Artificial intelligence is in the middle of a runaway boom given its obvious benefits and ability to radically simplify tasks. That said, many brand marketers are “just throwing money at AI,” without really understanding it or how to fully take advantage of its benefits, according to Andrew Swinand.
“It’s a hype cycle and it’s completely misdirected,” said Swinand, CEO of Inspired Thinking Group (ITG), an AI-enabled content company. Many marketers are dazzled by the abilities of Generative AI, the ability to generate an image, but the technology’s real rewards for marketers are operational, he explained.
He quoted an appraisal of the marketplace by Gartner that estimated 70% of companies are making investments on Generative AI projects and less than 10% will see a real return on that investment. “Everybody’s talking about Generative AI and how crazy wonderful it is: ‘You can put a monkey on a horse drinking a Coke,’” said Swinand. “But if you think about the real power of AI, it’s the ability to organize large amounts of unstructured data in ways never before possible.”
With this in mind, Swinand believes the real benefit of AI for marketers will be truly understanding consumers by being able to better manage large quantities of data and automating content at scale to deliver personalization. Brands that can execute that successfully are going to win, said Swinand, who has previously served as CEO of Leo Burnett and Publicis Creative U.S.
For example, Swinand noted ITG is working with a large brand providing software to small and medium businesses, and by leveraging its AI-enabled, proprietary Storyteq Content Intelligence technology, the brand can discover every piece of content posted or written online – “every article, every post, every conversation, every issue or question ever written on the internet about small business” – and rank, organize and optimize it all in just an hour to inform briefs and experience plans.
“Doing this old school, like when I ran a large creative agency, you’d have a strategist spend a month searching Google to put together a journey map of consumer understanding, which would not nearly be as complete or detailed,” said Swinand. “That’s the power of AI.”
Rather than use AI to generate new logos and packaging at a dizzying pace, brands should use it to apply their assets in a more thoughtful, bespoke way, creating intelligent content which really exploits the speed and agility of AI, said Swinand.
“If I’m Coke, you know what I don’t want? A new logo, a new bottle, or a new tagline. What I want is those things consistently applied,” he said “For me, the idea of AI creating and rendering completely new ads isn’t a big idea. What you need is a content marketing platform to create consistency in logos, consistency in packaging, but then have the flexibility to bring in Generative AI to change languages, change legal copies, and change backgrounds.”
At ITG, this runs through Storyteq. As well as AI-assisted content automation, Storyteq Content Marketing Platform (CMP) streamlines workflows and enables real-time campaign optimization. It harnesses Halo Content Intelligence to ensure content is personalized and brand-compliant across channels, languages, and formats – as Swinand says, creating the perfect story for every user interaction.
“What AI can do is take that big idea and make 5,000 versions: sizes, translations, language, etc.” said Swinand. “We talk about those versions as ‘Halo content.’ AI can take that big idea and Halo it across channels because it can manage systems, processes, and evolution.”
Swinand said that by using AI to capture, create, automate and integrate content at scale, ITG is able to save its 200+ clients anywhere from 26% to 70% of their content production costs. As well as having its own AI-enabled studio with the power to create digital twins and 3-D renders, ITG’s Storyteq Content Marketing Platform can adapt a single ad into 53 languages across 160 countries in under two minutes, then deliver and execute channel-specific asset variations in seconds.
The Big Idea
But the concept of Operational AI is still a hard sell. “Dynamic meta-tagging isn’t very sexy,” said Swinand. “Generative AI: ‘Look what I made with AI’ is a great news article, (but) very little value to business. The ability to manage every piece of copy I wrote, and image I ever shot, produced, or owned globally? Game changer.”
Some 80% of content in digital asset management systems goes unused because it doesn’t come up in searches, said Swinand. For example, he recalled a major client in the food and beverage sector was found to have over 3,326 images of the same bottle in their DAM because agencies would just keep reshooting it. A DAM using AI-powered asset intelligence to search images at the object level avoids these inefficiencies.
Putting Operational AI front and center is challenged both by the shiny-object mindset of this hype cycle and by internal structures that silo the technology, much like other innovations were before, said Swinand. The silos – similar to the treatment that the Internet and social media received when they were emerging channels – cancel AI’s biggest operational advantage, which is agility and speed.
“I remember the early days of mobile. Every year was the year of mobile. But that wasn’t the big idea. What you can do with cell phones – maps, music, all these things – that was the big idea,” said Swinand. “I think people are hugely distracted.”
The hype cycle diverts stakeholders from AI’s true potential; they need to focus more closely on defining the problem they are trying to solve, not the technology they are using, said Swinand.
“AI solves problems, but you need to name the problems you solve. AI is not the end game,” he said. “The value comes from solving a problem with AI. Don’t just deploy AI for the sake of AI.”
Swinand is also a strong believer in the power of creativity to radically change the business trajectory of brands. “At its core, the creative insight and the emotional “Hero” idea driving the brand must come from a person, not AI. AI can iterate on that insight and scale it in ways not possible before, but people will still be the source of true emotional brand connection,” argues Swinand. “I believe strongly in the power of emotive big ideas to radically transform brands,” he said. “AI is the tool that will allow brands to Halo these ideas across channels to all their audience segments.”
