As senior leaders invest in transformational AI initiatives, they need to see clearly. “You Are Not Hallucinating” spotlights BCG’s AI experts, whose insights for the C-Suite range from actionable next steps to thought-provoking ideas.
Before generative AI (GenAI), the use of big data in marketing was the opposite of creative. It was used strictly as a tool for channel optimization and measuring outcomes. Data represented the sterile side of marketing, what we needed to ensure that our creative ideas broke through.
Now, we have the capacity to use technology to produce original content. To garner brand insights. To pressure test big ideas. We can ask GenAI to create an unlimited array of personas to imagine how different stakeholders are likely to respond to dramatic shifts in strategy and content.
The catch, of course, is that everyone has access to the technology.
The number one obsession of CMOs—and the number one fear of CEOs—is that their company will get lost in an oversaturated market. And the risk is real. The competitive noise grows louder all the time. What the audience retains may amount to nothing unless your brand finds a way to become a beacon of light in a sea of sameness.
As barriers to producing and scaling hyper-personalized content vanish, CMOs need to sharpen their brand distinctiveness. What does that mean? It means the future of brands is experiential.
More than ever before, companies must immerse customers in the world of their brand. The moment a customer encounters your brand—whether they come across a visual asset, enter your brick and mortar location, interact with your shopping assistant—it is crucial that they have multi-sensory, 360-degree brand recognition.
To accomplish this, CMOs must determine the appropriate balance of AI-enabled content and AI-originated content. AI-enabled content is human-led, but it has been informed using AI models and tools. AI-originated content is produced by GenAI models. The companies that will thrive in this new AI-first landscape will be those that figure out how best to harness the creative brilliance of their people and the power of the technology.
Examples of ways to keep humans at the center of the brand experience include starting a messaging campaign with text written by a copywriter or booking a shoot on location to preserve authenticity. Even if the final output is ultimately AI-originated content, people heavily influenced the process.
The key challenge for CMOs is to figure out how to achieve brand distinctiveness while using AI to scale hyper-personalized content. The first thing to do is embrace the technology. Treat GenAI as a thought partner to test your ideas and take a pulse on trends. Given the new capability to scale creativity across an abundance of untapped channels and markets, GenAI can help make your brand more robustly singular than it was in a pre-GenAI competitor landscape.
The rare instances where AI should be avoided altogether come down to maintaining consumer trust. For example, if you sell beauty products, do not use AI-generated images of people who don’t exist. Use real photographs of real people, every time.
In addition to figuring out how to calibrate and balance your AI usage, CMOs need to double down on the principles of a good brand strategy. To protect your brand, be sure to do the following:
Choose the space you want to own and stay focused on it.
Prior to GenAI, companies may have been able to chase corners of the market that did not fully align with their audience. Not anymore. GenAI has made it possible for copycat companies to enter the market with relative ease. Your brand now runs an increased risk of losing its ability to cut through the noise, so you have a heightened imperative to stick to your expertise.
Invest in deeper, more sophisticated insights tracking.
As you scale the volume and reach of your content, simultaneously deepen your commitment to obtaining precise data and rich consumer insights. There is no question that the marketing ecosystem will continue to oversaturate, so as your outreach strategies grow, make sure to stay vigilant with data analysis.
Incredibly, we are only at the very beginning of the AI marketing transformation. As agentic AI continues to develop, the power of the function will grow at a rate we cannot yet predict. It will make today’s pace of change seem glacial.
Where marketing has historically been divided into insights, content, and channel teams, agentic AI enables us to connect workflows for end-to-end campaign planning. The shape and design of the function will naturally evolve to complement the more fluid nature of multi-agent systems. Teams will work together in innovative ways, because the siloes previously separating them will be gone.
GenAI is the new cornerstone of marketing strategy. CMOs should get in front of the transformation and ensure that it is human led. If they use their company values as a guiding force, the newfound functional agility and symbiosis will yield better outcomes and an impenetrable, utterly distinct brand identity.
