According to the Harvard Business Review, they are.
So, is it true? And if so, what should we (the AI industry) and we (marketers) do about it? Luckily, HBR lives up to its reputation, offering practical advice as well as insight. And living up to our reputation for being helpful, DecaSIM decided to summarize the HBR article for you (below).
(And, yes, we used ChatGPT to create the summary. In case you’re wondering, it took about 25 seconds to write the prompt, copy the URL and copy/paste the summary into Word. It’s taken longer to write this intro.)
The summary:
- Transformation of Marketing Processes: AI and machine learning have introduced new practices in key marketing areas, such as advertising, retailing, and market research, showcasing its transformative impact on legacy methods.
- Generative AI Applications: The current wave of generative AI applications holds the promise of transforming and potentially disrupting various marketing domains, offering unprecedented flexibility, analysis, targeting, and personalization
- Enhanced Information Processing: AI plays a crucial role in facilitating the transfer of information and insights between the external environment (customers, competition) and the company, enabling the processing of vast amounts of information beyond human capacity.
- Transformation of Complex Writing Tasks: Generative AI, particularly in complex writing tasks, has shown significant improvements, reducing the time needed to complete writing tasks by around 40% and improving quality by 20%.
- Effectiveness in Marketing Strategy: Generative AI has proven effective in supporting marketing-strategy formulation and implementation, showcasing capabilities in market research, positioning, email campaigns, website creation, logo design, and more within a short timeframe.
- Productivity Predictions: McKinsey predicts that generative AI could increase marketing productivity by 5% to 15%.
- Leaders’ Awareness and Curiosity: Despite predictions and existing possibilities, a survey reveals that many marketing and sales leaders lack familiarity with generative AI, with only 21% claiming substantial knowledge, indicating a gap in awareness and utilization.
- Top Concerns Among Leaders: Marketing and sales leaders express concerns about generative AI’s accuracy (50%), employee resistance (39%), ethical considerations (36%), industry compliance (35%), organizational understanding (33%), integration challenges (31%), and data security (28%).
- To overcome barriers, marketers are advised to:
- Invest in training for interpreting AI output.
- Embrace intentional test-and-learn approaches.
- Establish policies for data protection.
- Ensure quality control.
- View generative AI as a tool that enhances human creativity rather than replacing it.
We might not be contributors to the HBR (yet!), but we know how AI works. Get in touch and let us help you achieve the most out of your promotional and marketing investment.
Andrew Nadin, Chief Revenue Officer [email protected]