Thriving Professionally in the AI Era

Here's the reality: it has never been harder to be in marketing. As one of the authors of a McKinsey study on the CEO-CMO relationship emphasized to me, much of the C-Suite struggles to even understand key marketing metrics. Admittedly, marketing might be partly to blame for this by obfuscating some metrics, outsourcing others to the walled gardens (each of whom with their own proprietary measurement methodologies) and by not doing enough to draw the link between marketing measurement and business impact.

Dall-E 3 Prompt: Illustrate a CEO and the management team discussing marketing metrics and looking rather confused.

When businesses face downturns and cost-cutting becomes necessary, marketers are also often the first to be shown the door. They usually lack exclusive relationships with the distribution channels or to the supply chain, and nor can they be one of the faces of the company to the investor community or the board. As a result, they’re more easily dispensable when the going gets tough and businesses are forced to hunker down and cut costs.

And on top of that, few functions, apart from perhaps technology, are as profoundly impacted by consumer and digital transformations as marketing is. Be it the rise of the Internet, the transition to mobile, the emergence of social media marketing, or consumer trends like cord-cutting, these shifts have disrupted the marketing landscape requiring marketers to return to the classroom again and again. Just when we think we may have mastered our craft, we have to go back to school!

Without a doubt, we're at a pivotal moment again as we enter the AI era. Yet, this time, I believe the changes will be even more profound, lasting, and potentially career-altering than the previous shifts. Here are five strategies to help you not just stay ahead of this transformation, but to also guide the rest of your business into this new era in a way that makes your role and you indispensable.

1. Transform before you’re transformed. Years ago, I took a sabbatical from my day job to pursue a master's degree at the London School of Economics & Political Science (LSE). I studied social media theory when the social media marketing was still a budding niche, typically managed by someone's tech-savvy nephew or niece. That sabbatical was a step back I needed to take to propel me five steps forward. I returned to the workforce smarter and more driven just as social media marketing was entering the mainstream. The move turbocharged my career, paving the way for my debut book and my first executive role at PepsiCo.

   
   We’re at a similar moment once again. This may sound frivolous, but at the very least, consider investing the $20 a month for GPT-4 to serve as a co-pilot for every part of your professional and personal life. If it doesn't meet your expectations, first question whether you've fully harnessed its capabilities before pointing fingers at the technology itself. It will be enlightening. The more you're prepared to immerse yourself in this future, the more it will do for you. It’s the first step to transform before you get transformed.
   

2. Practice, Practice, Practice. As Ted Lasso would say, its just practice but the more you do it, the better the player and teammate you become. However, not all practice is productive; some can be redundant or even counterproductive. When it comes to your day job, start with GPT-4, as I suggested, but be discerning about where you first direct your attention. Artificial intelligence, even in marketing alone, is extensive, encompassing myriad strategies, tactics, solutions, and vendors for each stage of the marketing process. If analytics is your chosen area, it alone could occupy all your time.

   
   If you're unsure where to begin, the marketing brief is an excellent place to start. This integral document combines market research, customer insights, business strategies, campaign objectives, channel methods, and branding specifics, steering the creative and media teams in campaign development. Start by inputting all your customer insights, market research, and core business strategies into GPT. Consider uploading raw survey and interview transcript data from customer research. If research is scant, send GPT out to study your consumers, undertake a competitive analysis, and revisit previous campaigns for you. Next, seek out GPT's expertise in crafting the marketing brief and assess the generated content. Refine through several rounds with GPT and monitor its progress. Yes, GPT can do all that for you.

   

   Dall-E 3 Prompt: Illustrate a a leader taking control of her career and marching into an optimistic future.

3. Asymmetrical Networking. AI which is viewed as a meta-technology, is as impactful, if not more so, than the Industrial Revolution of the 1700s. Merely attending marketing conferences, sitting in on agency briefings, or skimming the occasional AI marketing book (yes, even if it's my forthcoming one!) won't suffice. Shed your executive facade, dive in hands-on, read the latest AI research, understand what the Biden administration is doing, subscribe to the newsletters, attend the hackathons, experiment, and connect with individuals leading the charge in the AI revolution - those you might not typically encounter.
   
   Admittedly, this can be daunting, perhaps even stirring feelings of insecurity reminiscent of your high school days, but that's alright. Learn firsthand from the philosophers, founders, designers, technologists, and venture capitalists who are betting the farm on this future. The settings might not be as plush or well-lit as you're accustomed to, and the catering might leave much to be desired, but you'll learn from those who are truly worth learning from. Seek out these people and attach yourself to them.
   

4. Cutting through the noise, AI resources. As with any new technology, there’s often more hype than there is reality. In the case of artificial intelligence, I believe there cannot be enough hype (with the exception of Elon Musk’s recent comments when he said that all jobs will go away with AI). Apart from the hype though, there is indeed noise. You could waste more time than you should reading perfunctory articles that don’t tell you very much. Instead, I’d begin by following pragmatic thinkers in business and academia such as Mustafa Suleyman, Fei-Fei Li, Kai-Fu Lee, Beena Ammanath, Thomas H. Davenport and Ethan Mollick. Then pay attention to the actual innovations coming out of artificial intelligence industry leaders like OpenAI, Google AI, Microsoft AI, and others.
   
   You could also follow some of the rather practical advice coming from Accenture, BCG, Bain & Company, Deloitte, EY, Goldman, McKinsey, and others (the links take you to their AI content). Granted, these consulting firms may more narrowly focus more on frameworks, roadmaps and building blocks but it is all helpful nevertheless. Their insights remain invaluable. An occasional study from such a firm can provide the perfect ammunition to persuade colleagues in your organization to allocate the necessary resources, time, and support for a deeper exploration into artificial intelligence.
   

5. Don’t forget about marketing fundamentals. The essence of marketing—building a robust brand, attracting and retaining customers, fostering deep relationships, and enhancing loyalty and engagement—continues to be vital, and must be executed in ways that yield measurable results, earning the respect of the entire C-Suite. A strong marketing foundation is the springboard that enables AI to significantly enhance your team's productivity. However, the adage "garbage in, garbage out" is particularly important. Inputting subpar customer data, superfluous brand strategies, and unclear directives into AI will yield poor results.

   
   Embracing the benefits of the AI Era may also mean pushing the boundaries of what you expect from your teams and how you partner with the rest of your business. Take for instance of my favorite brand efforts - Doritos' innovative development of an AI engine designed to identify thousands of variations of crunching sounds made while eating their chips. This technological feat is not just a party trick; it plays a strategic role for their gamer audience. They've harnessed the AI capability to mute the crunching noises for gamers who snack on Doritos during multiplayer gaming sessions. This ensures that players can enjoy their snack without broadcasting the crunch to teammates during pivotal moments, like a stealthy assault on an enemy base in Call of Duty, connected by headsets in real-time. Now, is this marketing or product or an offering somewhere in between?

What I’m reading

• Step aside world, the US wants to write the AI rules (Financial Times)

• What Biden’s AI executive order means for advertising (Ad Age)

• How the CEO–CMO relationship can drive outsize growth (McKinsey)

• Google launches generative AI tools for product imagery (Techcrunch)

• Coke boosts Santa-heavy holiday campaign with AI (Marketing Dive)

Companies I’m looking at

• Amazon Image Generator - Mind-blowing new functionality from Amazon where product photography gets transformed into engaging lifestyle ads.

• Jasper.ai - Strong end-to-end marketing copilot with company intelligence, campaign creation, content & performance analytics features. 

• Pixis - AI targeting, creative and performance infrastructure for growth marketing. First end-to-end growth marketing solution that I’ve seen.

• Stable 3D - AI-powered app that generates textured 3D objects for modeling and game development platforms like Blender, Maya, Unreal Engine and Unity

• Writer - Impressive enterprise-grade AI tool producing content ranging from incident reports and emails to product descriptions and executive summaries.

I'm continually researching and experimenting with new technologies in the AI space. If you have a startup I should look at, please email me.

Where I’m going and where I’ve been

I’m on a flying personal visit to Delhi, India to visit my parents. My mother turns 75 this week and I want to be there for her birthday. Next, I’m in Austin for a speaking engagement to a room of 200 senior marketers. Back in San Francisco immediately after that. 

I recently spoke at the Ascendant Conference in Palo Alto, California where I was interviewed on the AI marketing transformation a Glasswing Ventures VC. We covered what marketers can do right now, the commoditization of growth marketing, SEO’s challenges in an AI era, agency model disruptions, and AI ethics.

I would welcome the opportunity to speak at your event. Email me to discuss further.

What I’m writing about this week

I'm writing my third book, about artificial intelligence in business and marketing. This week, I continue to refine a chapter on machine learning and neural networks. Stay tuned to this newsletter for more insights from my forthcoming book.