The quest for efficiency continues, despite shrinking budgets, an increasingly fragmented media landscape and an evolution of the CMO role This made things more difficult. The way marketing directors position themselves in the industry was clear in the way the at CannesIt’s easy to see why generative AI tools that help brands do more with less might appeal to marketers. The question is whether these tools actually deliver on their promises.
Some people already seem to believe it. Marketing specialists, in particular Klarna, American Bankand, more recently, Toys r us Companies are touting the use of generative AI and the ability to speed up processes as something that is already helping them. Others are conducting their own tests to determine where and how to use generative AI tools in their marketing.
“Like most people, we’re also thinking about the role of generative AI and how it can make our humans smarter, faster and better,” said Kristyn Cook, State Farm’s chief marketing officer, recently in Cannes, where she had the opportunity to hear about AI use cases. “But it also has to make creative work harder.”
The answer to this question will depend on the marketer.
Some in the industry criticize that using generative AI simply for the sake of using it can be seen as a marketing tactic for the brand, and ultimately, for the CMO role if the use is not tied to something that makes sense for the brand.
“You can only know where to apply technology if you understand the human experience you’re trying to transform,” said Leonid Sudakov, president of growth, digital and platforms at Mars Petcare, when asked about using AI in marketing. Earlier this year, the brand used AI to give adoptable pets a better chance of being adopted by using AI to make shelter photos look like professional ones and optimizing those photos with outdoor placements. The work won a Grand Prix at Cannes just a few weeks ago.
Rather than succumbing to the fear of missing out or jumping too quickly into using generative AI to please C-suite executives, marketers need to think about how using generative AI makes sense for their business and their customers.
“The work on Pedigree that won us a Grand Prix was a great and innovative way for us to apply AI to help solve pet adoption problems,” Sudakov said, adding that it wasn’t the use of AI but the problem the company was solving that made it impactful. “But we’ve been working on this for 20 years. This is the last step. How can we create more impact, how can we create it cheaper and faster? The commitment to the problem you’re trying to solve has to be an ongoing commitment rather than a rushed commitment.”
AI is just the latest hurdle marketers must overcome to find efficiencies without compromising their brands’ creativity.
“Marketers are inherently supposed to be immersed in culture and what’s happening in it,” said Jim Mollica, chief marketing officer at Bose, who noted that the company is experimenting with AI for media buying as well as generative AI to help with personalization. “It’s part of the cultural conversation.”
Mollica continued: “You can use it as a tool to help you reduce costs without killing creativity. It’s how you apply it that matters.”
3 questions for Lee Anne Grant, Director of Growth at Babylist
How is Babylist evolving its business?
We have a three-year plan to go from a registry to a platform for everything expectant parents need. We launched a health business last year that’s doing really well. We launched a showroom, which is our first physical experience and is about bringing more joy into people’s lives, but also about experiencing what the future of retail looks like. With all of that on the marketing and advertising side, I would say the marketing side of the showroom is a brand initiative. We fund it with brand dollars and we work with 35 different partners to co-fund that experience. So that’s an indicator that advertisers are interested in the experience as well.
That’s a lot. What does that mean in terms of revenue and ad spend?
We now have four different revenue streams, which are based on experimentation and innovation. On the advertising side, we are very much focused on our core business, because we know that this product is fit for the market and that it is profitable. I am sure you know, investors care about profitability, everybody cares about profitability. So even though we are innovating, we are not spending money on innovation.
Do these new verticals open up more proprietary data for Babylist?
My biggest focus this year is lifecycle marketing, which is not as compelling as M&A or launching new verticals. But the bottom line is we know when people are expecting a baby, we know when their baby is coming, and so we can really guide them through that journey. A lot of it is leveraging the basic user lifecycle data that we already have. And then, yeah, getting new data points, how are they engaging in this new vertical? Kimeko McCoy
In numbers
Don’t assume that Gen Z has completely abandoned Facebook. Despite the platform’s reputation as the home of overly connected baby boomers (who started to love shellfish, no less) A recent study by researchers at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Acceleration Community of Companies think tank found that Facebook is more popular than you might think among younger consumer cohorts. The study included qualitative and quantitative surveys of Gen Z undergraduates, as well as a larger survey conducted by YouGov.
- 31% said they felt more comfortable on Facebook, compared to 11% on TikTok and 11% on Twitter/X.
- 52% said they felt comfortable with brands engaging with their online communities through influencer marketing, rather than commenting online through an organic profile (43%) or sponsored content (32%).
- 43% said they were comfortable with brands commenting or reacting in their online spaces. Sam Bradley
Quote of the week
“Social media can be called whatever it wants. Brands will always want to be there to reach those audiences.”
— Sammy Rubin, vice president of integrated media at digital marketing agency Wpromote, when asked why some social media platforms distance themselves from the social media label.
