Mark Leone, managing director of Madclarity, asks us to consider the importance of investing enough time and funds to training staff on how to properly use AI tools, with a refreshingly relatable scenario.
“Hi Honey, it’s cloudy …”
What???
Who is cloudy???
One of our clients was struggling to make sense of the AI text summary of my voice message.
Thankfully, they listened to the actual message and had a good laugh. But it wasn’t the first time. A week earlier “Jack Kimble Cheese” left me a message.
We know AI and automation will replace basic tasks. The speed, convenience and cost benefits are too attractive, but what happens with more complex tasks, when it inevitably goes wrong?
No, this is not a Luddite rant. Our only option is to embrace it, and in this case, there were no catastrophic consequences. But when it is well disguised, and the consequences are bigger, like multimillion-dollar campaigns, will we worry then?
Marketing teams are leaner and less experienced than 20 years ago. And they are looking up to leaders who are less experienced than their own bosses were 20 years ago.
The confidence to interrogate and challenge rogue data is disappearing. Less able to distinguish between good and bad, advertisers are accepting just about any data as irrefutable.
But is it?
We recently spoke to a savvy CMO of one of our clients. Their total, annual training budget, for the entire marketing team of more than 40 people, was less than the cost of a typical two-day training seminar … 20 years ago!
Having been a sports fan all my life, I like to look at the parallels. Progress in sports science has not resulted in less emphasis on training. The opposite is true. Increased professionalism means the poor old, beer-guzzling “Leaguie” of the 1980s wouldn’t dream of doing the same today. This was followed by increased investment in training facilities, coaching staff and time spent in the gym or on the training fields.
But in the marketing world, investment in technology and science has coincided with training budgets going backwards. Intergenerational learning is not working. The leaders themselves are less experienced and confident. Everyone is time-poor. Ironic, given the amount of automation.
Doing what marketing science says isn’t right all the time… particularly when it is contradictory. And free training from media companies certainly won’t encourage free thinking and challenge.
As sports science has become ubiquitous, it’s clear that teams that train the hardest prevail. The sporting metaphor started with a nod to increased professionalism.
But are we going in the exact opposite direction?
The winners in this mixed-up advertising world will be the people who can think for themselves and who use AI tools to help them be even better … not do their jobs for them. Because who the hell is cloudy??
