Is AI Making Brands Lose Their Souls?

Speaker A: Welcome to the Intuitive Customer where we discuss how you can improve your customer experience and your bottom line. And now here are your hosts, award winning influencer and pioneering author of seven books, Colin Shaw and Professor Ryan Hamilton from Emory University.

Speaker B: Welcome everyone. Uh, we have Ben Shaw back again as a guest expert. Ben. Ben is an expert on, um, all things advertising and PR and branding. And so we're always very grateful to have him on the show. Welcome Ben.

Speaker C: Hello Ryan. Lovely to be back again.

Speaker B: So we're going to talk today about something that's very much in your wheelhouse and that I'm very interested in too. Obviously, AI is integrating itself into all aspects of everything. Creative agencies have been at the forefront of all kinds of different types of technological changes and they seem to be embracing this, um, more and more. I know we'll talk about it in greater detail, but uh, Coca Cola recently unapologetically introduced an AI generated ad as part of their super bowl, uh, campaign. And this is like a little bit controversial, like how much of creative should we be willing to turn over to AI? Um, what are the advantages and disadvantages of that? I assume we're not going to come down on a place where it's like, oh well, this is obviously right or obviously wrong. I'm sure that there's a lot of nuance here. Um, but why don't I let you start us off and just framing this question. So as you think about this, as you've talked to folks and read up on this, what is the core of the issue here with how AI is being used in creative?

Speaker C: The opportunity for marketeers is huge because so much of marketeers budget is spent on lavish production and actually more so time. You'd hope that most of the budget is being spent on media to get reach, but it takes so much time and resource to get to a quality place and AI offers the chance to speed all of that up whilst delivering supposedly the same results. The challenge is, I think that despite it potentially delivering that is we are currently in that weird part of the hype cycle around AI where we're starting to really experience some consumer backlash to it. And so it starts to raise a, a whole number of questions which is should you report and should you tell people that you're using AI? If you are using AI, how does that impact their perception? If you don't tell them and then they find out, then what happens? Do people care and have an interest in how it is potentially impacted the economy and people's jobs? Or on the flip side of it, is could it lead to even better creativity that could impact consumers perception of the brand even more. The big challenge I think that in some of the backlash that there's been around the COAD and some of the other examples that we've seen around AI production is asking why really it still feels like it's sometimes a CMOS self image that they're trying to have more of an impact on rather than a better result for the business. And ultimately it should be like any form of communication should be how is this helping the business generate more money? And I don't think anyone's really solved that yet.

Speaker B: To be clear, questions, uh, of ego around branding and communications are not new to AI. I've heard of examples where for instance a new CEO will come in and kill whatever ad campaign is currently running because they need a signature campaign that is, you know, aligns with whatever their vision. And I'm uh, personally of the opinion that a lot of rebranding exercises are not driven by data suggesting that the customers are sick of the old logo, that it's somebody inside the organization who's bored or who wants to make uh, a splash or whatever. So uh, the problem is not new, but AI does introduce a new opportunity for that problem to manifest. Which is, am I introducing AI in here because I'm feeling pressure from, you know, the board or my other bosses or because I want to like be seen as being new and fancy? And where this gets to be dangerous, as you point out, is when it becomes disconnected from delivering value to customers or delivering value in terms of like revenue and profitability and all that kind of stuff.

Speaker C: The first hurdle that marketeers are uh, getting to is does it actually save money? When you look at some of the write ups of how some of the brands are getting to this, I think it was the COCAD got to use tens of thousands of executions of prompts to get to where it's gotten to. So it cut down the time of what a normal production schedule looks like in going through and going out and shooting. But the resource intensity and cost still isn't there. When you think even like even in the world that we're in around token costs and what that actually turns into, there's still a bit of a trap that's going on around that. And then it's the, is this getting to a better impact in storytelling and creativity for the consumer? Which when you see what they managed to do with the codecad, like the headline about it was that it was AI, ah, generated, not that it was an amazing ad Alter.

Speaker B: Can we slow down on that? The university I'm in is in Atlanta. The CEO of Coke actually came and addressed, uh, our students in December. So it was fun to get to listen to him. And this came up and the cost argument was the argument he made. He said we can run or we can generate 10 or 100 or 1000 of these creatives in the same time and cost it would have taken us to do one and therefore just like the net benefit of that. So I have not heard the counter argument that like, well, maybe it's actually not saving you as much money as possible. Can you, can you dig into that more like, where could this go wrong? Just from a pure cost standpoint, there

Speaker C: is a almost tried and trusted way that's been created over the last 50 years of going out and shooting above the line creative that has obviously had a big impact of using computer generated imagery in it as well. Which is the other weird thing that we talk about. There's AI involvement, but everyone's fine. As long as it's a human artist using computers, then that's like, that's a mute conversation. I think the thing that we haven't nailed yet in all of the models is predictability, which is ironic given that's how the models work. Of am I guaranteed that I'm going to get to a good output? And obviously we're now starting to get some masters of the craft of it of each of the different models. But I think that would be my hesitancy of what is the potential cost. But also really, you know, it comes with the same risks as running any potentially bad creative, which is you've invested all of that cash and then are you gonna have to go and run something else or it doesn't have the impact that you want it to have?

Speaker B: I should say that I've played around in AI quite a bit at this point, but I've never, uh. Because I'm not graphically or artistically oriented, I've never used it to create video. It's just not something I've invested time in. But from all of my other uses of AI, I can tell you that no matter how good it is, how amazing it is, it always ends up having to be heavily edited by me before I can end up using it. And I can only assume the similar thing is happening with video AI production. So you can generate lots of spec material and for testing an idea visually it seems like it would be ideal and super fast. But in terms of getting something like production ready, I would assume you're still doing a lot of editing and tinkering on the back end before you run it on the super bowl, for heaven's sakes.

Speaker C: Really, it's just a different way of shooting.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: It's a different production method. And arguably, I think the other big risk is that because of the nature of the production method, it actually gives more opportunity for clients to tinker, uh, with the creative. Rather than lock it, locking down an idea because you've got endless possibilities and can't you just go back and reprompt something? So that's the other thing. I'm fascinated in it. How in a dream of it opening up endless creative opportunities actually does it dull them? Because you've got more opportunity to edit and tinker than before.

Speaker B: That had never even occurred to me. But that's gotta be right. I remember seeing once a, uh, really funny chart that a graphic designer used to price out his work. And it was like, let me do everything myself. And that was the lowest price.

Speaker C: And.

Speaker B: And it was like, let me do everything, uh, myself with your advising. And that was a higher price. And then it keeps going down and down until the most expensive thing was you do all the work. And it hadn't occurred to me. But that, yeah, that's got to be. Because if you don't, you know, if there's some things you don't love about a traditional commercial shoot, like now the client's got to ask themselves, am I willing to pay to, like, get Katy Perry back on set in order to, like, reshoot this?

Speaker C: Or.

Speaker B: And so there's a certain level at which you're like, all right, this is good enough, I'll take it. But for something that's AI generated, you've got to be right about that. That there's endless tinkering that can be involved.

Speaker C: Should we talk about some of the consumer perceptions around it? So I've got some good insight and stats on this, which is one, that consumer negativity towards AI and this is AI involvement in creativity is rising. So it's 12 points higher than it was two years ago. I think as people have started to see a 1, the potential impact on jobs, but also just lots of slop they had like that we are yet to see once you got past the, oh, look, Will Smith can eat spaghetti really well. We are yet to see the amazing creative potential of what it could turn into. And then the other interesting thing I think is in. In our, uh, obsession with the youth and so many marketing brands going after Gen Z. It's actually Gen Z who are the most hostile. So there was an IAB study which said 39 report negative sentiment towards AI ads. And that's nearly double that of millennials. And so there is a. This backlash is then was then compounded, which is 54% of them said that they prefer no AI involvement in creative work at all. And 31% of them said that if they find out that AI is used in brand communications, that it makes them less likely to pick that brand.

Speaker B: And I can see that for all kinds of reasons. I mean, some of it is that the AI generated creative that I've seen, that I've been exposed to, that I'm aware of. It seems to be kind of soulless in a way that I have a hard time putting my finger on it. Exactly. But even as AI has improved and it's amazing, it's gotten so, so good, but it's still. There's something that just kind of feels uncanny valley and off about a lot of it. So I'm sure that's part of it too. Uh, there's also this sense of like, well, if I could do this in my bedroom with my laptop, like, how are you a credible source as a major brand by producing something that may be of similar quality, um, to something anybody else can do. And I think that that may contribute to this as well.

Speaker C: That is one of the biggest factors for me. Which is why what drives negative perceptions, which is it goes back to the old impact of just the fact that a brand, you see a brand take a expensive media spot, signifies that they are of a certain status.

Speaker B: The old Marshall McLuhan, the medium is the message kind of stuff. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker C: But more like more than that is. And you saw it with some of the Apple spots most recently, is there is credibility and value in knowing it costs you something.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: And seeing there was like, for example, one of the other super bowl spots was Manscaper, the um, male body hair brand who used puppetry for hair. And could you tell that it was puppetry? You kind of had to be told it looked like they were puppets. But there is something inherent in knowing the effort that went into it. Into. You're always so much more impressed with stop motion animation through Wallace and Gromit rather than something computer generated. And I think that's the thing in when you go back through the last 30, 40 years of some of the most impressive bright brand communications have been when it's been clear that the brand have believed in something so much that they've invested a huge amount of money into it. To create this epic show, to get that famous person to put on a ridiculous stunt. And when it's obvious that it's not real, then why should I listen and why should I care?

Speaker B: I think that focusing too much on um, the cost side of it is going to really be risky for these brands. I will say that I think that this is where the nuance comes in. We're talking about Apple and Coke and you know, these major brands. And it is kind of shocking for Coke, which is a massive marketing powerhouse, to embrace this so wholly. That seems very risky. Lots and lots of advertising though happens at, outside of kind of the, the major brands. And so if you are a small town furniture retailer advertising in kind of your local channels, I think that this presents a tremendous opportunity for you to really up your game. You know, if you're a startup like all of a sudden there's these huge opportunities where if we look at it just from the perspective of the apples and the Cokes of the world, I think we're, we're maybe not capturing the story of it.

Speaker C: The argument has been very long in the tooth of the value of TV advertising and despite all of the huge growth in digital that we've had in the last 20 years. And the number one reason why people, why marketeers and probably more CFOs are saying no is because of the production cost, because the media cost is you can pull out every study till the cows come home of why it's a good investment, um, and the how you are going to be able to reach large audiences at key moments and do brilliant Brad storytelling. But it's the production cost and risk. And for small businesses that's where there is this prediction. There's going to be an explosion and readoption uh, of TV as a medium, which is local businesses can now go, well, I can create a TV ad really, really cheaply and put all of my investment in media which should then hopefully see a rise potentially in creative and creative opportunity. Because then you've got all of these amazing little businesses who then need some form of input and uh, direction. The challenge is, as we know from most smaller brands and most local advertising is terrible.

Speaker B: The production values can be better because AI is involved, but it doesn't fix the underlying creative problems necessarily.

Speaker C: You know, that's ultimately really where I think the question still comes down to whether it's stop motion animation, whether you're going and shooting something for real, whether you are using computer generation, computer generated imagery or AI. It comes down to taste and creative direction and how do we think that this is going to impact an audience? Because as we know from anyone that's used, uh, an LLM, you can put a business problem into the machine and get it to do everything for you. It can create the marketing brief, it can create creative strategy, it can create creative ideas, and then very soon you can get all the way through to automated output. We are still identifiers of souls. As humans, there's this still a inherent thing about being able to identify what do we think is the right thing. And that's always been the thing I think that is fascinating about the world of trying to make an impact on customers through marketing, which is there's a number of marketing so called laws. But we've got lots of theory now of how we think marketing works. If it was that easy, every brand would be wildly successful. But for some reason most marketing is rubbish and most brands struggle. And I think that is still where, uh, there's such a big impact of great thinkers, great creatives, great marketeers to have a big impact in the world of whatever the world of AI becomes.

Speaker B: A lot of what you're saying in terms of heuristics that we as consumers use. So we're just out here trying to figure out what's best or what's best for us and we're bombarded with all this information and it's effectively impossible to sort through. You just don't have time to go and do all the research. And so we instead rely on a bunch of these simplifying cues, these, these heuristics to help us make those decisions. And as you said earlier, like for a long time, a really effective one is are they running this in an expensive venue? Like if they're, if they're putting this on tv, if they're running it in like major newspapers or magazines, that's a sign that tells me something about the brand. Production value is another one. If this thing like looks really slick and professional and as AI is now blowing a lot of this up, I think brands are going to need to find new ways of communicating that or maybe resist change in order to use old ways to communicate that. But to your point, like if this is effortful, if it was expensive, if it was like kind of the long way of doing it instead of the short way, those could become new heuristics that customers use to identify, like, oh, this is a brand that really cares. This is somebody who's really dedicated, uh, in the same way that, you know, high production values maybe used to be, maybe now High production values are going to be the norm. Like everybody can like turn this stuff out in AI and it all look glossy and great. We still need the cues, we still need some shortcut that we can rely on as customers. It's going to be up to brands to figure out what that is if AI now makes production values table stakes.

Speaker C: And I think we're already starting to see that in one of the big channel shifts in investment is actually more and more brands. And I think this is not just a uh, reflection of what's been happening in AI, but in wider culture of more and more brands investing in experiential and events and trying to do more things in real life because we're starting to have a wider disconnect movement in culture and people valuing the tangible. And so if everyone has access to Hollywood level production values then actually who can put on the best things real, real world things that I see, that I can feel, feel the quality, I can sense, get a sense of the investment.

Speaker B: I'm naturally kind of a doom and gloom person. Uh, if I could offer some help for people who are worried about how this will shake out. We've seen versions of this before on dramatically different scales of course. But I'm old enough to remember a day before everybody had a computer. Everybody had access to a laptop and word processing software. It used to be that you would get information on like what people typewrote, um, so you'd get like, you know, typewritten, mimeographed copies of stuff and it all looked terrible. And if a company came along with something that was actually like laid out and printed in an effective, that was a really strong signal that this company was professional, that they were competent, that they knew. And so it was that difference in design quality that was accessible to some and not others. Along comes the PC. And you know, Apple democratizes a lot of this, um, you know, kind of the graphic design and, and it becomes much, much easier. And now everybody's like elevated their game. Everybody can, can produce documents that look nice and that look professional. Creative still found a way, they found a way to signal like okay, the bar's been raised and everybody's doing this. We were still able to figure out, okay, well these people are clearly investing more into it. They've got more talent, they're more committed. I have confidence that through some pain and stretching we will again come to a place where there will still be these signals of competence and commitment. But yeah, a lot of it's going to be up in the air and I don't know what those new signals will be, but it'll shake out in some way or another.

Speaker C: I think that's the real. The real challenge is right now we are right in that, uh, emerging part, uh, of the hype cycle. I think that you go past that first pin, it's called the Valley of Despair.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: Um, and I think we're just on the way down into that. And with the optimist part of it, uh, to your pessimist part, is that hype cycle then finds out what's its actual role, what's the technology's actual role and huge potential for society. And so as we get through this period where everyone is actually still figuring out how to use this thing, and in reality, AI adoption is incredibly low when you look at all the businesses that could be using it, all of the marketing teams that could be using it. And so it's more what is actually going to happen over the next few years. Because. And it's what I find fascinating is I think the case studies that we will refer to in years to come, uh, are going live as we speak. Um, yeah. And that's where we'll see over the next year, two years work. Oak's decisions. Right. How did that impact the brand over time? How did that impact the business over time? Because at the moment, it's just a production cost exercise rather than one that's really of true effectiveness.

Speaker B: Yeah. It's like that old idiom. May you not live through times of great case studies. Yeah, no, it is. It's massively disruptive and can be scary if you're on the inside of it. But it's a larger version of stuff that we've experienced over and over again as technologies have improved. Do you have any advice for people who are on the outside of this? Maybe people are not working in creative agencies, but who will interact with them or hire them or looking to start doing some of this work for the first time. What are the easy traps to fall into, do you think, for people who are starting to take this on themselves

Speaker C: using AI, I think it's continuing to always concentrate on the primacy of the idea, making sure that you have got the core of the brief sorted, which is what's the intended impact on the consumer?

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: And there's so many things along the way that can go through and deliver, derail that, from the primacy idea to the production quality to where is this living and how is this executed in the world. The best marketeers, the best brand managers I know would go and see or Ask for proof of every out of home site, every billboard spot to see. Do we think that this is relevant context for our brand to be in, or am I just going to trust a media plan which says that there's 170 billboards that this is going to live in? And so understanding and really protecting. Do we think that this is going to have the intended impact on the consumer? But I also think it is something that should be, should be embraced. Like every marketing team should be going in and trying to see can they decrease production costs while maintaining the relevant creative impact. Because I'm sure everyone is being asked to cut costs. Uh, everyone's seen the headline saying this is amazing production, saving on production. And what you should be doing is finding a way to defend that budget to then be able to reinvest in another part of the business that you think is going to have an impact through marketing, rather than it just being the declining impact of marketing because we're the robots are taking over.

Speaker B: The way that I talk to my students about this is the importance of separating strategic decisions from tactical decisions. And I think that AI is as amazing as it is, is just a tool. And that makes it part of your tactical decision making. And so if you, if you don't know who your customer is, if you don't know what is important to them and how they're making decisions, if you don't know how, uh, you're positioning this product or how you're going to communicate effectively, then you can have the slickest production possible and it'll still fail because you can't turn the strategy over to a machine. The final risk, I think, for relying on these AI tools is their natural tendency is towards the most probable outcome. That's how these models work. And so there's this great smooth. As somebody who spends too much time reading student work that was supposedly generated by them and not by an AI, I can tell you AI produces things of a certain level of quality, which is honestly probably above the quality level of most humans and most tasks. But there's a sameness to it. And so if you are relying, turning your creative over to a machine that will produce the same creative outcome for anybody that asks for it, there's a real risk of losing your edge, um, losing what it is that you can uniquely bring to customers, which ultimately is what makes you successful in the marketplace completely.

Speaker C: It's the. Could AI have ever made some of the greatest human masterpieces in history? Probably not, because they are so weird, wonderful and crazy hyperbolizations of, of our own human experience that it definitely couldn't. You think of something like, you know, the most famous ads of the last 30 years. Guinness Surfer, uh, Cadbury's gorilla, Sony balls. Something that was carved out the depths of the human mind. AI currently can't get there. Let's see what happens.

Speaker B: Well, we almost were optimistic there till the, um, end. Thanks for putting the final twist on that, Ben, so that we can be bleak again, which is where I'm most comfortable. Thank you, Ben. That was a lot of fun. Great conversation and we hope we will see everyone back next, uh, time. Cheers.

Speaker A: This has been the Intuitive Customer with Colin Shaw and Professor Ryan Hamilton. But it doesn't end here. Just go to BeyondPhilosophy.com podcast to find all of our shows, access, free tools and resources and subscribe, won't you? That way you'll never miss a show. That's BeyondPhilosophy.com podcasts. We look forward to talking with you next time on the Intuitive Customer.