Belated thoughts on the year ahead | AI for Marketing
Written by: Rich Ware, Joss Freestone, Adam Bewley and Elisabeth Field
It’s time to take a breath.
We’re out of the January blues, and said goodbye to the February funk. We’ve moved from 2024 planning to delivery – and quickly. And as Spring knocks on the door, we thought we’d take a look at how things are shaping up across the comms world, and the impact of AI across the industry.
We’ve been asking ourselves – specifically our directors – what we might make of it all, now the dust has settled (a little).
Richard Ware, Director of Strategy and Creative
Already in 2024, we’re getting more interest from B2B marketers looking for creativity and personality, to differentiate within competitive categories, and achieve cut-through across complex marketplaces.
Creativity in B2B has been having its moment. Whether that’s taking a more creative approach to media buying, using new format innovations, exploring bolder tone and visual production, or using humour to achieve that long-desired goal of the industry: to make B2B ‘more human’.
At the big budget end you have the likes of the ‘Rockstars’ Superbowl ad by Workday, right through to the smart Addleshaw Goddard LLP ‘Fish and Chipmunks’ print campaign, calling out ‘Almost right is 100% wrong’.
Especially when marketing to B2B buyers can be a long and fragmented play. Brand-building over time sounds like a slog, and the B2B marketing space is already awash with an unnecessary amount of dull content and ever duller messaging. But creativity is where you keep your brand fresh and relevant.
Bottom line for B2B in 2024? Be creative and bold in what you are saying, and how you say it well. More of that, please.
Joss Freestone, Director of Social and Digital
The dizzying speed of AI evolution, and AI within the marketing industry, means that if this email was sent even three weeks ago, it would have missed the new paradigm started by the announcement of Sora by Open AI, perhaps an even more seismic technological achievement than Chat GPT itself.
The knee-jerk response to a revolution like this is often negative, driven by fear of change, such as for job losses or more likely just potential profit losses (as Tyler Perrys $800m studio shutdown) can attest to. As with all innovation, this is overwrought and the industry is beginning to see the creative, strategic and financial opportunities of using AI in marketing. The historic parallels of the Luddites and Gutenburgs opponents seem distant but all too relevant.
Beyond all this, it really feels like 2024 is the year that AI (and particularly generative AI) emerges as a commercially viable tool for brands and agencies alike and it will be interesting to see how it is utilised transparently to elevate client work.
But there's no value in jumping on the hype train just for the sake of it. Using AI in marketing has benefits, as something to add to our toolkit, but it is no replacement for great creative thinking.
At Eulogy, we have been exploring this opportunity, strategically using AI tools to support what we do, but with the proviso that we are taking clients on a journey with us on understanding where human thinking and AI intersect.
It might be 60 years ago this year that Marshall Mcluhans stated his iconic epitaph that ‘The medium is the message’ but it’s never been more appropriate, perhaps its just the messenger that’s changed.
Adam Bewley, Director of Social
The world of social has entered a new era of content as the rise of AI for marketing challenges digital norms in a number of ways; some good, some bad, some a little ugly...
We’ve seen the recent challenges of deep fakes across social being weaponsied among communities. With huge cultural and geo-political moments taking place across the world, for instance as we’re seeing in the current US election, the ability for AI-generated content to spread like wildfire across social is signficant.
Perhaps a little too late, guard rails are being rushed to implementation by governing bodies. Closer to home, the EU has updated the Artificial Intelligence Act to provide structure to avoid AI being used in a damaging way.
While it’s easy to focus on the negatives, micro-social communities are using AI to express themselves in more and more creative ways, and to also connect with their key audiences on a deeper level, removing all digital barriers to come together thanks to a shared passion.
Most recently, Nikki Minaj’s fans created Gag City, an AI fuelled online destination to promote her new album. This use of AI saw a ‘Barbie’ style takeover of everyone’s feeds but was fully driven by her community and rapidly became a trending cultural moment across channels, proving the value of using AI in marketing..
As we see AI develop, we are embracing the opportunity to elevate everything from ideation through to brand world development, and to explore new ways to engage online communities in the spaces in which they socialise – created and curated at the speed of social.
Elisabeth Field, CEO
Lots of talk last year centred on the role of AI in comms and what that might mean for the broader marketing industry. The big question mark hangs over its role in PR. Is it an opportunity, a threat, or a distraction?
As with all things, the truth is somewhere in the midst of it all. Yes it’s a distraction. Leadership teams have been running around for years, trying to figure out how to protect legacy business models from the threat of innovations.
At its heart, PR is still about relationships. No AI framework can replace the genuine connections, conversations and confidence that PR professionals create in their relationships with journalists and influencers.
If anything, AI is helping us to remember that trusted relationships become ever more important in delivering PR campaigns.
Creative strategy will always be the foundation of any successful PR campaign, but without solid relationships across the media landscape, it will all grind to a halt. AI or not.
In 2024, amidst all this change, the role of agencies remains clear. To help steer our clients through sometimes muddy waters, to help them continue to create creative content and comms that’s brilliant and brave.
