New AI-led Marketing Horizons
Mark Seery
Management, technology, and go-to-market consulting. AI, Cloud, Networking, and Blue Economy. Storyteller and explainer of the complex.
Introduction
Google Gemini tells me there is a saying, "You can't sail to new horizons without being willing to lose sight of the shore," which is an excellent saying for those who want to sail to new horizons. For others, change means nothing but threats and pain. The bottom line is that whether you are a wordsmith, a process monkey, or an illustrator, a fork in the road is coming up fast: Embrace AI or reject it. It is your choice to make.
Add more value or go home
The value I add exceeds what AI can currently do, especially in positioning and message design. When AI closes the gap, I will look in the mirror and lean in somewhere new - and ChatGPT5 may be chilling from that respect if it can reason, as some speculate.
For the last ten years, I have been thinking that anything that can be automated will be replaced by tech. In marketing, there is a new frame. There is a base-level achievement/content that AI will replace, and only those marketers who can add more value will survive what is inevitable.
Marketers will need to consider two tiers: AI-replaceable and Human-centric. You are delusional if you don't think there is an AI-replaceable tier. If you believe AI produces generic crap, well, maybe your prompts are not very good, or perhaps you don't know how to augment what AI does to become more productive - oh, and you better work that out because the head of the company you work for thinks you can.
I worry about people who call themselves product marketers but are just cogs in a process that depends on others to tell them the message. But everyone else in the team who is just a cog in the wheel of a process or is doing the same digital marketing optimizations as everyone else is doing should be worried as well.
Where will AI make a dent in marketing?
Some guesses from Google Gemini:?Formulaic Writing, Stock Imagery/Visuals, Concept Generation, Variant Generation for A/B testing, Predictive Analytics, Hyper-Targeted Content, Real-time Recommendations.
In future posts, I will look into specific areas, but briefly:
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New skills and new horizons
I am not sure I am in the majority, but I dislike the mundane. I want to be doing exciting and challenging work, which means clearing out the mundane. So I am definitely in the "bring it on camp" category.
What are some of the skills marketers need, even today:
These are also areas that will be explored in this blog series.
Ethical issues
There are many ethical areas to be discussed. Illustrators and artists have leaned in here, as have others. There are ethical issues with all new tech, whether VHS or AI. Oh, and some things that are announced every day and seem new can already be done to some extent, one way or another.?
There is a place for ethical discussions, and I would not discourage them. Some issues need to be transparent and hammered out. These discussions should occur, but I do not see them stopping the productivity explosion.
Conclusion
Like many other tech areas, AI is replacing all the low-hanging fruit and leaving the complex and exciting stuff to humans. You can call this augmented Marketing or whatever you want to soften the blow of the change. However, the bottom line is to refrain from deluding yourself about the impact of AI. That's a recipe for being replaced. Ensure you are constantly raising the bar on yourself regarding the value you add.
Call to Action: To remain competitive and relevant in this digital age, businesses must explore and adopt AI-driven marketing technologies. Begin by assessing your current marketing strategies and identifying areas where AI can add value. Invest in AI technology and training to harness its full potential, ensuring your marketing efforts are efficient and pioneering in the digital transformation era.