Jessica Apotheker has good news and bad news for marketers.
“Some say marketing is the number one impacted function” for generative AI in the work place, Apotheker says in her recent TED Talk, “What Will Happen to Marketing in the Age of AI?”
That prediction may sound worrying to some. But she is quick to add, “Some say the productivity impact in marketing is as high as 50%.” Everyone likes the idea of more productivity, right?
Yes, in theory, says Apotheker, who serves as Boston Consulting Group’s global chief marketing officer, as well as CMO for BCG X.
Watch her full presentation via TED.com or check out the video (below).
She notes that “marketing has traditionally been a super right-brained, creative type of function.”
You might assume that this would make this job safe from generative AI disruption. You’d be wrong.
“We found that ChatGPT, in its current form, already improves the right brain performance of marketers by 40%,” Apotheker says. “Imagine what that number will be in a year or two.”
Apotheker notes that there are multiple possible outcomes for this AI-driven marketing productivity revolution. The first, ideal scenario is one in which “more content actually means much more personalized content.” But marketers must be wary of “content overload” and the creation of boring, unoriginal content because “generative AI has been trained on existing content and data.”
To avoid the negative outcomes, marketers should “strategically reskill” to effectively utilize generative AI, without getting your brand “ trapped in your current territory,” Apotheker says.
This also means that marketing teams of the future should look different. For example, she advises “building teams of marketing data scientists, or getting data engineers that build solutions that can be distributed to all marketers to, for example, unpack performance and predict outcomes.”
Also, when developing in-house generative AI tools, Apotheker says, “Think outside your direct ecosystem on who could be super relevant data and content partners for you.” This will help to ensure your AI isn’t trained on repetitive data sets and set up to generate consistent but bland content.
But to really succeed, Apotheker suggests, “You need to identify the true artists, the true differentiators the true innovators” on your marketing team.You’ll know them, she says, because “They are the ones that always disagree with you.”
Once you’ve found them, “You need to protect them and teach them from using AI to generate and originate original ideas for that they have to use their human brain to keep those human juices flowing,” Apotheker says.
“And that in turn will protect the identity of your brand and your differentiation in the market.”
