Get out of the SHALLOW end

Another week splashing around in AI speculation, this time on brand strategy.

I went to a webinar on ‘How to use AI for strategy’ by Julian Cole.

Dropped in and out of Jacob Cass’s Brand Builders Summit, where AI dominated every session I watched.

And got some facts about how people are using ChatGPT, courtesy of OpenAI and Harvard.

I also caught Ray Poynter’s talk on his research into AI usage by insight people.

Don’t know how I found time to do any work.

Julian’s webinar had plenty of tips on using AI for strategy in a comms context. He talked a lot about the risks - surface-level responses, generic answers, still needing qual and quant validation.    

But basically he’s a believer. With the right prompts and the right frameworks, AI is an invaluable partner.

The slot that stood out on Jacob’s Brand Builders Summit was the Q&A with Marty Neumeier and Andy Starr. They were a lot more skeptical about AI for brand strategy and each came up with a killer quote.

Marty: “I think practitioners are taking too many shortcuts. And brand building takes mastery, and mastery takes work. So if you're trying to avoid the work, it's probably going to lead you on the wrong path."

Andy: “It seems like people want to think a lot less. They're much more inclined to copy someone else's shit, repackage and regurgitate it. And then when they expect things to change and they don't, there's kind of like a panic hunt for cheat codes and shortcuts that don't actually exist.”

So, risk and reward, as ever. The reward is an accelerated process. The risk is strategy slop.

The Chat GPT user data analysed by OpenAI and Harvard shows how people in general are using this new trillion-dollar toy. 70% of it isn’t for work at all and much of that is an upgraded web search.

The work usage skews heavily towards writing assistance, editing your words rather than initiating them. Overall, people are seeing ChatGPT as an advisor or assistant.

Which was the same conclusion Ray reached in his research among insight people:

“The dominant expectation is that AI will speed up, streamline and lower the cost of research while shifting human effort towards higher-order synthesis and storytelling.”

As a matter of fact, I’ve always thought of myself as a synthesiser. It’s one of the ways to convince clients they can’t do all this on their own.

It’s also what you learn from using LLMs. They’re about existing patterns that gravitate towards common responses. So the real risk of letting AI take the lead is being led to commodification.

But after all that, is there one big lesson emerging for using AI on brand strategy?

It has to be to get out of the shallow end.

I’ve used this metaphor before, but last time (here) it was in the context of Mental Availability reductionists. The message then was to take on board what they were saying about salience and codes but keep on swimming in the deep end, in search of motivation and meaning.

At the heart of that post was Bill Bernbach’s genius quote: “It took millions of years for man’s instincts to develop. It will take millions more for them to even vary. It is fashionable to talk about changing man. A communicator must be concerned with unchanging man, with his obsessive drive to survive, to be admired, to succeed, to love, to take care of his own.”

Of course, the challenge for brands is to stay relevant as the world changes. I’ve always believed the best way to do that is to focus on one unchanging need. And deciding which one, as Marty says, takes mastery.

So when it comes to AI, be its master.

That means diving deep. But if you take the plunge, AI will follow.