Angus Certified #024
The art (and science) of marketing technology and AI.
Hey there.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is everywhere. It isn’t new as an industry or technological advancement, but has exploded into the mainstream thanks to ChatGPT and other generative AI platforms that we can all access and use.
Almost every tech company I have helped over the last decade has used AI to some degree, whether or not they knew it, and whether or not they chose to market it. But that has changed over the past few years, with AI becoming front and center of marketing, press releases, and communications strategies across many industries.
AI is still a buzzword (buzzphrase?) in the sense that a lot of people talk about it and a lot of companies use it in their marketing without really fully understanding or explaining the how or why.
Every time I see AI used in a marketing setting, I dig deeper. Sometimes the usage is legitimate. Sometimes it is not. Most of the time, it is in the murky middle. So let’s take a look at marketing technology* (in general), and marketing AI (more specifically).
*I am referring to the marketing of technology, not technology built to help with marketing.
First up? Definition time.
From the technology OG Marc Andreessen:
First, a short description of what AI is: The application of mathematics and software code to teach computers how to understand, synthesize, and generate knowledge in ways similar to how people do it. AI is a computer program like any other – it runs, takes input, processes, and generates output. AI’s output is useful across a wide range of fields, ranging from coding to medicine to law to the creative arts. It is owned by people and controlled by people, like any other technology.
A bit wordy, but overall a great place to start. I wanted to kick off the rest of the newsletter by sharing one of my marketing maxims:
The more complex the technology, the simpler the marketing needs to be.
In the case of AI, a lot of it is still quite complicated, and companies are marketing it wrong.
Let’s get to it.
Jeff
Developing a better understanding of AI
If you aren’t familiar with Benedict Evans, he is well-regarded in startup and technology circles (I’d imagine the correlation between people named Benedict and intellectual fortitude is quite high).
This interview is worth reading in its entirety, but I wanted to pull out parts of it to help frame up today’s discussion on marketing AI and technology.
This [AI] looks like a platform shift. The tech industry has a platform shift sort of every 10 to 15 years. We went from the PC to the web, and then we went from the web to smartphones. And now we go to generative AI.
His description of AI as a platform shift makes total sense. The layman comparison I most often use is the internet. For the first few years of the internet’s initial boom (the late 1990s when I was staying up late watching WWF Raw on Monday night), companies had to clarify and qualify that they were “internet companies.” It was the same with everybody talking about their “app” or “platform” in the early 2010s. The “new thing” eventually becomes standard and fades into the background.
Right now, that is AI.
In a few years, AI will be so pervasive that it will be redundant for companies to refer to themselves as AI companies. It will be assumed. But until then, marketing and communications needs to help bridge the gap between technology/company and customer/public. And, again, I don’t think many companies are doing it well.
At its core, marketing is about either a) creating value or b) showing/sharing value that is already there.
Good marketing is always benefits over features.
But technology (and AI) often makes it so hard, and in some cases, impossible, for companies to escape out of the feature quicksand: look at us, check out our latest feature, look how fast we do this thing. AI gives us more technology-rich features to talk about without doing the critical work of asking: why does it matter?
Back to AI as a platform shift.
That’s the obvious, early thing, but it’s a bit like printing out your emails — you take the new tool and you force it to fit existing tasks. Then, over time, you work out how we actually change the way in work in order to reflect that this thing exists.
Early usage of any technology is always clunky at the beginning.
‘AI is anything that hasn’t been done yet’. People absolutely were thinking about databases in the 70s and early 80s as a sort of artificial intelligence. That’s what Tron is about. It’s just a database. Now you look at it like, ‘What are you talking about? It’s an ERP.’ When you do expenses, you don’t say, ‘I’m going to ask the AI if it will pay my money back’. So, by default, that’s what this will look like in 10 years time as well.
AI is anything that hasn’t been done yet. I love that.
We are still in a place where AI will be marketed and communicated to us by companies using it. But it won’t always be this way. Eventually, we will get to this place:
When you use your phone, the fact that every photograph you take is perfectly in focus and perfectly balanced is AI. But you don’t think of that as AI. That’s just a camera. And the fact that you can type in a word in the search of Apple Photos and Google Photos, and it will find a book in the background of a photo you took 15 years ago. Ten years ago, that was science fiction. Now, it’s just software. So by default, that’s what will happen. It will just be software. Unless, of course, it goes to AGI and kills us all.
AGI (not to be confused with the green swamp water known as AG1) refers to a “hypothetical type of intelligent agent.” Essentially the robots from I, Robot, or Dwight Schrute’s greatest fear.
I’m optimistic enough to think that AI won’t kill us all, and pessimistic enough to think that if it does, the world will probably have destroyed itself anyway.
A company using AI in a novel way: Durable
I’ve been following this company for a while, and not just because they are Canadian: Durable. They announced an $18 million (CAD) Series A round at the end of 2023, and are using AI in a very obvious and valuable way: customizing and streamlining website creation.
I would be reluctant to suggest that the world needs any more websites, but one of the use cases of AI as a marketer I am most interested in is the hyper-personalization of websites, ads, and a brand’s overall digital experience (think Minority Report when Tom Cruise is walking through the mall with his new set of eyes and retinas).
Durable seems to be taking a land-and-expand approach, with their eye well beyond just websites:
In the next year, Clift hopes to build out “step three” of the Durable product, which he described as “full automation.” This means when users turn it on, the platform will be automatically optimizing the entire business in the background, including making updates to the website, updating blog posts, creating marketing campaigns, getting new leads, and more.
How good does that sound? This is where the product will have to do the heavy lifting, and the marketing needs to focus more on the benefit (time savings for more strategic and creative work and business development/growth), and less on the “how it works.”
AI will… save the world?
Marc Andreessen’s (referenced earlier) magnum opus on AI was widely shared when he published it last June.
The stakes here are high. The opportunities are profound. AI is quite possibly the most important – and best – thing our civilization has ever created, certainly on par with electricity and microchips, and probably beyond those.
He goes through the pros and cons of AI, and debunks/addresses all of the major concerns that have been expressed about AI (will it ruin society, take our jobs, lead to greater inequality, and so on).
His end recommendation is to establish closer public and private collaboration to ensure that the West (in his case, the US because America #1 and all of that) goes full speed ahead to achieve AI dominance before China/others do. This is a great read to understand more of an optimist’s viewpoint on the role AI might play in improving society and elevating humanity.
Indulgence innovation vs. abundance innovation
You can probably guess what indulgence innovation is compared to abundance innovation.
When indulgence innovation is thriving, we spend more time glued to remote devices gaming, gambling, scrolling, and buying crap that we don’t need. We spend less time exercising, solving important problems, and connecting with others. For example, Facebook’s creation of the infinite scroll was an example of indulgence innovation. Some people and companies made lots of money from it. But society is arguably worse off because of it.
This is a lot of the AI that the average person is using/interacting with right now.
When abundance innovation is thriving you feel it in the areas of your life that you seriously depend on. Healthcare is faster and better. Highways, schools and bridges are built faster, with less money, less corruption, and fewer people. Insurance claims are processed faster. The world transitions quickly from vehicles and infrastructure that’s dirty and inefficient to infrastructure which is faster and cleaner.
This is where the excitement should lie. Healthcare. Climate. Education. AI to scale, augment, and personalize what we already know to work. In terms of marketing, these are the companies that deserve the very best work. And it isn’t about AI, but simply about more value and better benefits.
The inverse relationship of tech complexity and marketing simplicity
Let’s bring it back to marketing now.
We have a few years left where AI is going to be a heavily used buzzword, so let’s make the most of it.
If your company isn’t using AI, don’t stretch the truth. If your company is using AI, but in a standard way, don’t lean on it. It will just add fluff to your core proposition and positioning. And if your company is using AI in a new/novel/exciting way, use it with conviction and consistency. And with clear, concise language that your customers, investors, and the general public (whether you sell to them or not) can understand.
Thanks for reading.
Jeff