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Why The Future Of Marketing Relies On AI and Data Storytellers – Forbes


Advancements in technology continue to drive change in the workplace, altering employees’ tasks, priorities and required skills across different disciplines, especially in marketing and advertising. The phrase “data is the new oil” accurately captures today’s digital marketer’s world. But just like oil, data must be refined into insights in order to create value. The tools and skills to create value out of data are more critical to business success today than ever before.

For instance, data storytellers, marketers who also have the talent to glean insights about customers from advanced campaign reporting, are critical to propelling their teams further. When brands invest in data storytellers, digital teams and their creative partners have allies who can inspire them to explore directions and ideas based on data directly from customers.

My company helps Fortune 500 brands create hybrid digital advertising teams that leverage the collaboration of AI and human employees. I’ve seen firsthand how, with the right kinds of tools and talent, marketers can more deeply understand their customers and trends and even find new business opportunities.

Data Infatuation Denied Digital Marketers Their Humanity

Over the past couple of decades, the flood of data taking over marketing has been in relentless lockstep with the increase in digital advertising investment. This year, digital advertising spend is anticipated to account for 50% of all ad spending globally. As this wave gathered strength, the focus of the entire ad tech industry was largely measurement, targeting and response. This has meant that most reporting and analysis has focused on media execution. The creative process has been largely left out, save for some A/B testing.

I believe that the marketing team of the future will offload certain tasks to an intelligent machine to blend the use of data analysis for media execution with the validation of creative fundamentals like value proposition. Once the rote mechanical data-crunching tasks that bog down digital marketing teams are off-loaded, marketers’ attention can turn to the fundamentals that create great, compelling brand experiences.

The Rise Of Data-Powered Creativity

The future of digital advertising has the potential for unbridled creativity. However, unlike the golden era of advertising, this time it won’t be about three-martini lunches. Creativity will be based on insights that data-driven marketers have gleaned from autonomous AI.

Data storytellers and creative thinkers form a new kind of partnership that takes advantage of the rapid testing and learning possible with a platform that optimizes creativity, budget and audience simultaneously. In this new world, data storytellers will inform creative development, and atomized, individual assets will be fed into the tech.

Suddenly, marketing teams will be empowered to understand how certain concepts resonate with certain segments. This will inevitably lead to more questions, and more hypotheses to feed the test-and-learn process — a machine-enabled activity that relies on human creativity as its engine.

Letting Go To Leap Ahead

A big factor in getting to this future will involve marketers’ willingness to banish the notions of what campaign success has looked like and embrace what campaign success could look like. Teams will need to learn to be open-minded about their approach to marketing and advertising and shed preconceived notions of what they think works.

Instead of relying on past experience alone, they will need to let intelligent technology operate across channels and test different variables. By giving the machine space to execute tests and surface data, marketing teams can uncover surprising results, such as new demographics, untapped channel opportunities or new target audiences. When AI uncovers incremental efficiencies like these that spark questions or require shifts in creative brand strategy, trust between people and machines grows. I expect this will propel brands even further on their path toward overall business transformation.

What To Know Before You Start

While the hype around intelligent machines remains high, many companies have been slow to fully adopt them or have not seen successful results. Why? Many approach these technologies with the wrong mindset or do not fully understand how and where these tools can be applied to address their marketing needs.

When reviewing AI investments, marketing teams must first understand where their needs lie and what type of tech is best suited for their business. Are they just looking for recommendations on the next action to take, like which bids to adjust every so often? Or are they looking for a transformation in their approach that puts a machine on point to optimize campaigns 24/7? Assistive AI technologies provide data insights but require marketers to still make manual adjustments to optimize campaigns. Autonomous AI is another level of change entirely, leaving the bulk of the assignment to machines.

In addition, the success or failure of implementing a radically different approach to marketing execution can often be rooted in company culture. Leadership has to be willing to adopt an experimental mindset in order for cutting-edge tech to be accepted widely across a team. Day-to-day channel experts have to be willing to take their hands off the levers and let the machine do its thing. The shift from a deterministic machine that does exactly what you tell it, to a probabilistic machine that relentlessly explores many options can be unnerving. The upside, however, is rapid discovery.

Ultimately, teams that are aligned around the need for change, with a clear transformation road map, have the greatest chance for success.

Conclusion

Ad tech solutions have come light-years from their humble beginnings, but many marketers remain apprehensive about adopting advanced, autonomous technologies. As Forrester Research notes, just 18% of global information workers agree with the statement, “I have a sense of my career path in a world of automation.”

It will be up to inspired executives to lead the way into this new era. Marketing team cultures that are open-minded toward change and invest in both people and technology will be able to future-proof their teams and propel their businesses toward successful transformation.



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