Anne-Marie Rosser is the CEO of VSA Partners.
To say that AI is top of mind for most business leaders feels like an understatement. A recent IBM study found that the global AI adoption rate was 35% in 2022. And in Q3 2023, the term “AI” was uttered an average of 3.7 times per S&P 500 analyst call—more than double the previous quarter.
There’s a definite edge of panic to the excitement as companies jockey to showcase they’re incorporating the new tech into their operations and leaders scramble to forecast AI’s impact on their business. Meanwhile, pundits surround them, proclaiming that AI is either the next renaissance or the end of the world.
If you’re a business leader struggling to find your place in the AI discourse, my advice is this: Look to your marketing agency. Here’s why.
Agencies are used to helping businesses work through thorny problems, like cultural shifts, internal reorgs, M&As, new patterns and trends, and a constant drive toward growth. Clients come to them to get ahead or stay ahead, and a big part of that has always been figuring out how to leverage new technologies for a competitive advantage.
Agencies also have a unique finger on the cultural pulse, as they consistently work with different clients in different industries with different perspectives. This gives them a rare ecosystem of use cases, research and conversations that they can dissect and learn from.
As my own agency begins to help our clients create and implement AI strategies, there are four key pieces of advice that keep rising to the top. Here’s what we’ve been telling our clients:
It’s OK to be a cautious adopter.
I’ve been seeing a lot of talk about how if your business doesn’t get into AI right now, you’re going to miss the boat and never get this chance back.
In the words of my colleague, “That’s not how technology works.” In fact, many successful businesses have found their way into emerging technologies by waiting until they stabilize, researching what people like and don’t like about their uses, and capitalizing on that experience to turn out superior products.
Plus, there are still a lot of things, from copyright laws to data protection, that don’t have the guardrails companies need to manage risk in AI adoption.
It’s OK to adopt AI in a way that makes sense for your business. If that means taking huge leaps because risk is in your DNA, great. If that means hanging back and watching what works and what doesn’t before investing, also great. Let your purpose—not the hype—drive your decision-making.
There is no true AI expert.
AI is evolving and shifting so quickly that even if you were an expert yesterday, there are probably 12 things you don’t know about it today.
I say this to warn my clients away from grifters and false promises, but also to encourage them that—to the point above—there’s always time to level up your knowledge and your operations.
Keep your ears and eyes open about current practices around AI. Talk to outside consultants and others in your field. This is an emerging technology—no one has all the answers, and your own experience and understanding of your industry is a valuable addition to uncovering AI’s capabilities.
The power of AI is human insights.
Generative AI is a parlor trick. It’s a good one, but it covers up the real potential of today’s AI: harnessing and making sense of data at a speed and scale we haven’t seen before.
We think of AI right now as having three S’s: synthesis, speed and scale.
Together, these three capabilities can test hypotheses and prove them right or wrong at lightning speed across huge sets of data. There’s a real chance to use these capabilities to create a better human experience for your customers. It’s the epitome of great design—tangible solutions driven by real insights.
But currently, AI is limited by the data that it’s synthesizing. Companies cannot rely on externally held platforms to sort through their proprietary information. The real value of AI will be when companies can harness it for their own data and get to insights faster.
The idea still matters.
I’m not saying this out of defensiveness. My agency has been around for 40 years. There have been sweeping changes during those decades that have indeed rocked our industry, which is why I’m confident that human creativity will always be relevant, differentiating and the difference between good and great.
We’ve been here before. Tools that increase the efficiency of creatives are nothing new. Ultimately, AI is another collaborative tool, harnessed by people—not a new player or employee replacement.
Generative AI tools still need the prompt, or the creative spark. Designers might soon be using prompts instead of trackpads, but it’s the vision—not the execution—that ultimately creates great design.
Furthermore, generative AI might actually make the creative idea even more important than it was before. AI allows for content to be produced and delivered at a speed and level of accuracy as yet unseen in marketing. In other words, it’s about to get really loud out there. I believe that having a breakthrough idea will become even more important. AI shows you what it thinks you expect. But the magic—what we call Moments of Impact™—comes when you’re shown the unexpected.
So how will AI change your business? It’s hard to say definitively, but what we do know is that humans are very good at imagining extremes. The AI discourse capitalizes on this. The real outcomes, for humanity and for businesses, likely lie somewhere between chaos and utopia. AI is a tool, albeit a powerful one. When we stop fearing it or putting it on a pedestal, we can see it for what it truly is—and get to work finding out what it, and we, can do.
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