Few work-related topics induce as much excitement—and anxiety—as artificial intelligence.
The conversation around AI can often be pretty binary. It’s either a world-changing solution that will make every human being a superhero... or it’s another meaningless bubble due to burst any day now.
Let’s take a look at some of the prevailing myths around AI and marketing, and hopefully add a dash of nuance to the discussion.
“I don’t need a robot to teach me how to write,” says every intelligent person ever, scoffing at the latest op-ed about how ChatGPT penned some college admissions essays.
And it’s true—LLMs can be stilted, and cliched, and clunky, especially if they’re not given robust prompts.
But there are a lot of different types of writing, and with the right prompt (or platform), LLMs can excel at sharpening the right tone for your task.
The key is to lean into bespoke solutions that leverage this technology, rather than relying on the free, consumer-facing models currently available.
PRophet Earn, for instance, helps with the writing of press releases and pitches to journalists, allowing for effortless toggling between tones and styles.
You’ll still want to review the AI’s work—it’s like the relationship between a freelance writer and a savvy editor—but you’ll have an excellent foundation to build on.
Similarly, AI can excel at more niche forms of writing, such as the writing of unbiased or clear questions for a survey your brand wants to deploy.
The AI writing assistant built into QuestDIY is masterful when it comes to crafting questions that’ll drive the insights you’re actually looking for.
It’s a mistake to ignore the impact AI is having on business and how these tools can help when mindfully added to your tech stack.
Unlike blockchain or the metaverse—two previous advancements that once hijacked the news cycle—AI is already entrenched in all sorts of processes.
It can streamline parts of your job, automate tasks that used to take you entire days, and help marketing teams adopt a more data-driven approach that gets them a better seat at the table.
What’s more, if you’re a manager or business owner who’s not leaning into appropriate AI-enabled solutions, you’re doing your team a disservice.
And they’re probably noticing it (and perhaps updating their LinkedIn profile to look for opportunities where they will receive proper training in cutting-edge tech).
Fast Company put it well: “AI won’t take your job. But someone using AI could.”
“Generative AI output is getting better and better, but it's still not a push-button solution,” notes Lindsay Hong, co-founder of SmartAssets.
“The key to getting great images is highly detailed and data-based prompting, ensuring you are effectively briefing the gen models in a way that produces a differentiated asset that speaks to your brand and audience, not a generic one that feels very ‘uncanny valley’.
Starting work now to build this understanding of your creative effectiveness (using tools like SmartAssets) paves the way for effective prompting of the gen-AI tools—once the hands are good enough. We would expect that to be in the next 12 months.”
If history is anything to go by, a lot of technological advancements haven’t led to doomsday scenarios.
Understandably, professionals across every field are concerned that their roles might be rendered obsolete by AI technology.
But taking a “glass is half full” approach, it’s possible to view AI as something to harness and master—in order to make your job more fulfilling, able to drill down on the creative aspects that light up your brain.
This study on AI applications for marketing outlines how the technology frees up a marketer’s time to focus on strategy and consumer insights—the creative work, rather than the grunt work.
Far from removing the human element from brand and communications, AI could help you strengthen the impact actual humans are making.
Yes, it’s exceedingly easy to generate AI copy and imagery using very accessible tools. The low barrier to entry here has led to an overload of what’s being called AI slop.
It might stand to reason that the prevalence of AI slop on the wider internet would lead to AI slop in advertising. (Slopvertising?). That’s a bit offensive to marketers—as if they’re ready to simply push any old, hackneyed campaign out into the world, satisfied that doing so was quick and painless.
Marketing pros spend countless hours on theory assets because they want results. They aren’t simply waiting for a tool that makes it simple to generate a “35mm image of hipster man sitting at his laptop looking frustrated.”
While there will always be lazy marketers out there, one would have to assume that mindful and talented marketing pros will use AI to sharpen their production, and to drive the most value for brands by truly bringing data into the fold.
While these tools have often been focused on specific use cases—primarily writing text and generating images at scale—the story is incomplete if we don’t take into account AI’s predictive and analytical powers.
“The power of AI will rest in its ability to help us predict future communications and marketing outcomes and improve our performance strategically, tactically, and maybe even creatively,” says Aaron Kwittken, CEO of PRophet, who dubs this type of AI tech “nextgen predictive.”
“It’ll enable seeing around corners—leaning into opportunities and trends as well as mitigating threats.”
It can sometimes seem like there are cheap AI tools—ChatGPT at $20/month, or MidJourney’s “pro” features for $60—and then more tailored solutions that are out of reach.
But the right AI-powered solution might be closer to your budget than you think.
Stagwell Marketing Cloud’s offerings, for instance, come with tiered subscription plans depending on your scope of work and how much support you’ll need.
In any case, a demo is as free as air, and we’d love to discuss how one of our products can help change the way you do business.
