Marketing is seen as one area where AI could offer significant benefits, enabling more cost-effective campaigns and increasing the speed of getting campaigns to market…music to the ears of budget-challenged marketers.
AI is being applied to marketing grunt work like research and also being used to build creative campaigns; the ability of AI to generate imagery and content is developing very quickly and with that come concerns that it might in fact stifle creativity sparking a race to the bottom. This is especially concerning when one considers that according to System 1, most human-developed current advertising is uninspiring and ignored.
Within the London Insurance Market, some Insurers have started deploying AI within their marketing campaigns.
Beazley recently shared a series of teaser posts on social media, including a video showcasing a Beazley-branded hot air balloon for their ‘Around the World in 80 Years’ campaign.
AXA XL also used an AI avatar as the face of their recent risk campaign: #FacingIntoRisk.
Despite concerns that AI could impact the quality of creativity in marketing, many argue that it should still be seen as a legitimate and potentially powerful tool for marketers, one that enhances, challenges, and inspires innovative ideas.
Allegra Cuomo, a student and expert in the Ethics of AI, agrees, saying:
“I believe AI can be a useful tool to revolutionise marketing by aiding in quickly going through information and sources and designing approaches and highly effective algorithms. Using AI, marketers can customise and optimise their approaches to best meet customer needs, creating a more personalised user experience. This mode of targeting is possible due to AI’s ability to scan large quantities of collected data and make such effective algorithms.”
Georgina Peters-Venzano, Chief Marketing Officer at Beazley, offers a balanced viewpoint on AI’s utility:
“AI, like every tool, when used well should complement and augment the plans you have in place. I am not sure AI alone will revolutionise marketing within the London Market – you still need buy-in and budget to deliver a campaign.”
Peters-Venzano is confident that AI won’t replace creativity, adding:
“I don’t believe AI will replace creativity. The ideas we have, and certainly the best ideas are usually created by a team and then perhaps executed using AI. AI is just one of the tools that we use to bring to life in our brand strategy. There is always a risk attached to embracing the new. Overuse of any one tool can turn it into a commodity vs a competitive edge. If everyone jumps in with two feet and lets AI run and develop their campaigns, then yes it will become robotic however, doing the hard work up-front around brand, understanding and defining your brand and then setting parameters around those to ensure alignment with your brand should help mitigate that risk.”
Following Georgina’s point, Allegra also voiced concerns over the use of AI, especially if creatives go for ‘quantity over quality’ driven by the ease and low cost of developing swathes of AI content.
“AI is very good at creating a very large number of ever so slightly different creations, for example writing the same news article but only slightly differently for a number of news channels. An AI would take seconds to write 10 separate articles so – other than the fear that AIs are not always entirely accurate and have the tendency to create hallucinations – there would be a focus on quantity in our consumerist society that always wants more and more. I worry that the work of actual writers and creatives would be sidelined for cheaper and faster options.”
The current consensus seems to be that AI should be seen as a tool to support and elevate creative ideas, rather than replace them. After all, no matter how advanced AI becomes, it surely cannot match the power of creative minds coming together to generate fresh, memorable campaigns…or can it?