How will AI help people working at marketing agencies?

By Lily Germain, Senior Campaign Executive @ Bottle PR

How agencies and AI can work together

If you work in the digital world, it’s hard to avoid the talk surrounding AI (Artificial Intelligence) at the moment. Recently it’s really been taking the spotlight, especially in brand storytelling and media articles. 

But what is AI? Well, officially:

“The theory and development of computer systems able to perform tasks normally requiring human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and translation between languages”.

Essentially, it’s a smart way of helping to make your ideas a reality. If you work for an agency, or are the brains behind brand content creation, you might be sweating a little bit. Could AI take over your job? 

We’ve thought about the pros and cons of AI, and how we marketers can work with it in perfect harmony…

Streamline your creative time 

One of the wins of AI is the speed at which it can create content. It will optimise your time by assisting with idea generation, writing, editing and visual assets. 

Us mere mortals had previously only dreamed of creating content in seconds.

But AI is not a replacement for human creativity and judgement. By using it to help visualise an idea, it can save those moments of a creative block, which means you can get work out at a more efficient pace, winner. 

It’s not just visuals AI can create in record time, it’s written content too. While having technology do the hard work for you, anything written through AI should always be sense checked. Men’s Journal recently ran into trouble for written content created through AI that contained errors and factually incorrect information. While it can cut time, you should always double check for inconsistencies. 

Help with your decision making

AI can use data to make decisions purely based on algorithms and processes. In other words, it’s so techy, it’s unbiased. Using it can help us form conclusions for campaigns faster than ever before. 

While it’s useful for shaving time off data collection, AI lacks one big thing: relatability. We know that emotionally driven content is a current trend in content marketing. 

Bring creative ideas to life 

Even the best creatives in the world can get stuck visualising certain ideas. Taking some thoughts from brains to paper don’t always land. Using AI tech (like Dall-E) means you can input chosen keywords and it generates an image based on that information. 

While this can be a good starting point, the tech you use may not create the image you had in your head. This is where human touch is needed, to tweak the image so it feels just like your brand, and so it brings to life the story you’re trying to tell in an instant. 

Is the cost worth it?

One thing to bear in mind with some AI tools is that it can come at a costly price. Some out there will offer a free package, which is a good place to start. But if you find yourself using it more and more, you might have to invest.

When you’re putting money into anything, you want to know you’re getting the best deal. As AI is a technology, it can be difficult to manage. Making sure you still have a person attached ensures you’re getting what you ask for. Humans listen in a different way to technologies, you can have more of a back and forth to get the desired result, rather than inputting a mound of data and hoping for the best.