Generative AI, marketing, and the industry's carbon footprint

By this point in 2024, most people have had some direct experience with generative AI.

Perhaps you’ve asked ChatGPT to write you a Petrarchan sonnet about sloths. Maybe you’ve played around with MidJourney to create a Dune-themed invitation for your 40th birthday party.

But beyond the novelty, gen-AI is obviously a powerful tool that has been swiftly and radically changing industries and economies. Its use cases in the marketing world are extensive--case in point, the suite of AI-powered technologies provided by Stagwell Marketing Cloud.

We were curious, though: What do ordinary consumers think about the use of AI in today’s marketing efforts?

Do they have a handle on how the technologies are being applied, and do they think the results are positive, negative, or somewhere in between?

In tandem with this question, we started wondering how consumers think about the carbon footprint of creative production for marketing.

That’s a broad category, of course--it would include everything from a creative team jetting to Monaco to film a new ad spot, to the environmental impact of gen-AI itself.

So we fired up QuestDIY, part of the Stagwell Marketing Cloud family, in order to rapidly gather reliable survey data at scale.

How we did it

We ran this survey as part of a demonstration during the Marketing Procurement iQ Conference in mid-April. Since the conference took place in London, we decided to focus our outreach on respondents based in the UK.

• Using QuestDIY, we launched the survey at 11:27 AM.
• 400 responses had come in by 11:43 AM.
• A full panel of 500 respondents had completed the survey, representing the UK general population, by 2:28 PM.

Of course, our survey about the usage and environmental impact of gen-AI itself used gen-AI in its creation.

QuestDIY allowed us to plug in our basic request (in this case, “Understanding consumer views on the use of AI in the marketing industry and to what degree they care about the carbon footprint of creative production within the marketing industry”).

After that, the AI Creator tool drafted 10 questions, grounded in research principles and enabling us to go from idea to launch in a few minutes.

The findings

Here are some of the topline findings that came out of this rapid turnaround survey with QuestDIY.

First of all, it’s apparent that consumers are savvy, and generally clued into the fact that gen-AI is being used as a marketing tool... even if they’re not always sure how it’s being used.

• 8 out of 10 respondents are aware that AI is being used in the marketing industry.
• Understanding varies with age: 81% of 18-24-year olds somewhat or completely claim to understand the usage of AI in this context, whereas only 46% of those over the age of 65 made the same claim.
• 52% said the use of AI in marketing was beneficial to consumers, with the most beneficial application being product recommendations (45%) and customer service applications (43%). 

What about the knowledge (or interest) in the environmental impact of creative production for marketing efforts?

• Just 29% of surveyed consumers are aware of the carbon footprint involved in creative production.
• However, 76% of the sample saw it as being “somewhat or very important” that businesses minimize the carbon footprint footprint of their marketing efforts.
• Lastly, nearly two thirds (64%) are more likely to support businesses that are making efforts to reduce their carbon footprint when it comes to their marketing production.

Open-ended feedback

Our rapid QuestDIY-powered survey also asked respondents to share feedback in a less structured way.

For instance, we were able to ask, “Is there anything else you would like to share about AI in marketing or green marketing initiatives?”

Respondents shared insights that ranged from the optimistic to the cynical:

• "AI powered tools automate routine tasks such as customer segmentation, campaign optimization, and content generation, improving efficiency and freeing up marketers to focus on strategy and creativity.”
• "They are business and profit driven to exploit customers and ... anything green is a token gesture.”

Adding qualitative insights such as these to the previous data allows us to further understand consumer views on the topic.

Harnessing gen-AI for your own survey needs

As you can probably tell, the AI-powered capabilities of QuestDIY open up opportunities to conduct high-quality research, at scale, and within hours.

And a flexible subscription model means that the software might be accessible even with a more modest marketing research budget.

If you’re interested in learning how QuestDIY can help your brand, get in touch to set up a demo.