Hotwire Global CEO: Marketing & Comms Cannot Sit On Sideline With AI

Hotwire’s global CEO, Heather Kernahan, was in Sydney this week and explained that marketers and coms pros cannot sit on the sidelines with artificial intelligence as they have with previous tech innovations.

Speaking to B&T, Kernahan explained that she felt it was “really important for our industry to test this and not to sit back and wait.”

In the past, she explained, people in marketing and comms have been found “sitting out on the sidelines” and “waiting to see what develops.”

The pace of change with AI and the changes that generative AI will bring to the market, in particular, means that marketing and comms businesses that do not embrace the tech will be cast aside.

“Not fully understanding the impacts of technology on a business has been a barrier for some agency leaders. They really, truly want to wait and see what’s going to happen before they make it into it and they don’t want to be wrong about testing something new within their business,” Kernahan explained.

“What I’ve seen is that [approach] has led them to have legacy brands and not being able to keep pace with their business. If you want to be a leader in marketing and communications, this [AI] is different because it does directly impact the work that we’re doing every day.”

On her end, Kernahan, who was promoted from Hotwire’s North America CEO into the global hotseat in June 2021, is putting AI to work within the PR and comms agency — and on her own social feeds.

An image of Kernahan generated by the Lensa AI tool.

“No ChatGPT press releases! We’re using it internally on Hotwire only and it’s important that we test it on our own content.”

Specifically, Hotwire is using generative AI tools to produce copy for its own marketing materials and some social media posts. Earlier this year, it also launched new AI-powered tools to help improve audience targeting, measure campaign success, and optimise engagement.

“I don’t at this stage want to be using any client materials or items that are private and should not be shared with anyone else as we test it.”

The agency is, however, having conversations with its clients about potential uses of AI in their work together.

“We’re talking about these technologies now,” said Kernahan.

“We’re having a client dinner on Wednesday and the whole topic of the dinner is generative AI and what it means for marketing and communications leaders. We’ll talk specifically about what tools we see people using and how they are using them and what we’re doing for Hotwire and what we’re not doing and different considerations.

However, Kernahan was keen to stress that Hotwire is not using AI tools on any work for its clients, at least not without serious discussions and transparency around usage.

“Transparency is incredibly important because… I see generative AI right now as a starting point. Even as we do our own marketing work, it’s a starting point for us, not the product. The product requires human intervention.”

Hotwire’s clients, meanwhile, are “curious” about the tech and how they can deploy it.

“We have many clients who are testing different kinds of tools and there are so many new launches coming that I think, within the space of a year, there will be hundreds of different AI technologies that marketers can take advantage of and they’re going to need help sorting out which ones have the right privacy policies, which ones give great starter results versus others. We’ll assess those tools and help people understand them,” she explained.

While Kernahan said that Hotwire is willing, ready and able to help its clients navigate emerging AI tech, they do not have all the answers yet.

“Does a consumer need to know that an Instagram ad was made by generative AI? I don’t know yet. I don’t think anyone has thought through all the different consequences of that because it could depend on the content that is being produced or some other factor that we’re not aware of.”

That has not stopped Kernahan from putting pen to paper and writing a tech-focused book for business leaders.

“I thought it would be helpful to business leaders who need some inspiration and some tools from the technology industry on how to never be stuck in their business again. I went about gathering up the stories and the insights and the things that I know from 25 years in tech and put it into a book,” she said.

“What I talk about a lot in the book is how the tech industry uses specific techniques and tools such as pivots, which are not new, but the tech industry does pivot quite easily from idea to idea or from business model to business model.

“It’s looking for the optimism in the world around you and being able to use that optimism to take the next step and keep moving forward. If you’re a copywriter, a creative director, or whoever, that optimism from the tech industry is easily adaptable… Tech innovators tend to start with a big vision about what they want to do and, as an individual, you can use that technique to think about the vision you have for yourself three or five years from now.”

Kernahan’s book, Unstuckable: Never Be Stuck In Business Again With Tools From Tech Innovators, is due to be published in November.