Create, collaborate, cultivate: The 3 Cs to supercharging your work with AI

Generative AI will transform the marketing industry. And the first question I get asked after making such a statement is: “as a marketer, will I be replaced by AI?” The answer is no. But it is important to understand the role various GenAI tools play in different marketing use cases as they vary significantly. As a marketer, you must treat each differently.?

For some use cases, AI takes on a large amount of the work, allowing you to act as editor and approver; for others, AI plays a partner role, allowing you to share the work with a smart co-worker; and for others, AI will do the work you were likely outsourcing, allowing you to increase your impact at a lower cost. Knowing the role you play as a marketer across these use cases is essential to enabling you to get the most value from the tools.

So, how should you think about the use cases in which AI can supercharge your work? Think about it in terms of the three Cs: Create, Collaborate, and Cultivate.

• AI as the primary creator. When you have a hero asset—or fleshed out source material—and you want to build derivative content that is less than 300 words, AI can do about 80% of the work for you. With this use case, AI creates the derivative content and your role as a marketer is to edit the content, adding elements that make it uniquely on-brand, and approve it for publication. Great examples in this category are social posts, landing pages, and nurture emails that all point to a hero asset. The common thread for these use cases? You give AI the source material for it to derive content. The primary thinking (and content creation) has already been done. Tools to pilot: Google Bard/Workspace, ChatGPT, Claude, Jasper, Anyword, Writer . . . and many more.
• AI as your friendly collaborator. When it comes to writing longer, net-new content, AI becomes a great partner. With this use case, you are the subject matter expert and your role is to leverage the AI to build outlines, answer questions, discover hot topics or trends, and ultimately share the writing load. AI can also help in the same way for data analysis or market research that requires smart questions as an input to get smart results as an output. The common thread for these use cases is that it takes someone with subject matter knowledge to ask the right questions—to collaborate with AI—to get great results. Tools to pilot: Same as above (for long form content); GPT-4, Numerous, GPT for Workspace (for data analysis); Poe, ChatGPT, Bard, Claude (for market research) . . . and many more.
• AI as your skills cultivator. How many times have you enlisted an agency to help with graphics, video, and audio tasks? Or gone to a speech coach to improve your presentation skills? AI tools help here too! Imagine you want to deliver all of your blog posts in audio format. There are AI tools that output a human-sounding recording, in one of many different languages, in seconds so you don’t need to read them yourself—fun fact: some tools will allow you to clone your own voice so that you are the voice reading the blog. Now, imagine you have a long webinar or event presentation and you want to cut it down into multiple 30-second clips for different promotion channels, such as email or social media. Or you want to create a graphic that matches a piece of content you are writing. There are AI tools that take video files or well-formed prompts and output various options for you to accomplish your goals. Finally, imagine you are getting ready for a big presentation and are worried about your pace, your constant use of filler words, or your intonation. Yes, there are AI tools that listen to you speak in different contexts and provide suggestions on ways to improve. Tools to pilot: Midjourney, Adobe Firefly, Lexica, DALL-E (for graphics); ClipFM, Vidyo.ai, Qlip (for video); ElevenLabs (for audio); Speeko (for speech coaching) . . . and many more.

While the use cases in these various buckets differ slightly depending on the skills of the marketer, the reality is that AI plays a role in making all marketers better. It helps work get done more efficiently—as long as the marketer remains actively involved.?

Which brings us back to that common question: Will I get replaced by AI?

No.

Marketers will not be replaced by AI . . . Marketers will be replaced by other marketers using AI.

This article was originally posted on the GenEdge Resources page.

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About the author

Natalie Lambert, Founder & Managing Partner at GenEdge Consulting, is a leader driving innovation in marketing through generative AI. Her journey into the world of AI began at Google, where she initiated AI pilot projects across the organization to identify practical use cases, tools, and strategies to enhance Google's marketing efforts.?Natalie also led the content strategy at Google Cloud, held CMO positions in two successful enterprise startups, and worked at Citrix in various marketing capacities. Her career began at Forrester Research, where she advised companies on tech investments and best practices.