By Alister Adams

Over the past few months, I’ve been asked to speak with many of our client marketing teams about artificial intelligence. When speaking to one of the teams, I was introduced as an “AI expert,” to which I corrected them that I am an “AI student” just like everyone else. We are all trying to learn and keep up with the seemingly daily changes to this new AI landscape. 

That being said, I am blessed to work at Publicis, which has globally invested $435 million over the next three years in global AI partnerships with the likes of Adobe, Meta, Microsoft, Bria, Nvidia and OpenAI. Beyond partnerships, much of this investment is also in our people, giving us training and unlimited access to experiment and play with established and emerging AI tools. This has allowed us to experience AI in action first-hand – which is the only way I think you can really learn and understand new technologies and capabilities.

If I could summarize my thoughts on AI in marketing for CMOs, it would be as follows:

1. You’re not as far behind as you think you are

When it comes to artificial intelligence in marketing – to use the old adage – “it is a lot like teenage sex: everybody is talking about it, nobody really knows how to do it, everyone thinks everyone else is doing it, so everyone claims they are doing it.”

Every CMO I speak to thinks they are behind the industry and their competition when it comes to incorporating AI into their marketing process and efforts. As such, everyone is looking for help. The most comforting thing I have told marketing teams is that they aren’t as behind as they think they are. And it’s the truth.

According to a recent KPMG study, 81% of retail executives believe they must invest in Generative AI to stay competitive; but only 38% have a Generative AI solution of some sort in place.

2. AI delivers commoditized efficiency

AI allows us to be far more efficient with the necessary, but most commoditized, tasks in our industry – think lower-funnel content; product copy; stock image searches; repetitive code; digital, print and OOH resizes; Quality Assurance reviews; announcer radio; the list goes on. 

This is not to diminish the value of this work – it is important, business-driving work. But for many of our clients, we have gotten AI to do 80%+ of this work. For a while now, we have been using generative text, images, code and even generative audio for many of our clients who have approved for us to do so, all within brand-safe sandboxes. 

For example, for a major North American retailer, we built a custom AI tool and brand sandboxes to automate their 3,000 monthly new product webpages by ingesting excel-based custom-coded SKU data and converting it into compelling, brand-tone-accurate product descriptions. This has allowed the retailer to move from seven-plus SKU copywriters to 1-2 editors and redeploy this savings to expand and expedite their personalization journey.

Another simple example is for another one of our retail clients. Their challenge has been to record new offers in radio commercials – it historically takes a week to get talent and studio time booked. A lifetime when you want to get a new offer out. We are now harnessing generative voice to “record,” mix and finish a retail radio commercial in a matter of hours and expedite their in-market timing. Delivering not just time-savings but production cost-savings too. 

While AI’s efficiency may not be as glamorous as its creative potential, it addresses the biggest challenge our clients face: doing more with less. More content. More platforms. More personalization. More contextualization. More formats. More assets. All with less time, less people and tighter budgets.

3. Legal compliance remains the biggest challenge

The biggest barrier for many marketing clients is concerns from their legal and compliance teams. Many clients’ legal teams are ill-equipped to vet the commercial usage risk and liability that different AI platforms present.

Thankfully, our global team has done this hard work for us – providing us with an approved list of AI vendors for commercial use and associated legal guidelines. We have frequently solved the compliance concern for our clients by having Publicis taking on the legal liability for our AI-generated content.

In summary

My biggest recommendation to CMOs is to embrace AI and start somewhere. Anywhere. Begin experimenting with it in appropriate areas to drive greater creative enablement and efficiencies. Work with your internal, agency and production partners to put together an AI roadmap. The next few years are going to be exciting!

Alister Adams is the chief digital officer of Publicis Canada