Hi Team,
It’s a pressure cooker out there am I right? Seemingly everyone’s singing the praises of AI— claiming to be experts—proclaiming we have maybe three months to figure it out before the world passes us by.
That can create pressure and fear. There’s FOMO (fear of missing out) and the theme of this email, what I would call FOKU, the Fear of Keeping Up.
Many people call themselves “marketers” today simply because AI tools are easy and cheap to use. But they haven’t taken the time to master true marketing fundamentals. That’s like dumping soil on the ground without planting any seeds. Just because we can now build things instantaneously, it does not change what marketing has always been trying to do.
The Marketing Fundamentals
Here are a few of the fundamentals every real marketer must ground themselves in.
Extending your company mission into a brand people can connect with
Identifying the customers most likely to engage with that brand
Encouraging those customers to share information or make a purchase
Segmenting and organizing them for better targeting
Understanding where they came from and why they chose you
The AI Expert’s Approach
We tend to see people as AI experts for their ability to seemingly use AI for everything. But AI experts are unique in that their expertise enables them to recognize when not to rely on the very tool they specialize in. They follow some of these principles when deciding where AI belongs in the process.
Consider placing less dependence on AI tools when: being different is more important than being efficient.
Consider placing more dependence on AI tools when: being good matters more than being perfect.
Let's parallel path a logo design project and see how an AI expert would approach it versus someone suffering from FOKU, compelled to use AI tools, who we’ll simply refer to as a novice.
AI Logo Design Approaches
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Like a good teammate, the AI expert communicates with the AI to understand what it is and isn’t capable of doing—how did the expert figure this out in the first place?
Asking…
“Are you understanding what I’m communicating'“
“Is your model capable of executing this design”
…saves considerable time, especially when compared to the novice, who doesn’t share their frustration and/or dialogue with the tool they are collaborating with.
What this all means
In short, the AI expert collaborates with a person to create the ingredients that an AI can understand. The novice feels pressure to adopt certain tools, surmising a general idea and tells the AI what they want something to taste like.
With the bevy of AI tools available an AI expert is also someone that realizes what they don't need—they aren’t compelled to learn every tool but they have sufficient knowledge to quickly ascertain what a tool does and cut out the noise as to which AI tools are superfluous.
Starting tomorrow…
So where does this leave you? If anything, here’s what you can do starting tomorrow:
Quiz Show: Tell an AI to create a 20-question test on marketing fundamentals (include “make it fun” in the prompt)
Pick a marketing concept you’re unfamiliar with and ask AI to give you a real world example of it (e.g. what is a real world example of a brand pyramid)
Use AI to evolve your brand voice: Ask an AI prompt to tell you the weather in the voice of your favorite comedian
Understand the hard value of AI: If I gave you a $200 a month budget for AI tools, tell me in a few sentences what you would spend it on and why that is/isn’t sufficient. You must choose at least 3 tools.
I hope you find this insightful. As always, I welcome your feedback and the chance to learn more about your marketing background.
My contact info is below if you’d like to continue the discussion. Please don’t hesitate to reach out, as group feedback leads to better solutions for everyone and gives me a chance to share readers thoughts with our general audience.
As Ever,
Paul Nyhart
Chief Connection Officer - Hi Team
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