What Will Happen to Marketing in the Age of AI? | Jessica Apotheker | TED

Generative AI is revolutionizing marketing, potentially increasing productivity by 50%. To capitalize, companies must develop a "left-AI brain" by building data science teams and AI tools to improve efficiency and prediction. Simultaneously, they must protect and upskill their "right-brained" creative talent to prevent homogenization and maintain brand differentiation. The key is strategic reskilling and collaboration, leveraging AI for efficiency while safeguarding human creativity and innovation. concretely, imagine you are a brand that is super strong with Millennials.. there is nothing in data and content existing on Millennials that will help you to be successful with Gen Z. And in turn,, if you're never successful with Gen Z, you will miss out on important innovations and trends that will make you stronger with Millennials. so I advise every company out there: think outside of the box, think outside your direct ecosystem on who could be super relevant data and content partners for you.. imagine you're a construction company and you decide to market to architects for the first time. you have zero data on architects. what do you do? who has data on architects? other construction companies, but they're direct competitors. so where do you go? well, you go outside your ecosystem, potentially, for example, with financial institutions, insurances. you can set up a federated model with them, train algos on that, that will in turn make you much stronger to market to a new consumer segment. and so are you done? if you have that, if you have that data, if you have those skills are you done, you have that left-AI brain advantage? well, no, actually you are not. if you do that, there is a risk you give all of your right brain to generative AI and in turn run a real risk of losing that divergence, losing that super strong brand identity, being trapped in that grand equalization of marketing I was talking about a minute ago. in the Harvard study we conducted with the Boston Consulting Group and Harvard, we found that when people over-rely on generative AI, the collective divergence of ideas drops by 40 percent. concretely, that means that new ideas don't come to the surface. it means that true innovation is being stifled. so what is a solve here? well, you need to identify the true artists, the true differentiators, the true innovators of your function. now, if you've ever worked in marketing, you know who these people are. they are the ones that always disagree with you. now you take these people and you need to strategically reskill them to use AI well, for example, to be inspired by new ideas, to be inspired by new trends, to also crack fast prototypes, to multiply their impact once they've cracked a great idea. but you need to protect them and teach them from using the AI to generate and originate original ideas. for that, they have to use their human brain. what are you good at? are you super creative? are you the true innovator in the room? well, if you are, cultivate that. that will be your superpower. do you like data? are you super rational, are you super fact-based? then you should specialize.. you should grow tech skills.. you should be investing in predictive AI competencies.., but right now,, every marketer out there, needs to choose their brain..