The narrative around generative AI (genAI) has shifted rapidly over the past year - especially among marketers - as organisations rush to experiment and adopt the latest tools in an attempt to keep up with the competition. But those business leaders expecting the tech to revolutionise their organisations overnight – creating viral content and driving brand awareness at the click of a button – have another thing coming.
For others, who are still concerned that the deployment of genAI will override the creative process, the tech should be seen as more of a “starting point”. That’s according to Simon Morris, vice president of international marketing at Adobe, who Raconteur caught up with at Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in June.
“We firmly believe that AI is going to amplify human creativity,” Morris says. “It eliminates that blank page. It gives everybody with ideas in their heads, and who struggles to get them down on paper, a way of now doing that.”
Of course, genAI can and will level the playing field to some extent, giving even the most uncreative of minds the ability to create new ideas or content. After all, anyone can plaster Linkedin feeds with so-called AI-generated ‘thought leadership’ every day. But when it comes to brands finding new ways to connect with their audiences, the human element is always going to stand out, Morris says.
The gift of time
The biggest direct gift that AI can give the marketing world is time, believes Morris. As AI takes on manual tasks, more individuals will be freed up to spend their time thinking, innovating and creating - benefiting overall creativity albeit indirectly.
“When you speak to a lot of creatives, agencies or freelancers, one of the biggest challenges they have is time,” Morris says. “They always get their briefs late, or have to turn things around in 48 hours. And they end up putting the first thing out that comes to mind. Hopefully, [AI] will give them a chance to have a few different ideas and options, and start iterating on the one or two they really like.”
According to a recent Econsultancy survey, 32% of marketers are already using genAI tools, while 43% are actively considering using them. Of the ones already deploying, 58% use genAI for written content creation and copywriting, or more manual, administrative tasks like summarising emails and meetings (38%), language translation (34%) or data processing (26%). Only 29% are actively using it to generate images and videos.
On the surface, adoption looks relatively high for a still-nascent technology that’s only recently become widely accessible in the public realm. But many businesses are yet to harness the true power of genAI, with individuals instead settling for rudimentary use-cases or minor productivity wins.
Putting AI to work
“A lot of brands are in that test-and-learn phase. But I think where we need to get to now is, how do you scale?” says Morris, who recommends focusing on the business outcomes you need to solve with genAI, before actually jumping in.
“As much as the tech itself is important, so is the process around that. You’ve got to think about what it means for different types of roles and areas of the business, and how they need to evolve in order to truly embrace the technology and roll it out,” he says.
Increased speed is also key for marketing teams when creating actionable insights from reams of customer data. To improve marketing personalisation, data can be your biggest asset. But without a unified profile of each customer, insights take a long time to uncover.
“One of the biggest challenges for CMOs is getting that truly 360-degree view of the customer. Normally, there’s a lot of data touchpoints across an organisation, but they tend to be fairly siloed. But once you have your data in order […] you can use AI to ask questions and uncover opportunities and insights,” Morris says.
“It could be that you’re running email marketing campaigns and you can use your wealth of data to identify the best time to send a follow-up email to customers in order to get them to take some action. It’s really about going from data to insights to action, except speeding that up.”
And it’s these instantaneous insights that can be the real game-changer, according to Morris. “I think what you often find is that by the time you get the insight, it’s already out of date if you don’t move quickly. So being able to move in a much more agile manner is incredibly important, and where the value can really lie.”
