AI-Driven Marketing: Manage Risks of Generative AI Usage in Marketing

In a world where artificial intelligence not only guides decisions but often drives them, marketers and media agencies are venturing into a realm of unprecedented opportunities. As we stand at the brink of this transformative era, a crucial dialogue is needed to illuminate its capability to erode value if unregulated. This article outlines the potential risks associated with using Gen AI in marketing and provides guidelines for its use, in daily operations for marketers and media agencies.

Understanding Gen AI's Double-Edged Sword

While Generative AI has expanded opportunities in marketing, it's crucial to address the challenges and risks it brings. Recognizing uncertainties is vital for a balanced perspective and effective use of this technology.

• Absence of Content Divergence: If Gen AI is trained on a narrow set of data or if the data lacks variation, the resulting content can indeed show little divergence from each other. The AI system learns patterns within the data and uses these patterns to generate new content. Consequently, if the patterns are too similar or repetitive, the generated content may also be repetitive and lack novelty.
• Lack of Human Intuition: While Gen AI can analyze data and generate content at an unprecedented scale, it lacks the human touch. It can't fully emulate human emotion, intuition, or creativity. This can lead to marketing campaigns that feel impersonal or fail to resonate emotionally with audiences.
• Off-brand content: Without proper oversight and training, Gen AI can produce content that is off-brand or misaligned with a brand's values and messaging. This can result in confusion among consumers, damaging the brand's reputation and eroding trust.
• Ethical and Privacy Concerns: The extensive use of data by Gen AI can raise privacy concerns. Misuse of customer data could lead to loss of trust, damaging brand reputation and customer loyalty.
• Regulatory Risks: As Gen AI evolves, so does the regulatory landscape around it. Non-compliance with data protection laws and regulations may result in legal repercussions and financial penalties.

Addressing the pitfalls of Gen AI empowers businesses to maximize its benefits while minimizing drawbacks, leading to more successful marketing strategies.

A Guideline for Value-Focused Gen AI Usage

To navigate these challenges, marketers must champion a set of operation guidelines that safeguard the integrity of their campaigns.

• Use Diverse and High-Quality Data: The quality and diversity of the data used to train Gen AI significantly influences the output. To generate unique and varied content, marketers should use a wide range of high-quality data sources in their training datasets.
• Human Involvement: While Gen AI can automate many aspects of content creation, human creativity and intuition remain invaluable. Incorporating human oversight and input into the content generation process can help ensure that the content remains unique, engaging, and tailored to the target audience.
• Brand Individuality and Authenticity: Despite the advanced capabilities of Gen AI, it's crucial to conduct regular audits of the generated content. Review the AI's output on a consistent basis to ensure it aligns with your brand's voice, image and style. Make necessary adjustments to the model or its training data based on these reviews.
• Efficiency vs Creativity: Encourage teams to increase efficiency with Gen AI for various tasks, from design to copywriting. However, human creativity should remain a vital component of advertising. Host brainstorm sessions to encourage creative thinking and balance it with Gen AI's efficiency.
• Experiment with Parameters: Most Gen AI models allow users to tweak various parameters to influence the generated content. Experimenting with these settings can help create more diverse outputs.
• Leverage AI's Personalization Capabilities: Gen AI can analyze vast amounts of consumer data to tailor content to individual preferences. Marketers should leverage this capability to deliver personalized content to each user, thereby avoiding the "one-size-fits-all" approach.
• Compliance with Regulations: Advertisers must ensure that their usage of AI-generated images or content complies with relevant advertising regulations. This includes being mindful of potential risks associated with the use of Gen AI.
• Ethical Guidelines: Establish processes that ensure that AI-generated content adheres to ethical guidelines, avoiding any discriminatory or otherwise inappropriate content.

Practical Advice for Marketers and Media Agencies

Here lies the balanced path—be audacious enough to explore AI's capabilities but prudent in its application. Marketers must be willing to look beyond short-term gains and envision the long-term implications of AI adoption within their strategies.

By doing so, brands can maintain an equilibrium by deriving value from AI-driven marketing, aligning with broader brand objectives, and prioritizing audience interests.

As we enter a new era, the fusion of AI and marketing will not only shape consumer engagement but also the ethical framework for business operations. Let the provided guidelines act as basic markers as we navigate a future where our most potent tool is both potent and unpredictable. The emerging potentials of AI are captivating yet intricate. As industry leaders, our duty is to wield this power responsibly, analytically, and optimistically with the necessary oversight in place.

Smart AI Marketing Newsletter Article No.9

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About the author

Eva Dong is a Senior Expert Manager at McKinsey & Company, bringing a decade of AI and digital marketing experience. Her technical expertise in data science and AI empowers me to unravel the complexities of digital marketing and create significant impact. As an entrepreneur and CEO of a direct-to-consumer marketing start-up, she is dedicated to empowering marketers to seize the future of AI-driven marketing. Connect with Eva.