Marketing seems fun and all at first glance, doesn’t it? You’re not necessarily tasked with the same monotonous technical affairs that someone in the accounts department is dealing with regularly. What you’re supposed to be doing instead is pouring all your creative shenanigans into cooking your respective brand’s perceived identity, creating all the quirky promotional materials riddled with subtle tongue-n-cheek gags (time and place!), setting the tone of your company’s communication and PR which is perhaps glorified roleplaying to some extent even. With all this, a marketer’s job seems like a walk in the park that even brings a buck in the bank, right? Yeah, perhaps, with rose-tinted glasses. Marketing isn’t all sunshine and hay day, it is a fairly systematic process that requires extensive market research to construct a foolproof (can’t always guarantee) plan that’s going to create a sense of value within target consumers for the offered products and services. Or if we put it with a blunt smug on our faces, marketing is what we do to make things sell well. So, that makes it quite clear that a marketer’s job is no joke but rather puts a huge pressure on their backs because they have the responsibility to create a bridge between the brand and the consumers. Your brand can be top of the game when it comes to products or services offered but that can remain fruitless if your marketers fail to reach the customers. The demand put on marketing for being responsible for half the success (some would argue that it’s full) of a brand is immense and that prompts us to utilize all the help we can get to make it as effective as possible.
Speaking of prompts, enter AI, short for Artificial Intelligence. I don’t need to write an entire para to walk you through “Whats-an-AI?” because you’re most likely living the storm it took the world by in the last few years. I may add that I do not advocate for “AI will replace marketers just like flying cars did to ground wheelers (right?)”. I also am not up for telling you to make a lock-stock and barrel shift towards AI putting behind your manual roots (you’re the AI at that point). Instead, let’s take a breather and discuss 2 ways you can integrate A.I to your arsenal and take its full advantage to tweak and twist your branding endeavor while not coming off as a soulless hack. Anyway, let’s just hop right in.
It is not You VS AI, It is You & AI:
Take it with a grain of honesty, AI isn’t something you’re supposed to butt heads with. It’s been developed by humans, for humans. No carpenter looks at a great tool and says, “Nah, not fancying that, hate it with every fiber of my body.” and as a marketer, you shouldn’t either. Rather, you could use AI to enhance efficiency and maximize output. A lot can be yapped to support this claim but let’s just soar through a story instead for a better understanding:
Sydney is a passionate gamer and that love for gaming ultimately inspired her to throw some darts out at game development. After 2-3 years of playing around, she managed to develop a puzzle game that also happens to have an engaging detective story filled with lively and adorable characters. She named the game “The Many Cases of Mrs. Sally Smartypants” and opted for Steam and Epic Games Store to publish the game there for PC Platforms with planned console releases later down the line. However, she now had a gigantic task at hand and that was to market the game to the world. At first, she only opened an X account posting small updates on the release of the game. Traffic and interest were fairly low even after 2 paid boosts therefore she felt a little bit concerned and demotivated. However, she was quick-witted and didn’t take long to formulate a plan to implement AI to get the best out of her promotional efforts after reading about it from veteran indie devs who started out just like her.
She used an AI-based text program where she would describe some aspects of the game such as gameplay mechanics, storyline, the beautiful art style, etc. and the program would suggest compelling ways to rearrange and rephrase those for better delivery. Sydney went on to use this program to produce content for her Steam community, social media, and dedicated dev blog.
She took the help of an AI-powered social media analytics tool to find out the best trends among puzzle and story-driven gamers alongside finding out the best times to make her posts for maximum engagement. This research ultimately helped aided her success in capturing potential buyers’ attention and even prompted some to Wishlist or even pre-order the game on Steam and Epic Games Store.
She also implemented an AI chatbot to her game website that used machine learning and natural language to answer questions from interested gamers from everywhere around the world at any given time. She even trained the chatbot to offer free mini text-based puzzle levels with consumers as a promotional spin-off for the actual game.
In the end, all of these efforts paid off as Sydney managed to convert a decent portion of her Wishlist to actual game sales. Some sales also derived from Steam keys directly via her website, helping her retain full revenue on several copies of the game. Her first game’s moderate success helped her cement a reasonable reputation in the games industry and now she is working alongside Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft to release the game on consoles very soon. Pssst, a little secret, she is also working on a sequel to “The Many Cases of Mrs. Sally Smartypants” which is set to be bigger in scale and ambition.
To this day, she still feels grateful for deciding to integrate the help of AI in her promotion of the game. She even consults and helps out first-time game developers with using AI to market video games quite regularly on Twitch and YouTube channel.
The story might be fictional written for the sake of this article but it is fairly down to earth because of how significant this is in terms of real life. I believe the story gave you a good kick-off about adapting AI to your marketing needs no matter which industry you are in. The principles and advice all remain the same, the rest is the blend of your creativity and skills to chunk out the best 360 marketing campaign.
Hit a roadblock? AI with the clearance!
It’s not wildly uncommon for you to hit a roadblock or a ‘creative block’ when you are tasked with developing a branding plan for any product. Your boss asked you for a Coffee brand logo and a catchy tagline to go with it and the creative senses are simply not landing. You can’t go beyond vector images of coffee mugs and beans and the snappy tagline you wanted feels dry and mundane. You can’t always estimate the enormity of developing a brand image for a product until you undertake it so occurrences like this are expected. Well then, let me call dibs on it, you can use AI to help you abolish the roadblock and hit the road running with every ounce of creativity you have tucked in to conduct brand development in the best way possible.
We don’t need to necessarily narrate yet another story with AI coming to save the day but let’s just build upon that Coffee brand example. Suppose you need to construct an eye-catching brand image that speaks volumes for your newly launched coffee brand with a very local feel. You conduct a study based on your area and its significance to coffee culture. You have got the gist of what you want the logo to be but can’t quite put pen to paper. This is where you can get AI to provide some nice crosses for you to tap in. You know what, let’s go in real-time. I asked the popular AI program named ChatGPT (3.5 version) to help me create a logo for my Coffee brand and let’s see how it turns out!
I told ChatGPT 3.5 “I want to make a logo for a coffee brand based in Milan, Italy, and want it to look unique and have a very local feel. Give me some ideas.” and it didn’t disappoint. Here are some of the key takeaways I could use to make the logo after being hit with a block for so long:
- Incorporate the iconic skyline of Milan alongside landmarks such as the Duomo di Milano or the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II. This instantly connects the brand to its local roots and creates a recognizable symbol for customers.
- Design a coffee cup or coffee bean graphic using the colors of the Italian flag (green, white, and red).
- Use typography inspired by Italian art and design movements such as Renaissance or Art Deco.
- Depict a cozy street scene inspired by the charming cafes and cobblestone streets of Milan.
ChatGPT gave me 4 simple ideas that I can use as a reference and get to designing the logo right away with my brand of touch! Now let’s move on to some taglines. I just told ChatGPT 3.5 “Give me some taglines for the brand.” and here are the results:
- Sip into Milanese Magic
- Where Coffee Meets Milano
- Crafted with Love, Inspired by Milan
- From Milan with Love, in Every Cup
- Caffeinate Your Day, Milanese Way
Now, let’s blend these and come up with one exquisite tagline. It is going to be subjective, naturally. I came up with “Brews like None, the Magic of Milan”. That was yet another example of how you can sit down and elevate your work speed by letting AI tag along with you while keeping things fresh and fairly original, and most importantly, potentially effective for consumers.
Trust me, AI really isn’t limited to just the few perks I’ve mentioned above. I can certainly say and you can safely assume that it is well beyond that. It isn’t simple nor would it be productive for me to delve into all that AI can offer (not like I can) so let’s take it one (or two?) at a time. So, that would be quite it for 2 ways you can implement AI into your marketing routine to help it progress more smoothly and iron out the antics that keep you off your best. I am not the best with promises but making one would probably push me more, I’ll be back with discussing more ways AI can assist you with several tasks (be it fertile or fun) and subsequently try not to make it monotonous. Until then, farewell folks!
