Woolley Marketing: Artificial intelligence or more human intelligence?
In his regular column for Mumbrella, Trinity P3 founder and global CEO Darren Woolley questions whether if AI will be used to produce more of the same, or if we can force more compelling and effective communications.
If I read one more online article that tells me ChatGTP wrote this paragraph, I will yawn. I get it. AI technology has improved. And it will of course continue to improve. Okay, at this stage it does not appear to have developed the malevolent intent of HAL-9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Not that you would know from the doomsayers of the marketing and advertising world who are proclaiming that AI will take over the industry.
AI is a technology tool. An application to make human beings more productive and more creative. It is an enabler, like most technology, that is designed to provide the user with enhanced capabilities. Be it more creative. More productive. Or more interesting.
Take ChatGTP – just one of the hundreds of AI tools that have appeared. Using it, you quickly realize the quality of the output depends on the quality of the prompt to which it responds. Likewise, the images that are generated by DALL-E 2 or one of the many available.
As for those comparing the copy written by ChatGPT to any of the examples currently seen online every day – does it take that much intelligence (artificial or not) to say 50% off?
Copyright Dennis Flad – reprinted with permission
The solution to the poor state of digital advertising is not to automate the process to generate more digital wallpaper. Rather than feeding the volume demand for content, automating the digital advertising process could create time for those talented creative people to come up with better ideas, rather than wasting their time creating more ways of saying 50% off, half price, buy one get one free, 50% discount, half off, 2 for the price of 1, etc.
Part of the problem is the continuing practice of advertising agencies getting paid by the hour or even the output. This drives a business model focused on volume and not effectiveness. In this context, AI is an opportunity to increase output and decrease cost. Ideal if you are not focused on effectiveness and results.
An alternative is to think about these tools in the context of improving productivity and performance. Sure, if your only focus is pumping out the largest volume of marketing collateral for the lowest possible price, then AI is the path to achieving it. But the alternative is using these tools to enhance the advertising outputs by opening new and previously unconsidered opportunities.
Several prize examples have been shared with me in recent weeks. The first was the ability of the agency team to have more than 30 pages of client brief summarized by ChatGPT and then discussed internally for input into the agency brief. The next was a creative team who play with visual concepts in the brief to generate next images they use to stimulate new perspectives to what are often tired old briefs. And finally, a writer who uses AI to provide outlines on the topic for which they are writing content, to test their thinking.
Okay, before you counter that these are basic applications of the technology, the fact is that AI technology will only evolve from here, as will our application of it. The use of technology depends on our perspective. If you think it simply allows you to produce more, faster, and possibly cheaper, the question you should be considering is whether you really need more volume. Or perhaps more quality – that is, more effectiveness?
AI is already extensively involved in making media planning and buying more effective. Built into programmatic buying, social media monitoring and CRM systems, it can process data to optimize investment and provide options for consideration.
For the content that fills these optimized media channels, we should be looking to AI to allow us to create more compelling, engaging, and effective communications, rather than just more of the same. Because let’s all be honest, the last thing we all need is even more of the same. So perhaps more intelligence will prevail – be it human or artificial.
Darren Woolley, Trinity P3 founder and global CEO
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