Is AI the new easy button for marketing?

Video Transcription

Hi friends. Happy casual day from my mobile office. I wanted to check in with you today about the increasing application of AI and whether you might be at risk of making your brand suck faster to more people. That’s an actual quote from a former colleague of mine when we were discussing years ago the infatuation of the moment, which was marketing automation, the digital revolution and executives’ hype about wanting to do more faster, deploy more tactics, get their brands out in front of more people, generate more awareness and more leads. Well, if you’ve watched closely how all of that has played out, you know that we’ve all learned that there are no automagical shortcuts to creating deep trust and a strong brand. But we’re at risk once again of forgetting our history and thinking there’s an easy button. 

So I just want to challenge you today to remember that a good customer experience, a strong brand that’s enduring a positive reputation, is built brick by brick over the long term, one human to human relationship at a time, creating and sustaining trust. And right now, every morning I get to my office and I delete a boatload of automatically generated emails created and sent my way through data scraping and very lazily put together clearly through AI. And this is not the way to build trust and human connection. So if you’re thinking that AI is your new easy button to build your marketing team and automate everything and have less human involvement, I want you to slow down and remember that there is no easy button. Nothing happens automatically when it comes to building a strong brand, a stable business and a lasting positive reputation. 

You need human wisdom and human empathy and you certainly need oversight of the machines that might not get it right. So please do not make your brand suck faster to more people thinking that you’ve got a new easy button. Certainly AI is a powerful tool and we’re using it across all of our core processes at Authentic and to enhance, enable and expedite task level work for our employees. And you should do the same. But don’t let it replace the heart and the soul and the brains of your business. Take the time to be thoughtful. Take the time to do the work. Plant the seeds that lead to a harvest down the road. There is no easy button. AI can be a great accelerator, but it will not replace the human heart of your brand. 

So keep that in mind and do it the right way. And we’re here to help. Have a great day.