Promotion. AI. Fried or Foe of the CMO?

Part 5a - Awareness, AI and Advertising & Promotion.

At some point in the last 20 years, probably around the time ‘digital marketing’ became a thing, the multidisciplinary field of marketing became just the bit that related to advertising.

The Promotion element of marketing is the one that many AI commentators have spent the most time on, warning of job losses for copywriters and designers and photographers. People are already selling ‘prompts’ that will do everything from write SEO titles to tweets and product descriptions.

I’ve tested some of these tools with varying results. It might be that some low level, tactical tasks could be automated by AI, but if you read my piece about the rise and fall of the microwave oven, you will know that quick and easy and mediocre is not the best strategy.

Of course algorithms and machine learning are not new to advertising and promotion. Email service providers and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems use behavioural data to adjust the send time of emails to optimise open rates and social media platforms can cycle headlines and copy and images to test which ads work best.

But what do the new AI tools mean for the CMO?

There are different kinds of promotion and advertising for each part of the customer journey. Simplistically there is:

• Awareness

• Acquisition

• Conversion

• Retention

AI and Awareness