In a recent survey by The Conference Board, 50 percent of marketing leaders and 42 percent of communications leaders selected AI content creation tools as one of the most exciting areas for innovation in the year ahead. B2C companies were more inclined to experiment (54 percent) and matrixed organizations the most committed (60 percent).

Insights for What’s Ahead

The rapid expansion of experimentation with (generative) Artificial Intelligence applications to assist, augment, or possibly replace some functions in the communications discipline cannot be avoided. At the same time, the challenges of risk, credibility, reliability, and creativity are yet to be tackled, and the regulators will have a role to play in this. No company can afford not to explore the possibilities, but all companies must do so wisely.

Leaders know AI will disrupt the functions of marketing and communications. It will radically improve efficiency in many areas of the creative/communications process, but humans will have to harness it to ensure effective outcomes. How should marketing and communications approach this?

Corporate communications teams must lean in and learn, identify the areas where the efficiency gains of tools like Bard, ChatGPT, Dall-E, and MidJourney can help the human side of the organization deliver more effectively for the enterprise. Expect an influx of closed-AI applications to appear on the market to drive workflow, scenario planning, and measurement.

The possibilities of new techniques for leveraging data at high speed and with greater accuracy are enticing for marketers. This will enable faster reaction to changing market conditions and customer behavior, and even predicting these changes before they happen. When this is combined with the power of generative AI content tools to create hyper-personalized content with offers and even prices served at the key trigger points in the customer journey, opportunities open up to win new customers, drive new business models, and explore new engagement tactics.

The critical scarcity here, however, will be reliable first-party data. Companies must assess how they can best collect and leverage data and maintain the trust of their consumer by treating it with integrity and transparency. The same approach must be taken to the application of AI and a clear position on its use—and its misuse—must be drawn up and communicated to customers and consumers.

This space is changing fast, and staying abreast of what is new, learning from peers about what is being done, and finding trusted insights for what’s ahead will be important.

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