Photo: Canva
August 30, 2023
How Will Generative AI Transform Marketing?
A survey of over 1,100 U.S. marketing professionals by Human Driven AI found that 56% use generative AI (GenAI) tools daily, with the top two reasons for doing so being speed/efficiency and personalization.
Among the respondents, 62% use GenAI to proofread copywriting for errors and to make their writing more concise, 45% to ideate new topics for content (i.e., blogs, articles, and social media posts), and 37% for copy generation.
However, enthusiasm varied among generations, with 48% of those aged 18 to 29 optimistic about GenAI versus only 24% for 45- to 60-year-olds. More than seven in 10 (72%) worry about whether the tools provide truthful information, 63% shared fears of copyright infringement, and 46% are concerned about job losses.
Boston Consulting Group (BCG)’s April survey of over 200 CMOs found 70% already using GenAI with another 19% testing it. Among the major uses, 67% use GenAI for personalization, including retailers creating “hyper-personalized recommendations that entice shoppers to buy more.” Nearly half (49%) use GenAI for content creation, including to “create content faster, with higher quality and greater variety.” Finally, 41% use GenAI for market segmentation, or targeting customers more precisely.
Bain research also cites concerns about the safety of customer data, job threats, and copyright infringement but concludes that the benefits outweigh the risks.
Bain wrote, “Imagine a world in which smart assistants are the common front end of digital interactions, transforming the experience of engaging with a brand’s app or website. A world in which the current mix of marketing channels has been shaken up — by a surge in text-based communication sparked by AI’s ability to personalize at scale, or by a boom in audio, video, and image-based marketing triggered by an acceleration of production speed at lower costs. Picture a corresponding disruption in the creative landscape as new sources of imagination and flair emerge and old ones lose their historic edge. Or one in which influencers become even more critical, with access to simplified or targeted versions of powerful digital tools that used to be out of their reach. For marketers, all of these developments are in sight because of advances in generative artificial intelligence.”
Discussion Questions
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS: What potential benefits do you see generative AI bringing to marketing? Do you see much greater rewards than risks for marketers in generative AI?
Poll
Loading …BrainTrust
Phil Chang
Podcast Host, Retail Influencer, Fractional CMO
Ken Morris
Managing Partner Cambridge Retail Advisors
Ryan Mathews
Founder, CEO, Black Monk Consulting
Recent Discussions
More Discussions
SantaGPT and Holiday 2025: Do Americans Care if They Receive an AI-Suggested Gift?
New survey data suggests most Americans don’t care if ChatGPT curates gifts that they receive. Is…Did Philadelphia’s Netflix House Deliver?
Netflix House Philadelphia drew mostly positive reviews in the early goings. Will this concept prove itself…Will an In-Store Retail Tech ‘Confidence Gap’ Create Winners and Losers?
A new survey suggests that in-store retail tech could be a major factor in retailer success…
I think AI can play a big role in some forms of marketing, such as email campaigns, database management, personalization, and so forth. These are all quite technical processes that lend themselves to management by AI. Of course, AI can also generate content including images and videos – even if some of these can sometimes look a bit ‘off’. However, the trick of great marketing is bringing together all the elements with a very strong understanding of the customer. It’s an emotional activity, not a purely technical one. For the time being at least, humans are far better equipped to undertake this than AI. Plus, with AI you have all the usual potential pitfalls of understanding cultural nuance, not violating intellectual property, displaying bias in output, etc.
Neil, it is interesting that you mentioned cultural nuance. In my last company, we talked about an “immersive experience” on our website. We ran into translation problems between European Spanish and Latin American Spanish. We even had differences between Colombia and Panama. In some cases, we were promoting people drowning.
I suppose AI could solve this by “personalizing” a website to reflect proper meanings depending on the location of the viewer. Maybe?
Generative AI (GAI) is a tool, it is not a craftsperson, at least not yet. Within a very limited set of functions GAI is great. The problem, as anyone who has worked with it extensively knows, is that it can make up connections that are incorrect. Can it make recommendations based on past purchases faster than a person? Of course. Does Amazon insist on sending me recommendations for books I’ve purchased on Amazon? Every week.Does that irritate me? To no end. Marketers tend to fall in love with the technology flavor of the week. Remember the Metaverse and all those marketers that added Master of the Metaverse to their business cards? Tools do what tools do. GAI has broad applicability but, to date, only on a fairly limited set of applications. Personalization? It can do it, but can it consistently do it correctly? Pattern recognition? Same story. GAI can recognize and provide text around patterns whether or not they in fact exist.Of course GAI can “learn” and that may be the problem if it starts paying attention to incorrect inputs. We will have to see how it develops. But maybe, just maybe, the next time we fall in love with a technology we should learn its limitations first. Just an idea.
Today’s discussion noted plagiarism as an issue. As a professor, I submit all papers to software identifying plagiarism and where the source comes from. It even determines if it is taken from another student’s paper. I wonder if, as the creative uses of AI increase, the AI will start copying itself.
Consider the famous theory in probability: A million monkeys hammering a million typewriters will, given sufficient time, eventually bang out entire works of Shakespeare by complete accident.
All of the benefits stated in the introductory letter apply. The thing about which we must besot concerned is that 72% and 63% (72% worry about whether the tools provide truthful information, 63% shared fears of copyright infringement). The genie is out of the lamp and now we will wrestle with it ’cause it ain’t going back in! Call me Debbie Downer.
GenAI has already transformed marketing and it getting more powerful every day. There are GenAI chatbots that use everything you feed them about your brand and product and can answer questions correctly, immediately. And upsell and cross-sell along the way. Product descriptions can be shortened and peppered with more powerful keywords instantly and on a massive scale. AI, behind the scenes, is doing everything from nailing online size and fit to negotiating one-off sales (a.k.a. haggling) in real time.
In other words, GenAI and all other forms of AI are the semi-magical tools of today’s successful retailers. With great powers come great responsibilities, though. The benefits far outweigh the risks. but just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should. And if you do, you’d better do it right. I think the “surge in text-based marketing” could become annoying fast. Better-targeted, more compelling messaging that leverages these tools would be a far better use. The last thing we need is more texts, emails or calls.
Long story short, retailers need to catch on fast to what AI tools are available, what they actually do, and how to incorporate them in their daily workflows and customer interactions without tainting their brands.
Great points Ken!
Here is a test of answering this question using ChatGPT. What do you think of this response?
Generative AI has the potential to bring several significant benefits to the field of marketing. Here are some ways in which it could positively impact marketing strategies and practices:
While generative AI holds promise, it’s important to note that its implementation should be carefully monitored to ensure ethical use and to maintain the authenticity and human touch that customers often appreciate in marketing interactions.
Human beings are a funny bunch. We tend to see all or nothing, and everything has to be “go big or go bust.” AI is a great tool to make marketers better marketers. We already know that marketing jobs tend to be overwhelming, and in the short term, AI makes marketers more effective, and allows them to get to things they always wanted to get to.
In the long term, a mix of human marketers and AI powered marketing initiatives should actually create experiential moments that the consumer should appreciate.
Great comment, Phil. So true! “Human beings are a funny bunch. We tend to see all or nothing, and everything has to be “go big or go bust.” “
New digital tools are always good to use, test, learn from. But at the end of the day, they are…..tools. Marketers love the shiny new objects and it’s not all bad to take this position, because new ways of working, new models can be developed from these solutions. Yet, woe is the individual, group or company that doesn’t verify and validate the findings before they are submitted. As we’ve already seen numerous times in the press, there have been fantastic fails with significant consequences. As with most new tools, GAI will find its niche and settle in nicely before another disruptive technology disrupts it.
As a writer, the potential of generative AI initially made me glad I’m closer to the end of my career that the start. But as I began to play with it more, and it really still is playing to a large degree, I came to see both its limitations and the opportunities to boost efficiency. The limitations are primarily on the query – how to phrase it, what to include and exclude, where to search, etc. – but also on the search databases. The opportunities can be found in the speed with which you can get very base information in a format that can then be added to and edited for target audiences.
One thing – ask ChatGPT to write a biography of you with well-defined parameters – where you live and work, age, etc. Even with that detail, my generative AI query spit out a bio that had me working as a professor at Syracuse U., which I’m not now and have never been.
For what it’s worth, there is a Lynn Margulis that was an honorary doctorate recipient at Syracuse. She also created the Margulis theory, earned the National Medal of Science and was married to Carl Sagan.
Gen AI certainly brings research, writing and personalized communications skills to a larger group of people. This probably will reduce the skills required to be a marketing “professional” and open up positions to a larger pool of people who may not have previously qualified for marketing employment. For the consumer it will provide some answers to their questions more rapidly, although for those who really needed to talk to a knowledgeable “real person” with authority to solve their specific problems, good luck getting through to an ever scarcer resource.
Other Braintrust members have aptly characterized some of the potential negatives of generative AI. While I agree with their implementation issues, we can’t lose sight of the fact that this latest tool may enhance “market segmentation” & “targeting customers more precisely.” These two potential outcomes deserve consideration of the use of generative AI.
Tools help people do their job faster and easier. Tools don’t replace people. The same tool in the hands of different people with different skill levels will produce different results. Generative AI sounds like an amazing tool that is very early in its life of serving us. GenAI can start and seed a process, but it’s not at the stage where it can finish a project yet.
Generative AI offers marketing speed, personalization, and efficiency benefits. It aids in copy proofreading, content ideation, visuals, and creation, enhancing customer targeting. Concerns include accuracy, copyright, and job impact. CMOs leverage GenAI for personalized recommendations, content variety, and precise market segmentation.
Generative AI presents significant rewards for marketers, however, notable risks such as accuracy, copyright, and job displacement warrant careful consideration. Combining human marketers with AI-driven initiatives can ultimately craft consumer-appreciated experiential moments over time.
Like any tool, AI comes with positives and negatives. Being aware of the negatives while leveraging the positives seems the best course of action. As someone who has been using GPT well before ChatGPT, I’ve experimented with many facets of AI. Can it be inaccurate, yes, if blindly trusted. But can it help with speed/efficiency and a host of other things, also yes. The train has left the station and I’m on board.
AI will bring benefits to marketing (and almost everything else. It will take mediocre marketing messages and make them better. It will tweak messages to personalize to different personas. It will save everyone time. YES! It will deliver many benefits!
Imagine all the best marketers in the world in a room- experts who know how to use social media, others talented in direct mail, broadcasters and connected to, influencers and authors, Ries, Trout, Ogilvy, Mather and even Don Draper and perhaps even a few Braintrust members- combine access to this knowledge base and put it in the hands of a new marketer just out of school. Now add to this at least a partial understanding of the consumer, what they like and dislike, their online click history and propensity to purchase. Ask the GenAI tool to run a newly created campaign to the right people, with the right content, right images, right copy, email, in store, promotion, images, video and X-text (formerly tweet). One line description and a click to reach thousands or millions of consumers. The productivity benefits alone will change how marketing is done, add to that the continual improvement of machine learning for every campaign run, and it becomes a staple case. The risks exist, but they are negligible to potential gains. Smart marketers will mitigate with human- in-the- loop. In the long run, the personalization capability will win- as it will differentiate from speed and efficiency. Space to watch for sure…
The risks of GAI far outweigh the benefits, since we are dealing with a technology that cannot create original information, but instead recreates information from a database. This leaves open the high probability that used concepts, words, phrases, and other marketing are not original. When this happens, the users are exposed to plagiarism, copyright infringement, possible patent infringement or even logo infringement. None of this is good, and often the users have no idea that this is even happening.
For eCommerce marketers and merchandisers, specifically, brands can significantly improve personalization by leveraging Generative AI. It can be a helpful resource when generating and delivering new campaign ideas and content, analyzing campaign performance, and evaluating customer data to determine which products are trending and which might need a little boost. At this point in time, Generative AI does still require significant human oversight to ensure that the output is acceptable, but the rewards in terms of speed and scale are definitely there. eCommerce Customer expectations continue to rise, and long-term we’ll see forward-thinking retailers integrate Generative AI for marketing, merchandising and other applications to deliver the kind of shopping experiences customers have come to expect, faster and at scale.
Like most things Generative AI, I think it can be a tool to make a marketer more efficient. From my point of view the question is not can Gen AI replace marketers or make marketers more efficient, the question is where & when does the Human in the Loop make the most sense.