AI for Marketing: Latest Strategies – American Marketing Association
Studio director Mark Sund led this morning's discussion for the AMA Cincinnati B2B Community about the latest in AI for marketing. A big topic was #aitraining on the information you enter – potential risks and how to keep your company or clients safe. Brand kits, copyright, prompts, process, biases, and more were part of the discussion!
AI for Marketing – Latest Tools and Strategies
For the American Marketing Association, Cincinnati – B2B Community
07 September 2023
Facilitator
Mark Sund, Studio Director, Sund + Co
When I’m not giving presentations about AI, I work for clients to generate leads, acquire customers, and support their marketing and sales teams.
How is Generative AI Different?
Generative AI takes a small input (aka prompt) and generates a large output: an image, video, writing, computer code.
Whether it’s any good – how to work with it to meet your needs – is the focus of today’s discussion!
Today’s Topics
Four big use cases
Tools – Fundamental, Marketing
Prompts
Brand kits
Process
Training and biases
Legal and risks
Four Big Use Cases
In order of sloppiest to most careful, just about everything you do with generative AI falls into one of these categories:
Brainstorming (internal)
Research (internal)
High volume, good enough (external)
Low volume, high quality (external)
Tools
Words
ChatGPT – great for writing
Perplexity – great for research; also writing
New Bing – great for research
Poe – great for chatbots
Bard, Llama – not really ready for prime time
Articles and SEO
ChatGPT – pay the $20/mo for version 4; we use alot
Claude – some people prefer it
Copy.ai – see more below
WriteSonic – see more below
Jasper – see more below
Graphics
Dall-E – great for brainstorming; same account as ChatGPT
Midjourney – harder to use but more realism
Stable Diffusion – harder to use but more realism
Design
Adobe Firefly – brand name for all their AI stuff; available stand-alone
Adobe Express – incorporating AI
Adobe Photoshop (Generative Fill) – incorporating AI
Video
If you work alot with video, can be huge time-savers…
Runway – the Swiss Army Knife of video tools
Vidyo.ai
Lumen5
Capcut – incorporating AI
Adobe Express & Premiere – incorporating AI
Websites
Marketing professionals should stick with existing website platforms that are incorporating AI, like Squarespace and WordPress:
Mixo
Durable
Squarespace – incorporating AI
Elementor and other WordPress plugins – incorporating AI
Campaigns
Jasper, WriteSonic, Copy.ai – great for SEO; designed to manage whole campaigns
Microsoft Designer, Adobe Express – great for social media; designed to manage whole campaigns
Canva – incorporating AI; designed to manage whole campaigns
Hubspot – incorporating AI; marketing automation and CRM
Nearly everything is incorporating AI these days!
Prompts
Prompts
We didn’t spend much time on prompts, because there are so many examples out there – follow them or experiment and improvise.
Long prompts can be all in one paragraph, or broken up into a series of “do you understand” prompts.
Another reason to not spend much time on prompts: there is no perfect prompt, everything comes back a rough draft.
Include in Your Prompt
What to write about or design
Style / tone / audience
Length or use case
Background – caution: nonpublic info! See below
Words to use or avoid and other optional things
Brand Kits
What’s Great about a Brand Kit?
You don’t need to re-enter background info each time:
Brand / company
Products / services
Positioning in the marketplace
Audience / customers
Style / tone
Logo, colors, fonts, secondary graphics, etc
Brand Kits
ChatGPT has “Custom Instructions” – same thing
Adobe Express puts it in Your Stuff > Brands
Some AI tools allow multiple brand kits in the same account.
Switched to ChatGPT and Adobe Express to show their brand kits.
Risk: Entering Nonpublic Info
The Risk of Entering Nonpublic Info about Your Company or Client
If you enter nonpublic info in prompts or a brand kit, that info is now outside your company or client. The AI will train on it, to use as background for answers it gives to other people. Be sure you know whether the AI will train on your inputs, and whatever else they reserve the right to do with it. Consider this in light of an NDA or confidentiality expectations with company or client.
A bunch of discussion about this.
Process
It’s not a prompt, it’s a process
That’s our philosophy
Process – AIs are Like:
An intern or entry-level employee
Giving someone too tight a deadline
A natural liar
An incurable pleaser
A brainstorming partner
Managing a team
Examples
Here and several other times switched out to show examples of the process and to examine quality of outputs.
One Example – An Ambient Music Channel Cover Image
This image is great – the lighting is amazing, composition and perspective are too. But click and zoom in and tell me what you see.
The good and the bad here are typical of AI – both graphics and the corresponding things in writing.
Training, Biases, Errors, and Editing
Training and Biases
Inside the Secret List of Websites that Make AI Sound Smart
Things that make you go hmmm…
www.washingtonpost.com/technology/interactive/2023/ai-chatbot-learning
Fake Details
The AI Tools Making Images Look Better
Details, even when wrong, increase trust – has long been known in courtrooms, where juries believe witnesses giving testimony with lots of details, even if they’re wrong, over witnesses with less detail, even when it’s correct
www.quantamagazine.org/the-ai-tools-making-images-look-better-20230823
Lying and Pleasing
More unhinged behavior from AIs – you can make these happen too
www.gizmodo.com/paknsave-ai-savey-recipe-bot-chlorine-gas-1850725057
www.gizmodo.com/google-search-ai-answers-slvery-benefits-1850758631
Editors Needed
We’ve always needed to review and edit design and writing by humans. We have biases too, and the brand we’re working for has an angle.
AIs allow us to be more productive, yet require more oversight. So professionals and managers need to keep in mind that the time savings are partly taken back by longer and more careful oversight and editing.
Copyright
Copyright
Content is eligible for copyright protection to the extent that original, skilled, human work was used to create it.
We had some discussion about this – both for the content the AI tools train on, and what it means for content we create using AI.
Take-Aways
Hierarchy
Tools -> Brand kit -> Conversations -> Prompts -> Process
Principles
Curate and iterate – Teri Campbell, Cinci-based CPG photographer
Your weird + AI’s magic – Molly Mahoney, a high-volume CPG social media guru
It’s not a prompt, it’s a process – Sund + Co’s philosophy
Curate + iterate + document – for copyright purposes
Avoid nonpublic info – confidentiality of company or client
Thank you!
To the Cincinnati AMA, the B2B Community, and Karen Kranak :-)
With Input From!
Thank you to my colleagues for ongoing discussions of how we-all use AI:
Sarah Crawford, Creative Director, Sund + Co
Dino Pelle, Digital Director, Engage321
Q & A
In addition to discussion throughout, we had time for a little more!
For more about Sund + Co’s lead generation, customer acquisition, and support for marketing and sales teams, visit us at www.sundco.com
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