Whether automating tedious, mindless tasks at a high level or completely upending human ingenuity and creativity, artificial intelligence (AI) has become more than just a reliable tool for today’s brands and businesses; it’s become the backbone of modern industry.
At Gate, we recognize the potential of AI to reshape marketing strategies, reveal insights into consumer behavior, and offer new ways to think about branding. We also understand that if your business doesn’t use AI, your brand will very quickly be left behind.
Which means it’s important for us to have meaningful conversations with our clients and collaborators about the role AI plays in our operations right now. Because we do use AI. We’d be foolish not to.
An Assistant, not a Replacement
Any meaningful conversation about AI has to first address the elephant in the room: actually using it. Very often, you’ll hear marketing agencies say, “We do use AI, but …” Usually this qualification is followed by just how little they use the technology. There’s a fear among those in the marketing industry that admitting to using AI either demonstrates that you’ve sold out or that you’re somehow living it up on Easy Street, while the mechanical contraption does all the work.
This implies that using AI is a bad thing, even if it makes your operation more efficient and allows your team to focus less on the tedium and more on the creative.
Example: four years ago, removing the background of an image was a painstaking process that could take up to several hours. Today, AI can remove a background in less than 10 seconds (and that’s if it’s lagging—five seconds is more like it). That means our turnaround time for a design can be reduced considerably, which not only saves us time, but also saves money for our clients. We can reallocate that time to other work we do for them and ultimately increase their ROI.
What AI cannot do, however, is understand the nuances of client desires. No matter how intuitive, speedy, and precise AI is at executing tasks, it simply cannot process all the little details that coincide with a full-scale marketing campaign.
Where Human Creativity and AI Precision Intersect
It’s not that AI cannot be fed all the little bits of information that lead to a successful marketing campaign. Even without certain contextual elements, AI can help brand marketers develop successful cross-channel campaigns. After all, AI-powered tools can better predict consumer behavior, better automate content customization, and optimize media spending more efficiently than ever.
Yet, these tools still require human insight to interpret data in context and make strategic decisions. These decisions may not align with performance metrics and logical analysis but may likely be more authentic and situationally sensitive to rapidly changing attitudes and longstanding cultural norms.
While AI can offer a backbone of analytical strength, the creative and empathetic elements that drive brand success remain firmly in the hands of marketing professionals who understand the emotional and psychological depth of their audience.
In other words, we at Gate leverage AI to handle the more mundane and data-intensive tasks but ensure that every project includes the very human touch of skilled professionals. This is the best of both possible worlds: harnessing the speed and precision of AI while maintaining the nuanced understanding that only human experience can provide.
Using AI Without Overdependence
When it comes to strategic creative decisions, such as the tone of a campaign, the emotional appeal of imagery, or the alignment of marketing messages with current social issues, AI just can’t compete with human insight.
This means it’s essential to build guidelines and establish boundaries for where, when, and how AI should be applied. For example, AI excels in handling large-scale data analysis, detecting patterns, and managing real-time bid adjustments for ad placements—all foundational elements for optimizing campaign performance. At the same time, it cannot evaluate nuances and understand certain subtleties that can completely derail a campaign.
At Gate, we foster a collaborative environment among our team members. This extends to AI, where tools are used to enhance efficiency and provide insights, but final decisions are shaped by a deep human understanding of brand values, cultural contexts, and the emotions that drive consumer behavior.
For our clients, this approach ensures that we are leveraging the latest technology to improve precision and efficiency, while maintaining marketing solutions that are thoughtful, genuine, and thoroughly human.
Avoiding the AI Monkey’s Paw
Navigating the intersection of human creativity and AI requires a clear mindfulness of its potential pitfalls, especially the “Monkey’s Paw” scenario where technology adoption and adaptation can lead to unintended and often horrible consequences.
The Monkey’s Paw concept stems from an age-old story where wishes granted never seem to end well. You’ve probably heard the expression, “Be careful what you wish for, you might just get it.” In the context of marketing, this adage and the “Monkey’s Paw” metaphor are becoming increasingly important.
Yes, AI can optimize and automate at an unparalleled scale … but its lack of contextual and emotional understanding can lead to less-than-ideal results. These results might technically meet the desired criteria, but they may also wildly miss the mark on deeper, human-centric goals. For example, an AI-driven campaign might optimize for maximum engagement but could inadvertently align the brand with unsuitable content or sentiments and ultimately damage the brand’s image.
This is why, at Gate, we eschew total automation by closely monitoring outputs and meticulously reviewing placements and contextual references. Everything is reviewed by humans before, during, and after campaigns are run. This approach prevents the potential downsides of AI and upholds our commitment to maintaining authenticity and integrity.
AI isn’t perfect—it has very real limitations. Just as we harness its strengths, we also must not fall prey to its weaknesses.
Mastering AI in Brand Marketing
At Gate, we believe in the strategic synergy between AI and human creativity. After all, we want to offer our clients the very best in brand marketing services. Our approach utilizes AI for marketing efficiency and precision, while preserving the essential human elements of empathy, creativity, and understanding.
If you’re looking to enhance your brand’s impact with a marketing strategy that blends the best of AI innovation and human insight, reach out to us today.
We are Gate. Let’s do this together.