Set Phasers to Stun: AI is going to change your organization for the better

Our industry was already in a state of flux before AI appeared like a visitor from some distant future. Budgets were shrinking up to 15% year over year, clients were looking for more than ever, and they wanted it at the speed of the internet which is increasingly breakneck.

Agencies are competing with individual creators with big social reach, internal teams and each other, making each new pitch and project more fraught than ever.

Then AI beamed down and no one was quite sure what to think. Is this new visitor an ally or adversary? It seemed like people had one of a few reactions…

1. The Robots are coming to take all our jobs 😬
2. AI is fun but it can’t do X, Y, or Z tasks as well as I can 🙄
3. This is amazing and it will change everything 🤯

But now that we have had time to get to know each other and see the potential and pitfalls that AI offers, the truth is somewhere in the space between. Let’s jump in and break down how AI can accelerate your agency.

Strategy to Insights at Warp Speed

Strategy is a critical part of the process and it’s hard work. Deep-diving into endless data sets, learning about the audience and searching for the right insight to answer the questions the client is asking and your creative team needs to do their work.

It’s a whole thing and it takes time that clients sometimes feel they don’t have or don’t need to spend. Sound familiar?

At Truth Collective, and other agencies we collaborate with, AI has proven to be a valuable strategy timesaver. Helping get to those insights faster, smarter, and without losing a week of sleep in the process.

AI can act as a research assistant, a junior strategist to help interrogate insights and even as a proxy for the audience.

With the right prompts, programs like Chat GPT (and other platforms) can give you instant feedback from simulated digital focus groups allowing for faster insight into your audience and how they may react to your brand. It takes the time-consuming parts of strategy and speeds them up so you can focus on making the bigger, bolder and braver decisions that really matter.

Truth Tip 1:

Share your frameworks, brief templates and other important docs with the AI before you start so it has background and guardrails as you work together. Be mindful of sharing proprietary or sensitive information on open platforms though.

AI Lets Your Team Shine in All the Ways

We all know how talent can get trapped in silos. Your copywriter might be a genius with words but isn’t touching design, and your project manager could have amazing creative ideas, but they’re stuck wrangling spreadsheets and trafficking projects.

Here’s where AI can help break down those walls. It turns your team into multi-disciplinary ninjas, opening doors to creativity and tools that expand the capabilities of your team instantly. Creative Directors can generate custom music, copywriters their own visuals for storyboards and on and on. AI helps your people do more, visualize more, and honestly, enjoy their work more.

I know, you might be thinking, “But isn’t AI going to replace those jobs?” I get it—the fear is real. But the reality? AI doesn’t take away our work, it takes away the mundane parts of our work. It amplifies what we’re good at and gives us room to explore. AI doesn’t remove creativity; it superchargers it.

We have found these tools inspiring our team to explore. We have seen them become commonplace in reducing repetitive tasks and creating exciting new creative outcomes for everyone. This means they are able to be more agile and self-reliant creatives and, as we see the adoption of tools, we systemize them into our daily operations.

Truth Tip 2:

As you start training your team, create assignments that are multi-disciplinary on purpose and have everyone do the same thing. You will get great group learnings and everyone skills up together.

Learn your AI Multiplication Tables

Some clients, for all the right reasons, need many versions of their ads and content. Personalization, customization for the market, different languages, and usually, they need all of the above (and by tomorrow).

Whether you need 50 versions of the same ad with personalized tweaks or visuals and copy that feel uniquely tailored to each market, AI tools can help you deliver.

As an example, we are working on a global brand that needs multilingual content.

Using Eleven Labs we are able to translate one voice into another language or just create AI voice characters that we can use repeatedly. This allows us to maintain the pace and deliver lots of content affordably.

Think of AI like the ultimate production partner. It’s providing new tools to lower the barrier to creating types of content that in the past were prohibitive because of budgets and logistics. Agencies need to be prepared because it won’t be long before we are hearing “Can’t we just do that with AI?” from our clients.

Truth Tip 3:

Explore how you can start to gang up multiple tools at once to create even more efficiencies and opportunities in your work.

Future Shock

Over the last few years there have been some startling and shocking developments in technology with AI being the most consequential of them.

We are all adapting to what these tools can do and just as we start figuring them out more come along. Over the next six months we will see text to video explode on the scene in a big way, Toys R Us raised some eyebrows with their completely AI generated ad and they are not the first and certainly not the last.

For marketers we have to keep in mind that AI tools will continue to come out at a rapid rate and that those we have seen and started using will continue to evolve.

But this is nothing new for us as creatives. We have adapted and learned new software, new tools and new ways of creating brave and impactful work. It’s in our nature.

AI isn’t something to fear or push to the back of your mind, hoping you’ll deal with it “when you have time.” The agencies that embrace it now? They’re not just surviving—they’re thriving. While AI can’t solve the problem we are up against, it can enable us with exciting new tools so that we, the humans behind the creative, have an edge to propel us to new heights.

The marketing world is fast-paced, and clients aren’t slowing down. If anything, they’re speeding up and expecting us to keep up. AI is how you stay ahead of the curve and make sure you’re not just playing defense in this fast-paced industry.

Truth Tip 4:

Look for and experiment with new tools as a part of client projects. Even if the AI output doesn’t make the cut your team will learn something valuable in the process.

Keep in mind we are at the beginning of the beginning of AI tools.

As we all continue to explore AI collectively it is easy to look at what the tools can’t do right now but it is important to remember that these are the worst version of AI and let’s be honest, they already feel like they are straight from an episode of Star Trek. There is a reason why 65% of the careers that Gen Alpa will have have not been invented yet and that is because the profound impact of this visitor from the future has not yet been felt on the world. But we can see it coming.

So here’s our advice: don’t focus on what these tools can’t do. Focus on what they CAN!

Start learning them today. Don’t wait until you feel like you’re behind to start using AI. Play, experiment and let the creative spark that drives us all fan the flames of your curiosity to boldly go where you never thought you could.

Hopefully, you see now that AI isn’t coming to take your job, and it is amazing and will revolutionize the way we all work but the truth is it can’t do it without you.