The marketing community has a terrible habit of failing to realise that the ‘new’ thing it’s raving about has, in fact, been around for ages. This is true of AI which still sees many rhapsodising about it as a boxfresh innovation but, as Rob Webster, Founder at TAU Marketing Solutions, points out in a fireside chat at NDA’s recent Foresight conference, AI “has been around since the 50s”.
That said, AI forms a major part of the Foresight 2024 discussion and not without good reason. It has, Webster suggests, “gone through a quantum leap recently.” So, what’s changed?
First, it’s commonplace. “You’ve got 100 million people using OpenAI on a regular basis. Ten years ago, AI meant expensive, hardcore engineering. Now it’s really democratic,” Webster reveals, adding that if you want to interact with AI, you just have to get your phone out. It’s this, he says, that will be behind a huge transformation in delivering marketing.
“We want to make sure every marketer who wants to do things more effectively has those tools to innovate so the value goes back to brands, advertisers and publishers,” he insists, adding that this is a part of taking back control from the big suppliers like Google and Meta.
It’s not something marketers can just plunge into, headfirst. We still have so much to learn about how to use it effectively: “AI can be a waste of time if it’s done badly”. Webster suggests marketers will need “a coach to get set up if it’s to be used well.”
The benefits are clear. Webster relates the tale of Walmart being able to update its data on 8.5 million products that it simply couldn’t have done without the help of AI. Full automation of customer-facing creative is still a very long way off, but as a tool for planning and research it can be used to ideate cheaply and quickly.
Safeguarding, too, is an area where AI can build great consumer confidence. “Trying to make the world safe for people with allergies, ordering in restaurants and not having to scribble it on a piece of paper for the kitchen. Something like a health passport. That’s a very robust solution.”
There are, naturally, concerns. The dominant one seems to be that AI will swallow up jobs. It’s a reasonable worry, Webster admits, but the threat may not be coming from the place many think. “You’re not going to lose your job to AI, but you might lose it to someone who is using AI to do it better.” In that scenario, AI has the potential to be a huge step up, career-wise, for people entering the job market today. “How can we magnify all the skills and experience in this head of ours and use that as the way to adopt AI and use it to push the market in the direction we want it to go.
Removing drudgery and opening jobs up to be more creative and innovative is where Webster sees AI driving the future. It’s going to speed up the creative process, but certainly not replace it.
It may not be immediately apparent what people can do tomorrow to integrate AI’s benefits into their marketing prowess, but Webster’s advice is just to “lean in”. “Get a corporate account for OpenAI or Gemini. Start to brainstorm, run tests. Collaborate with people. You don’t have to do it all yourself, but you can be the curator of what good looks like.”
