An AI Story

Jaclyn loves to come to work in the morning where she is a marketing manager for a skin care brand.? After she gets her coffee, she sits at her laptop and her GenAI assistant bot JB greets her:? “Morning Jaclyn.??Today's a great day and I’ve got good news.? That campaign we launched yesterday is already performing better than we expected. Of the 1000 variants we launched I already have a statistically significant signal.? I have shifted our ad buys to the 20 variants that perform the best for our target personas.? We are running 30% above target!?? I took the liberty of drafting an email for you to send to your boss so you can take credit for the great work!”

Jaclyn is pleased. “Amazing JB! We make a great team”.

With the grunt work of managing the campaign done before her day even starts Jaclyn turns to thinking strategically about a new product line she is developing. “I want to work on the new pre-wrinkle cream for Gen Zers that we started to think about last week.”

JB is on it: “Absolutely!? After we chatted last week,? I pulled all our desk research, constructed an interview guide, and conducted an initial 50 customer interviews.?? I developed 20 different product concepts and tested them with customers to get reactions.? I have 5 ideas based on the research that tested well for us to talk about. But before I bias your thinking, what are your ideas?”

Jaclyn: “Can’t wait to hear your ideas but as the human I’ll go first.? I’m really excited about a skin toning cream that looks great on Insta and is clinically proven to delay the appearance of lines and can clear up acne. I’m calling it AgeFilter. “

JB: “Hmm.? I had a similar concept but it didn’t test very well.? People liked the aging prevention but didn’t want it to be a day wear.? Maybe we should test as an overnight serum “?

Jaclyn: "I like that idea.? I have a new human marketing intern starting?today.? Can you have him take a first pass at the interview guide to test?this?with customers?"

JB: "Of course.? I'll run the new skill onboarding protocol with him.? This will be a great exercise for him to engage in some Productive?Struggle?to learn how to do primary customer research.? I'll make sure he knows what steps to take but them let him do the work, only providing coaching where he lacks understanding.? When he's done?I'll review his work with you and provide suggestions where you can help coach him."?

Jaclyn: “Great.? This isn't urgent so go ahead and let him?struggle?through a few iterations before giving him too much help.? If it's taking too long, I?know you can always whip it out in an afternoon!”

JB: “You've got it!? Always fun teaming with you.? Enjoy the management meeting - sorry I can't take those for you ;)”