Inbound 2024 was, like all the years I've attended, an incredible experience. I met people at all levels of their marketing careers, some in industry verticals I had never heard of, and got to have exciting conversations with each of them. Usually, when I leave a conference like this, I generate a wrap-up blog, but this time I was struck by one unavoidable topic that kept bubbling to the surface... typically when I said my job included a lot of writing... and yes, it's about artificial intelligence (AI).
- Are you afraid of AI replacing you?
- How is AI affecting your role?
- Do you expect to still have a job in the future?
- Is your process still the same with AI?
- How are you using AI as a creative?
Basically, is AI the Big Bad Wolf and are writers, designers, and other creatives afraid?
Yes. Some creatives are afraid. This fear is widespread because at Inbound, there was a plethora of vendors selling AI. However, there were also some well-known presenters showcasing why it may not be the answer to everything, especially to writing woes.
From here on out it is my aim to show you where AI can be best utilized and, on the flip side, where a human may be a stronger choice.
Is your goal engagement?
Most marketers are fairly well-versed on who Neil Patel is, but for those who have yet to discover him, he's an agency co-founder, a best-selling author, and more specifically to this article, a marketing influencer who consistently speaks at conferences like Inbound.
In a recent blog article and live at this year's conference, he presented a few points about engagement and they were very compelling.
First, according to his study, content generated by a person usually outperforms AI generated content. It receives 5.44 times more traffic. In that same study, he found that content created by human beings also garnered 4.10 visitors per minute dedicated to writing, but AI-generated content only earned 3.25 visitors. Finally, when humans are told directly that something was written by AI, they choose to support other humans. At least that's what Patel's study shows with human-created written content holding attention for two minutes and 36 seconds, where AI was only getting one minute and 21 seconds of their time.
All of these findings are likely due to the fact that people feel a stronger emotional connection to other people and that humans are better at setting up context within content than machines.
With the average attention span dwindling daily, these engagement metrics can't be ignored. Engagement is at a premium and marketers can't achieve their business goals without it.
Our winner? Humans! But you can always use AI for research or for my favorite thing... to rule out what everyone else is writing about (ask me about this, it's one of my favorite strategies).
How about mass production?
It's no secret that AI is faster, especially at writing. According to Patel, ChatGPT and other generative AIs can create an article in around 16 minutes as opposed to the 69 minutes a human counterpart would take. So if speed and level of production are your key performance indicators (KPIs), AI is the clear winner here.
Our winner? AI!
What about creative optimization?
The big word in marketing used to be "automation." Many people still confuse automation with AI. The bulk of the vendors at Inbound were selling AI optimization solutions or ones focused on stretching what your creative team produces.
For your reference, here are the definitions of each:
Marketing automation – "A kind of technology that lets you establish systems to automate everyday marketing tasks, reducing the amount of time and effort it takes for you to communicate with your audience in timely and relevant ways." – Mailchimp
AI – "Technology that enables computers and machines to simulate human learning, comprehension, problem solving, decision making, creativity and autonomy." – IBM
Customer relationship management (CRM) data cleanliness & actioning
Why would a creative be writing about CRM optimization? Because if your data isn't clean and optimized, your creative won't land correctly in inboxes or anywhere else.
HubSpot has always been a heavy proponent of clean data. That's why they offer automation tools within the Operations Hub like Data Quality Software. After all, it sets AI up for success! However this year, they took it to the next level by introducing Breeze, which offers things like intelligent form shortening for better conversion rates and more.
Of course HubsSpot has other AI creative features, but we expect to see the majority of success coming more frequently through this path of taking human and automated efforts further in a cleaner way in the coming months and years than from the actual creative ones.
Our winner? If multiple HubSpot hubs and feature upgrades fit in your budget, choose AI with human oversight. But you can still utilize humans alone if you don't have the budget.
Basic training & data referencing
An interesting product highlighted at Inbound by Atlassian was Rovo.
It's centered on locating information throughout all your chosen SaaS apps, can help with thinking and learning during work, and claims to improve speed.
For example, if you need to pull up a project with a particular detail that is escaping you, this can be a more intelligent way to seek it out. It also provides newer employees with the ability to find information they may have to otherwise ask a senior coworker for. Essentially, it removes monotonous tasks or the friction that results from a lack of existing knowledge because it pulls from actualmajor business data to generate the answer.
It does other things too, but those are the ones that seem most useful and different from other products in market at the moment. Oh, and the fact that it's designed for SaaS. That's a biggie!
Our winner? If your budget supports it and you're in SaaS, give AI a try and see if you like the results.
Video
One video platform we tested out at Inbound was provided by D-iD. Their platform can take your image and turn it into a video avatar. The same program can create different videos in multiple languages or can be used to take one video and spin it up into personalized ones for individuals.
Per their pilot case study, "Videos, especially personalized ones, consistently led to higher engagement rates. Personalized videos achieved a 16.3% average CTR, significantly outperforming the 11.6% CTR for non-personalized emails. Personalized videos resulted in 18% more email clicks."
With that in mind, it may be smart for business leaders to consider this solution for getting more for their dollar out of one strong asset. We don't expect this product to replace original videos by human creators, but there are certainly use cases for this one's efficacy.
Our winner? Humans for the initial work and AI for a boost.
Visual creative
AI can be used for visual creative. While I don't endorse this route (at least not for the entirety of a piece), some people are happy with the results of its inclusion in the process. One company present at Inbound was Superside. They have a range of services, and their creative case studies do show a strong story of customer satisfaction.
Our winner? Unclear. This is going to be a personal decision for your brand.
So yes, AI was the hot button topic at Inbound 2024, but before leaning into it too heavily I would urge you to consider what you want your brand to project – sameness or inspiration.
I don't want to make it sound like we never use AI at Imarc. We do! We use it in plenty of ways like the ones outlined in this creative blog and for some elements of paid media. We've also gone as far as to write down the ethical ways it is being used within our walls. However, what we don't do here is remove humans entirely. In our collective minds, that would be a significant mistake.
"The [Science Advances] research adds to the growing body of work investigating how generative AI affects human creativity, suggesting that although access to AI can offer a creative boost to an individual, it reduces creativity in the aggregate. " – Rhiannon Williams, MIT Technology Review
The widespread use of AI for creative work, especially within the creative sector will generate a landscape of sameness eventually based on the way it's built. So think carefully about when, where, and how you use it. If you really want to stand out creatively, you'll see that humans should be involved.
Want to hire a human creative? We have the best ones around! Say hello to get started.
