I've had the pleasure of meeting many of you over the years while hosting the Kickframe Digital Marketing Strategy Bootcamp training & networking event. I stopped running the event during COVID, but I'm bringing it back with a new focus on marketing and AI. Here's where you come in.
I'd like to gather feedback on the curriculum and exercises, so I'll be hosting a series of 'beta bootcamp' sessions. These will be run live virtually, likely in three 1-hour sessions over six weeks beginning in May. The training will be designed to provide marketing teams with a shared and current understanding of what AI is and how it affects marketing, including relevant use cases and technologies that can be explored today.
If you or someone you know is a marketer and is interested in being a 'guinea pig', please enter your information here, and I will contact you closer to the date with the scoop. Participation costs nothing more than your attendance and honest opinion - the more honest the better!
Exploring AI Opportunities
I’ve been working with a client to explore AI opportunities across several business areas. This has required an approach to explore different workflows with multiple stakeholders - many of whom are unfamiliar with AI. It’s tricky. What I found helpful is the concept from Ethan Mollick that jobs are a bundle of tasks. Some tasks can be easily handled by AI, while others cannot. The idea is to take a top-down approach to decompose jobs into tasks, then into use cases with the greatest potential for AI automation or enrichment. I ran an exploratory workshop recently based on this approach, and we are now analyzing which use cases from the workshop have the potential to be automated, augmented, or transformed using available AI tooling and technology.
AI & Search
How will AI impact search? Google has been testing Search Generative Experiences in several markets (but not yet in Canada), and intends to charge for a new AI-infused search product. Perplexity, a Gen AI search engine, appears to be following in Google’s footsteps by planning to sell advertising. It’s interesting to see the incumbent and new entrant moving closer together. The Verge compares AI chatbots to search engines for various types of searches (chatbots great for ‘buried information’, search great for ‘exploration’) and concludes that AI search engines can’t "kill Google" but will change search.
AI & Social
Meta recently released Meta AI across Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. It’s early days, but it’s not a great sign that “How to Turn off Meta AI” is already trending. Feels like an awkward fit, especially because the feature provides users with Google results / links which can drive users off the platform. The AI + social trend that fascinates me most? Virtual influencers: Not only can you now virtually chat with an AI version of a real person, those real people are now competing with completely virtual influencers for advertising / sponsorship dollars.
AI & Hardware
Will there be an ‘iPhone for AI’? A bunch of companies and investors are trying to figure out the right sort of hardware and UX to help people use AI in a natural and additive way (including Jony Ive of Apple fame). Early products have not entirely impressed tech reviewers (see “The Worst Product I’ve Ever Reviewed” on the Humane AI Pin). Iyo is a start-up that is designing hardware for your ears, whereas the Apple Vision Pro focuses on your eyes. Maybe using AI on your phone isn’t so bad?
AI & Advertising
Dove made a splash last week with its smart and emotional pledge to not use AI in its advertising as part of its Self-Esteem Project. Some other brands have followed suit, banning the use of AI to depict human features in their advertising. While I appreciate the move in this context (not setting unrealistic beauty expectations), I doubt it will deter advertisers and agencies from experimenting with AI for production work (resizing, reformatting, translating, personalizing….basically all of the '-ings'). Plus some advertising is just too well suited to not use AI (see Spotify cloning the voices of podcast hosts for audio ads). Piotr Bombol has put together a useful overview of AI tools for advertising.
Cool Beans
Dumb & Boring Phones: Turns out ‘digital minimalism’ is definitely a thing, and so is the business opportunity around selling ‘dumb’ phones (new and refurbished). Heineken is launching their own.
Spotify AI Playlist: Spotify has released a beta version of a feature (again, not in Canada!) that generates a playlist based on text-prompts. Now I can just ask Spotify to create the perfect late-night email newsletter editing mix.
Google Arts & Culture: I haven’t checkout out the experiments at Google Arts & Culture in a while, and they’re so good. This one recommends a recipe based on combining two national cuisines into one. I tried to trick it by selecting Canada combined with Canada, but the joke's on me - this looks tasty!
