Making sense of the AI marketing revolution - AI First Newsletter

Hello you!

Happy New Year and thank you for opening my brand new monthly newsletter "AI First"!

Anyone that knows me or has spent time on my website will probably know that I've been talking about AI First communications and AI First marketing for more than 5 years now. The concept is very simple - and what it means can be as complicated as you want to make it!

In the 2000s, the Internet began to replace books, television, retail stores and other services as the starting point for any query or transaction. Leading marketers in key sectors began talking about Internet First as marketing strategy.: that is, making it easy for consumers to start their customer journey with a brand via the Internet.

With the arrival of affordable mobile broadband and smart phones in the late 2000s and 2010s, behaviours shifted again, as consumers demanded access to brands, products and services via their mobile devices. By the the Mobile World Congress in 2010, everyone was talking about Mobile First.

We are now at the beginning of another massive shift in consumer behaviours, as we enter the era of AI First, where marketing must reposition itself again to meet the growing demand for information, goods and services accessed via interactive AI-powered channels, be they text, audio, voice or video. AI will leverage a wide array of technologies and data-driven insights in order to meet consumer demands via different channels using conversational AI.

We're not living in an AI First world yet, but as technology connects more of the dots to make that possible, so it will bring more and more opportunities for marketers to begin using AI in new innovative ways. Like the digital waves of change before AI, we'll see some brands triumph and some crash and burn! However, those brands are already thinking AI First and experimenting with these new technologies will be best placed to create seamless customer experiences, delivered and managed by AI.

And that's what this newsletter is about! In writing this, I'll aim to focus on 1) Strategy 2) Technology 3) AI tools and 4) Governance. So, I do hope this is of interest to you too!

Best wishes for 2025!

/Carrington

>> Innovate with AI video

Nearly eight years ago Victor Riparbelli had a vision of building an AI video communications platform for business and founded a company called Synthesia. It launched in 2019 and made waves with a campaign video created for the NGO Malaria Must Die, featuring a video avatar of British footballer David Beckham speaking nine languages, including Arabic, Hindi, Mandarin and Spanish!

Fast-forward to 2024

Fast-forward to 2024 and the company announced its biggest platform upgrade to-date, launching Synthesia 2.0 and Victor was selected for the TIME 100 AI list! Meanwhile, the demand for high quality digital video continues to soar, with video accounting for 82% of all Internet traffic. Synthesia provides a glimpse into what our AI future may look like, but also provides an amazing AI video platform that we can use today.

Solving many problems

Anyone who has been tasked with creating business videos, even for one-off internal requirements, knows how much work is involved and how many different elements have to come together correctly to create an effective video. When it comes to external marketing campaigns, the budget, planning, resourcing, management and production of videos can become quite intimidating - and just one mistake can render all your effort worthless.

Traditional video production: just one mistake can render all your effort worthless. AI video production: revise and iterate as often as you like!

AI video tools can make production, editing, voice-overs and translations a breeze (and no, I'm not on commission!). Synthesia has all that covered, but its the lifelike human avatars that take your video production to the next level, slashing production time and providing the flexibility to create a new version of a video anytime, in mere minutes. This obviously doesn't replace all video needs, but it does make producing a wide variety of video types easy and cost-effective.

Enabling marketing innovation

However, what I get most excited about is the option to use Synthesia's capabilities to innovate. One of its most powerful solutions provides businesses with the option to create video avatars of their own spokespeople, able to communicate using clones of their spokespeople's voices. This creates possibilities that were simply impossible to consider in the past. For example, you can create an AI video message from your CEO, that is automatically personalised for your top 1,000 customers or partners! Or create a video of a spokesperson for a global announcement, communicating fluently in as many as 140 languages!

You can start experimenting with Synthesia for free, but businesses will want to buy a subscription (Starter for $216 /year; Creator for $768 /year; or Enterprise).

>> When do you tell them that it's 'AI'?

It's becoming a new communications quandary - When do you tell your audience that you've used AI in creating something? When do you announce proudly that your new creation was produced using the latest AI technologies? When do you need a disclaimer? And is it ethical to keep quiet about it altogether? These are questions that that I've given quite a lot of thought to over the past couple of years.

At this point, two year's after the launch of OpenAI"s ChatGPT, it's not hard to figure out that very soon everyone is going to use Generative AI tools to help them in everyday communications, writing, and to produce creative work.

However, I believe that we are still at the messy stage of GenAI!

The messy stage of GenAI!

The quality of GenAI generated content still varies greatly due to differences in technology platforms, the skills of the end user and the type of job at hand. This means that we're going to continue to see a wide variety of content at varying levels of quality and effectiveness and that most of us will be able to identify a high percentage of AI content when we see it. Spotting AI content is becoming a sort of superpower! Once you begin noticing AI content, you just can't stop seeing it. So, in this environment, it could be a judgement call deciding when to be proud of your AI content and tell everyone what you've done, and when to keep quiet.

Spotting AI content is becoming a sort of superpower! Once you begin noticing AI content, you just can't stop seeing it.

There are also, of course, ethical dilemmas which accompany AI content, including how to decide when AI has had a positive impact (added value) or a negative one (e.g. done someone out of a job). Then there is copyright, fair use of data, and the potential for AI plagiarisation.

Timing

As with most things concerning communications, what you say and don't say has a lot to do with timing. Firstly, many of the issues that we wrestle with today, could be a thing of the past in five years time. For example, the negative connotations to your multi-million dollar business cancelling your photography agency's contract, because your going to save money by creating all your catalogue shots using AI. This is a very present day issue. In ten years time, whatever photographers remain in business will have adjusted to the new reality and no one will bat an eyelid if you never hire an agency of any kind, ever again.

Secondly, like any other communications requirement, with a little forethought and planning you should be able to work out what messages and policies to put in place now when talking about AI in today's environment and then map out how these might change over the next year or two, according to potential changes in perceptions and reputational risks. Just because AI has some unknowns, it doesn't mean that it can't be planned for.

A little empathy goes a long way

The biggest risk, as usual, is not taking into account the perceptions of employees, customers and other stakeholders in your use of AI, and communications about it. Part of the problem here is that many organisations these days have a team of people that are well-versed in AI, but this often does not include the communications and marketing team!

Whilst all your marketing counterparts may be jolly impressed that you created your latest campaign in one day and made it home in time for tea, your customers are likely to care more about your message and what that campaign means to them.

So, does one announce "AI campaigns"? For me, it's all about whether this helps meet the goals, resonates with the target audience and doesn't risk upsetting other audiences. Whilst all your marketing counterparts may be jolly impressed that you created your latest campaign in one day and made it home in time for tea, your customers are likely to care more about your message and what that campaign means to them. It's easy to let the 'humble AI brag' creep into communications because we all want to be seen moving with the times, but unless there's a clear benefit for your key audiences, it really doesn't belong there.

Transparency and authenticity

As with many corporate reputation risks, reviewing how and where more transparency should be offered on AI usage can help mitigate some of that risk. For example, making it clear that your website chat support is responded to by an AI chatbot and not a human, can help avoid customers making false assumptions (and perhaps being unnecessarily annoyed or upset).

What about marketing content? Should you be transparent about what content was created using AI? My experience is that the more personal the communication, the more sensitivity there is. I may not care if your $100,000 billboard was created entirely by AI, but when I when I receive a personal email from you, I probably expect more authenticity.

A personal perspective

Last year, I began labelling my LinkedIn content to show where and how I used AI. The use of ChatGPT and other Generative AI tools to write posts, articles and comments has started to proliferate on LinkedIn. As you have probably seen yourself, sometimes people use GenAI to great effect and sometimes content lacks context, nuance and the human touch that makes it engaging. So, I've found that posting in this environment can invite scrutiny - and occasionally accusations as to whether you are using AI to post, or not.

I would much rather that the focus remains on what my content communicates, rather than what role AI played.

I use AI extensively when planning, creating and repurposing content, but I still create more content with little or no help from AI. Although AI-generated content rarely accounts for more than 50% of any written work, I don't really want my audience to either assume that I'm using AI to generate everything, nor to assume that I don't use AI at all. Additionally, I would much rather that the focus remains on what my content communicates, rather than what role AI played. So, I now add a footnote at the end of all my LinkedIn posts and articles, which mentions whether I've used AI and what I've used it for.

If you are guided by your goals, your audience, the context and the potential risks, then deciding on how and when to communicate your use of AI can be very straightforward.

>> AI in Media & Marketing - Middle East Roundup

#Saudi #influencers - Saudi Arabia-based AI-powered networking platform Halo AI has launched to revolutionise brand-creator collaborations (Wamda)

#Saudi #adtech - A new AI-powered adtech company will be formed by SCAI (Saudi Company for Artificial Intelligence), a Public Investment Fund (PIF) company, and advertising media power-house Saudi Media Company (SMC). (Middle East AI News)

#UAE #events - A new Dubai AI Week (21-25 April) has been announced, featuring the Dubai AI Festival and Machines Can See, the event aims to address real-world challenges through a variety of events and programmes. (Middle East AI News)

#Saudi #GenAI - The Professional Training Program in Generative Artificial Intelligence has been launched by the Gen AI Academy, backed by Saudi Data and Artificial Intelligence Authority (SDAIA) and NVIDIA. (SPA)

#Qatar #assistants - Khadoom, an AI-powered assistant, launches new services in Qatar, connecting customers to local vendors for delivery and services. It operates through WhatsApp, streamlining access to businesses. (The Peninsula)

#Saudi #media- A Media Innovation Bootcamp has been launched by Saudi Media Forum, with Saudi Data and Artificial Intelligence Authority (SDAIA), to nurture national talent and advance sustainable media practices. (SPA)

#Morocco #film - The AI Film Awards premiered at the Marrakech International Film Festival last month. Partnering with École Supérieure des Arts Visuels, the event spotlighted AI’s role in cinema. (Yabiladi)

>> Top Reads!

• The 6 Most Powerful AI Marketing Trends That Will Transform Your Business In 2025 - Bernard Marr (LinkedIn)
• Transforming the PR Firm Into a Superhuman-Scale Communications Engine - Andrew Bruce Smith (LinkedIn)
• Accenture Life Trends 2025: Accenture Song’s annual bellwether report on consumer behaviour - Accenture Song

💡 How was it? Questions? Ideas? Please do leave a comment below!

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If you want to reach out to me you're welcome to send me a message via Linkedin or an email to carrington@carringtonmalin.com

[ This newsletter was 100% human created - honest! ]