Is AI a Full Stack Marketer's Best Friend?
A New Series looking at the impact of ChatGPT style tools on the Marketing function.
Full Stack Marketing Redux
In October 2022, I wrote a piece about Full-Stack Marketing. A return to the principles of marketing as a complicated multidisciplinary activity and not just pushing out social media content and running the Discord channel.
In that article, I said that disruption is happening. From DeFi to 5G to AI - all of these things will foundationally change the way marketing needs to be approached. Here's a reminder...
Disruption will impact the market at a macro level.
Disruption will change the way consumers behave and browse and discover products and services. (PROCESS)
Disruption will change the value chain, remove middlemen and aggregators and reduce costs through efficiencies delivered by AI. (PRICING)
Disruption will impact what a product is, enabling new asset classes and products, but also complicating legal ownership, rights and liability. (PRODUCT)
These technologies will impact the relationships between brands and customers, will change the way identity, personal data and trust work. (PROMISE)
They will change the way companies communicate with customers. (PROMOTION)
… and they may replace the CMO entirely. (PROGRESS?)
With the rapid improvement of AI models like ChatGPT, MidJourney, Jasper and a host of others, people are starting to question which jobs might be made redundant by a computer that can work 24/7 at a cost of 50 cents an hour.
It may help the pundit classes to take the most alarmist view and predict the end of millions of jobs by the end of the year, but students of disruption know that it usually takes longer to have a systematic or cultural impact.
AI. A Marketer’s Best Friend? Series Overview.
Part 1 - Your Market and AI - How to gain a competitive advantage using AI while protecting against new entrants and structural changes.
Part 2 - How AI will Disrupt Product Design & Management - AI as your new sounding board and chaos agent, rapid prototyping and accelerated market testing. Using AI to ‘imagine’ a world that you may not be able to.
Part 3 - The Customer Journey Disrupted by AI including Discovery & Search - How will customers find you in a world of AI? Is ChatGPT really a ‘Google Killer’? What happens to SEO in this brave new world?
Part 4 - New Business Models. How AI may impact pricing in the Market - Pricing in a market is a dance between demand and supply where the match-maker is information. What will AI mean for arbitrage? Where can customer value be created in a race to average?
Part 5 - Ads, Messaging & Comms - The bit that everyone thinks Marketing is, but isn’t. Can AI write better performing copy than humans? What is the future for influencers and ‘creators’? Do we really need another White Paper ever again?
Part 5b - Acquisition and AI
Part 6 - A Sense of Place. Localisation and AI. A word of caution.
Part 6b - Where are your customers? Long term trends including the metaverse.
Part 7 - Branding. The Best Protection against AI in the new Authenticity & Trust Economy - Will customers trust the machines? Will there be a ‘made by humans’ movement? How do you differentiate your product and experience in a world where all the thinking is done by a derivative hive mind?
Part 8 - Your Questions Answered - Will the CMO be replaced by an AI? Which parts of the marketing function are most at risk?
Things You Will Need
If you want to try some of the tips and tools I will describe in this series, you might need the following… these are not affiliate links.
ChatGPT - You can sign up for a free account which will allow you to achieve most tasks at an entry level. There is a premium version which is said to deliver better results, especially including events after 2021.
Midjourney - is a text to image generator. Some prompts are available for free. There is a premium version which allows more images to be created. Midjourney needs to be used through a chat app called Discord. Other text to image generators are available.
I look forward to having you along for the journey. If you are the kind of person who learns by reading, then please subscribe. If you are someone who prefers to learn by doing, then I have a workshop to work through the issues on a more bespoke basis.
Download the Managing Disruption Workshop Flyer.