Part 1 of a 3 Part Series: How to Gain a Marketing Advantage with Gen AI (and Avoid the Pitfalls)

I was talking with a friend and fellow business owner recently about generative AI (Gen AI) and its impact on the marketing industry. My friend was aware of the more popular Gen AI tools such as ChatGPT, Bard and Mid-Journey but he didn’t trust the tech and was afraid of what was coming as the number of users continues to grow. He even went as far as to say he just wasn’t going to let any of his employees use Gen AI. I offered the opinion that some of his employees are already using it, he just didn’t know it.

I would venture to say that the majority of marketing teams are at least experimenting with Gen AI in some way, whether their leaders know it or not. And what is interesting about this tech is there are no user manuals and very few experts.

I’m a believer in this technology. I am excited about what it can do for our industry. I’m also concerned that people aren’t going to attack the use of this tech from a responsible and ethical place which will ultimately make it more difficult for all marketers to use it for brands.

So how are we ensuring we are using Gen AI in a responsible manner? Here is how we’re attacking it at Brandience.

First, I shared a Gen AI vision with our company so that people understood what I believe it cando for our company and our clients. One of the main points is that we are approaching AI from a human-centered perspective. This human-centered approach is about making ussmarterso we can do our jobs better. As part of that vision, I established three pillars that are equally important as we embark on our journey to embrace Gen AI in an appropriate way: Best Practice, Education, and Tools.

The first pillar is Best Practice which focuses on what is needed to ensure we are approaching and using Gen AI in a responsible and ethical way. The main deliverable under this pillar is our Generative AI Policy.

Our policy has four main areas: privacy, IP protection, quality, and transparency.

Privacy – we must use Gen AI tools in a manner that will protect our clients and our own confidential and sensitive data.

IP Protection – It’s our responsibility to make sure any work product where Gen AI is used doesn’t include content that we don’t have the rights to use.

Quality – All Gen AI output has to be validated with human expertise to ensure accuracy and relevancy. We always strive for the highest quality possible so we can’t allow a tool to lower our quality level.

Transparency – All employees must communicate internally when and how they are using Gen AI. If Gen AI output is part of a final client work product, it’s our duty to be transparent about that with our clients.

Having a Generative AI policy in place ensures that employees clearly understand expectations, best practices, acceptable tools they can use, etc. The recent 2023 State of Marketing AI study by the Marketing AI Institute reports that only 22% of organizations have Gen AI policies in place.

Continue reading Part 2 and Part 3 of this series.