Unleash the Power of AI Through Human Being and Behavior
Marketers’ Community gathered again to build on the learning from the first AI-focused event they held in August 2023, which was all about productive conversations. In November 2024, revisiting AI and providing a check-in from the AI-immersed panel, brought the latest insights to light. And given the rapid pace of AI technology, the conversation wasn’t all about answers. Much of it was about asking important questions and making correlations to the introduction and evolution of significant new technology in our history, namely the internet.
A Tool that Teaches
The audience of marketers in the room brought their AI trials to the context of the conversation, indeed with a greater amount of experimentation than the AI 1.0 event. The panel matched their level of inquiry and readiness to explore Ai further.
Tim Brunelle, AI early adapter and panel discussion lead, touted AI as the first technology tool that tells you how to use it as you go. Mona Askalani, digital technology leader at General Mills, noted the importance of being polite for better results; while Callan Faulkner, AI and automation expert, encouraged the audience, asserting that creative types can flourish using AI. Heather Boschke, marketing strategist and founder of Vogel Ventures, shared tools including Reclaim, Magical, Overlap, Zinnia, and Napkin; and Garrio Harrison, founder of Forage, a strategic consultancy that works with leadership teams, reveled in sales representatives’ usage as essential in getting them up to speed in onboarding so they can more quickly thrive in a high pressure sales environment.
Optimization, but at What Cost?
While AI as a tool is teaching, there is such a thing as over production and human elements of navigating how, why, and to what extent we use AI. Heather prompted the audience (not AI) with a question about the impact of optimizing so much that it could lead to anxiety and mental health issues, more time in front of screens, and less opportunities for joy, play, and things that fill our soul. All outcomes to consider and be aware of in our personal and business-related AI use. On the flip side, Callan’s AI-savvy mom, Cate Faulkner, prompted Callan to share how awareness and her approach to AI has led to reclaimed time outside of work for joy and a fulfilling lifestyle. She advises to not use AI to solve a problem you don’t have; and to put in the work to train AI to capture the essence of your founder vision and brand so you can execute at a high level, delegate, and scale.
Brand Relevance and Author Ownership
As AI grows in widespread business use, the panel shared several areas of concern and context for the audience to be aware of. When it comes to brand relevance, we want to be tracking with consumers’ changing mindsets as they adopt AI in their daily lives. Tim cites that consumers will have as much power as the brand. If they understand AI capability for customization and personalized experience, their tolerance for brands that don’t talk to them on a micro-experiential level will be null. It raises the stock of the brand, noted Heather, in that it must be authentic. Mona forewarned that effective marketers won’t be using excess time created through AI-optimization and resting on one marketing message, rather, they’ll be tasked with creating 10x the messaging to solve consumer problems we’re now more aware of in detail we’ve never before had available.
Rest assured, using AI to create content still requires human effort to make the final product sing. The general plea was to use AI data sets you create about your brand and business, prompts and conversations to generate output. Then your time is about refining, source checking, and adding in emotional intelligence – never publishing the AI-generated initial version without these additives. Tim hit home this notion: If you’re the author of anything you share online that comes from AI tools, it’s on you to double check sources. It’s part of your responsibility.
AI for All, with Guardrails
A highly notable distinction from August 2023’s Marketers’ Community panel: we’ve moved past prompts and outsourcing that to prompt engineers (Callan). It’s not a role, confirmed Mona. All of us need to get good at AI. One of those aspects is looking at data as the unsung hero, as they do at General Mills with their Mills Chat. The company recognizes the need to unlock data so they can have conversations with it and glean insights (did you know 66% of our data is “dark data” i.e. not accessible because it is in a pdf or other inaccessible format?).
With the embrace of AI, Mona also noted that employees need guardrails when it comes to AI. To this end, their internal teams work closely with cyber security to ensure compliance and balance. Garrio cited a legal firm that extensively uses AI and the transparency around that use; and how sales teams have specific uses for AI that allow them to see and adjust for patterns like objections.
AI on an Up Note
As the panel discussion and audience Q&A wrapped, the consensus seemed to be that if AI’s going to allow us to be more human, as it’s been promised, we need to seek its usage with a human lens of intention. That includes understanding how data you input is being shared. As was suggested: always used a paid version of an AI platform and turn off settings that mine your data and convey one-liners like “make this platform better for everyone.”
Insightful takeaways, many summarized by Marketers’ Community host Laura King, included: AI may bring us back to face to face to determine reality and authenticity; AI can help us understand other human beings more fully; AI can guide me in having a productive / hard conversation with another person; AI can help me with meeting prep and follow up. The experts also say that the average person can only handle 2-3 AI tools before tool and chat fatigue sets in; and we will see consolidation in AI tools so think carefully about which ones you invest time in learning.
On that note, I’m off to bed after AI weaves me a story based on my childhood wildest dreams.
--- Event recap (non AI-generated because I ENJOY the recap writing process!) provided by Jen Veralle of Sparktrack, who covers events so event hosts and attendees can continue the event inspiration beyond the event itself. Find her on LinkedIn @jenveralle or online at sparktrack.com. The summary captures the spirit of sharing and the themes of the event in a quick, digestible way so that attendees can refer to it and take action; it also allows the host to archive what was shared and build on that for future events and use in marketing promotions.
