These days, we’re often asked about AI.
Here are the 3 most commonly asked questions, and my answers:
Question 1
Do you Use AI?
Answer:
For my work — sometimes. Generally for organizing, proofreading, and administrative tasks. In everyday life — probably more than I understand.
Question 2
Are you afraid of it?
Answer
I grew up watching reruns of the Twilight Zone and reading Ray Bradbury. Of course I am. The idea of Technological Singularity is terrifying.
Question 3
Is AI a threat to your job/profession?
Answer
That depends on the artist. I think AI is a tool for good creatives and a crutch for the lazy. Good human connection often lies outside of logic, data points, and analytics. Creativity is magic. Magic is human.
AI can mimic a pop song, but it’ll never understand gospel or punk rock.
If you look or read carefully at what’s out there, you can spot the differences between when AI is used to enhance creativity and when AI is used instead of creativity.
A 2024 study found that 60% of marketers are concerned that AI will take their jobs1.
Relinquishing Humanity to AI
The seduction to fall into an over reliance on AI is real. I know entrepreneurs who have created entire business plans, corporate identities, marketing campaigns, and websites all using AI. And you can tell. Because of this growing dependance on AI, the internet is flooded with the same website templates, the same trendy typefaces that don’t mesh with a brand, and the lifeless About Us content.
I met a person last year who bragged that he, himself, hadn’t written a single work email without chatGPT in over a year. You could tell he felt clever when he said, “It keeps me off of HR’s radar.” He is a VP at the company he works for. These are examples of using AI as a crutch. We need to be careful that we don’t relinquish our humanity in an effort to optimize tasks. Our presence in the work we do is what makes it unique and memorable.
Staying in the Game: Positioning and Strategy FTW
So, how do we stay ahead of AI in marketing and branding? Positioning and strategy — know who you are and where you are going. These frameworks are built on cognition and emotion, and they can evolve. As humans, we are drawn to nuance, emotion, and irrationalities — AI doesn’t do too well with these qualities. If our branding and marketing have strong positioning and we follow a solid strategy the work will stand apart from AI.
Call me naive and/or arrogant, but I’ll never run out of ideas, and I have faith that you won’t either.
1. Kasumovic, D. (2024). Artificial intelligence (AI) marketing benchmark report: 2024. Influencer Marketing Hub. https://influencermarketinghub.com/ai-marketing-benchmark-report
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