, doesn’t "AI-powered" creative become like the new stock photography? Fast? Yes. Cheap? Uh-huh! And, at some point, (my bet!), ignorable and forgettable.
Because AI forces marketing teams to build campaigns for two target audiences, instead of one. (1) Still for humans, who respond to a signature point of view, a special way of expressing it gives them a reason to give a hoot. And (2) the "audience" of AI agents now standing between you, Mr. or Ms. Brand, and them, summarizing your category, shortlisting your competitors, sometimes even buying on the customer's behalf.
So easy. Yet, kind of scary.
Creating and optimizing with AI means having the machines in mind, first and foremost, and also likely means you’re increasingly going to get correct, cited, and ... stuff that’s just okay? On the flip side, if you optimize purely for humans, you risk being invisible to systems driving search and discovery.
That's the problem already in our – certainly my – midst. While running to keep up with the tricks and mental gymnastics needed to successfully manipulate and "play" with AI, what feels like it's in danger of floating away is that beautiful – FUN! – exhausting-but-exhilarating process for developing the winning, strategically-driven, brand point of view, expressed with enough verve, differentiation, and discipline that both a machine – and a person – can tell it apart from the rest of the herd.