AI & Marketing Workflow
Sure, AI will take over and destroy humanity, but in the meantime can it please help me with my work? I’ve been tinkering with various generative AI tools – all very interesting, but no great productivity gains yet. Ethan Mollick’s Substack is super helpful in this area – he has a great guide on experimenting with different tools (read the comments for more recommendations). As these tools become more integrated with the core applications I use, they’ll no doubt become more helpful. I’m keen to try Google’s AI chatbot which now integrates with Gmail, Docs, and Drive to access user information, not just the public web. Consulting companies are also trialing these tools, and a study shows that consultants that used AI finished completed tasks 25.1% more quickly and produced 40% higher quality results.
Some brands and agencies can’t help themselves when it comes to jumping on a new trend, even if it’s only to grab attention. Exhibit A: Coca-Cola launching a new flavour called Y3000 generated in part by AI. Exhibit B: La-Z-Boy launching The Decliner – an A.I. powered recliner that sends texts by pulling its handle. Not sure this is exactly what Alan Turing had in mind when he was putting in those late nights in the lab pioneering artificial intelligence.
Social Media Moves
Contagious has a good interview with social media vet Matt Navaro discussing the general shift from people sharing publicly on social media to sharing privately within messaging platforms. The large social platforms are responding to this shift, as TikTok is projected to be moving into messaging as is Clubhouse (remember them?) Private messaging is harder to monetize through advertising, so perhaps that’s why Twitter is exploring a subscription model as is Meta (Facebook / Instagram) in Europe.
So where does this leave marketers? More time / investment required to understand niche communities and how to add value. More focus on working with creators / influencers for presence within the feed and for creating content that has a chance to be shared within these private spaces.
First Party Data & Marketing
First-party data has been a hot topic for the last few years as marketers prepare for a world without cookies and investment in adtech / martech grows. Google recently shared that it will drop cookies in 2024, and replace it with user-tracking within Chrome (showing advertisers topics you are interested in based on the websites you visit). Companies continue to invest in acquiring first party data, like PepsiCo who increased data by 50% through tactics like rewards programs and giveaways. Accenture has shared an advertising playbook that highlights the importance for investing in people (i.e., those fleshy things with pulses) to work with this data, and Martech has a practical list of ways companies can unlock value from their data.
For a more nuanced take, this episode of The Overthinkers on first-party data is a good listen. From my experience, it often feels like companies are looking at hoovering up data as an end in itself. We need to spend more time establishing a clear view of the types of experiences we want to provide customers (and operate our businesses), and have that drive our data collection and investment planning.
Fresh Research
2023 Global Mid-Year Forecast (GroupM): Global stats on media spend with a breakdown by channel: Digital and Retail Media up, Print and Out of Home down.
Digital Consumer Trends (Deloitte UK): Zooms in on personal technology use and highlights how people are keeping devices longer, subscribing to more services, and are generally skeptical about AI.
Creative CMO Report 2023 (Dentsu): Survey of 700 senior marketers that surfaces 8 different themes. Interesting to see marketers biggest concern for 2023 is ‘owning the customer relationship’, which aligns with this desire for more first-party data.
Smart Resources
The Multiplayer Brand (Zoe Scaman): Another thought-provoking (and beautifully designed) deck from Zoe Scaman on how brands need to facilitate next-generation customer participation in new ways.
The Future of Influence (We Are Social): Smart article / deck on how the influencer / creator space is evolving – from forming collectives to launching businesses outside of social platforms.
Web3 Marketing Case Studies (Paul Martin): Related to Web3, I just came across this awesome repository of modern marketing use cases (Nike, Starbucks, Adidas). Bookmarked!
