3 ways AI can help Improve Creative Teams' Performance

John Kinmonth, Sr. Director, Brand Marketing at Amplero, writes about how agencies and in-house creative teams can keep from being overwhelmed by AI, and instead use AI for greater success

We’ve entered a world of blurred lines between art and AI. Algorithms are used to generate classical music compositions, oil paintings, and jokes—even some good ones.

Scientific American’s David Pogue recently asked the existential question, “Is art created by AI really art?” citing human effort as a possible necessary attribute for art.

In the marketing world, whenever a fast-talking futurist claims a new AI feature that magically generates a new mobile app experience or bridges an instore and online interaction, you can bet your landing page on a few eye rolls from the creatives in the room.

They’ve heard it before. They know the elbow grease it takes to get any new system up and running, particularly when someone is talking about generating thousands of different creative experiences tailored to the individual user.

However, with 84% of marketing executives adopting or expanding AI initiatives in 2018, the machine is definitely joining the marketing team. And creatives need to have a plan.

For level-setting purposes, I’m using Forrester Analyst Joe Stanhope’s definition for an AI marketing technology as something that can sense, think, and act autonomously with minimal intervention from the marketer. These systems often include native experience builders or can connect directly to a digital asset management system or downstream channel (email, web, etc) to dynamically deliver interactions.

Here are three ways agencies and in-house creative teams can keep from being overwhelmed by AI:

1. You actually don’t have to start from scratch

While TED-talking thought leaders and technology sales executives tend toward hyperbole when touting the recent wave of AI, the truth is that your creative agency or in-house team are already running a lot of the processes to support AI/ML optimization on your primary engagement channels.

In simple terms, you can start experimenting with the content you already have. From programmatic display to multi-channel experiences spanning social, email, mobile, in-store, and print—your creative teams are already accustomed to building a mountain of assets to fit different mediums. In fact, they likely are already building the templates that you need to feed the machine.

2. Focus first on the always-on relationship

From abandon cart messages via email for retailers to data usage notifications for mobile carriers via SMS, most brands already have “evergreen” or “always-on” campaigns corresponding to stages in a customer journey. At best, these are based on static segments, SKU affinity categories, or basic behavioral triggers. At worst, it’s a one-size-fits all automated interaction.

These types of basic communications are great places to start for AI decisioning initiatives since marketers can set sanity boundaries and let the machine optimize experience elements based on the unique, time-stamped attributes of a customer or user.

What this means for the creative process is that creative directors and marketers need to think about campaigns as a true relationship versus a linear interaction toward a specific short-term outcome.

3. Adapt for volume and variability

Just as AI engines have a voracious hunger for large data sets, they also thrive on a large number creative permutations. Fortunately, for creative teams, many of the assets they’re producing on a daily basis have templated elements or variable tags in place that are ideal for experimentation.

The trick is making sure the creative teams are adapting their process to include multiple options for each copy or visual component, along with adhering to strict metadata taxonomies for each asset attribute.

For example, in a dynamic email, the subject line, preheader, and headline can all change based on a what performs best based on your KPIs (longterm or short-term) and a user’s behavioral data profile. During the production stage, your copywriters should plan on generating multiple options for each copy block within a campaign that fit within your overall brand voice. These could shift between educational, sense of urgency, humorous, informational, etc. In a visual paradigm, the hero image should have multiple composition options that all fit within the overall visual direction of the campaign.

For creatives, the emphasis anchors creative direction and production within larger brand elements like tone, voice, and feel, while asset variables within an experience will continually adapt based on your customer’s evolving preferences.

Ultimately, this shifts the creative team toward a more strategic dialog when discussing project scoping and execution.

And, with a machine picking the final design, creative teams need to embrace the focus on the bigger ideas that really connect with their audiences.

Otherwise, they risk being reduced to a life of labor shoveling creative assets into a hungry marketing machine.