AI + Marketing = ?

I just wrapped up the Kickframe AI + Marketing Bootcamp with 30 smart marketers last week (thank you!) It was an excellent opportunity to receive valuable feedback on the new curriculum while also learning more about how everyone is thinking about and experimenting with AI. If you’re looking to up-skill your marketing team in AI, please don’t hesitate to reach out and I can give you the scoop on this corporate training course. I’ll also be hosting an open training event in September.

AI + Marketing

One thing we talked about during the Bootcamp was how AI affects creativity: does it produce poorer quality creative work than agencies and in-house teams? Right now, yes. Is it giving businesses that don't have a lot of resources marketing capabilities they wouldn't have had otherwise? Also, yes. This is one reason why industry folks have such mixed feelings about AI in marketing: we can see how it can boost productivity, but we can also see how it can hurt quality and disrespect craft. It doesn’t help that OpenAI's CTO shared her feeling that "some creative jobs might go away, but maybe they shouldn't have been there in the first place." Yikes.  

Marketers are still investing in AI. Brand teams are starting to share their predictions for how much money they can save (Mondelez forecasts a 10%-20% drop in non-working media spend, while also producing more personalized advertising). Agencies as well. The Brandtech Group continues to invest in consultancies and tools that have AI at their core, such as the marketing platform Pencil. An agency called Rehab says that it thinks AI works best to help with strategy development and market research (not creativity). On the market research front, Mark Ritson talks about how synthetic customer data will disrupt market research (i.e., why pay for a focus group when you can ask an AI model?) Gartner predicts that by 2026, 75% of businesses will use GenAI to create synthetic customer data, up from less than 5% in 2023. Lots happening.

AI + Video

Many people have been paying close attention to AI-generated videos ever since the OpenAI Sora videos came out. Sora can only be used by a small group of testers right now, a list that somehow includes Ashton Kutcher. He shared that soon “you’ll be able to render a whole movie” using it. In fact, that is what a new start-up has in mind: to become the “Netflix of AI” by allowing audiences to generate their own shows. Abandoned Films is a YouTube channel that publishes movie trailers made by AI for “films that could have been, films that we can only dream of.” The Matrix – 1940s Film Noir is my fave. Luma Labs just released a text-to-video tool called the Dream Machine. It’s open for everyone to use, not just former sitcom stars. My creations have not worked out particularly well, but some more talented prompt engineers have created some videos bringing famous memes to life.

Fresh Research

• Teens and YA on AI (Common Sense): GenAI use among teens and young adults was studied by Harvard. 51% of those 14–22 years old have used GenAI at some point, but only 4% say they use it every day.
• State of AI in 2024 (McKinsey): This study shifts the focus from teens to businesses, where AI adoption has jumped to 72%. Approximately 50% of businesses have now adopted AI across 2 or more business functions. The biggest area of AI growth still remains consultancies billing clients for AI advice.
• Consumer Trend Report (Forerunner): Interesting research on big-picture consumer trends. Includes a useful 2 X 2 chart on how consumers view AI as a tool to help them with different tasks.

Smart Reads

• Building AI Products (Benedict Evans): Another smart / sober view of how (at this point) AI product innovation is most successful when it focuses on solving a narrow and specific use case.
• New Cultural Codes (Zoe Scaman): A fantastic new deck / visual essay on how brands can more fully participate in culture and society, with some great framing and examples.
• Doing Stuff with AI (Ethan Mollick): An update on the best ways to play around with AI right now, including how to use the new features of frontier models that use images as inputs.

Cool Beans

• The Complexifier: As a strategic planner, I often question whether I’m making something simple too complex, or I’m making something complex too simple. Now I no longer need to do the former, the Complexifier GPT can do it for me!
• Jenny Nicholson: Is an Executive Creative Director who shared a smart, fun 20-minute presentation on how she experimented with AI in her work over the last 12 months. Worth a watch.
• WKRP’s Dr. Johnny Fever: My new favourite person in the world has pieced together every one of his DJ breaks and created a 3-hour playlist that is impeccable. One for the Gen X’ers on the mailing list.