CMOs have a reputation for being flighty. This view may be a little unfair as Marketing Week showed that the average tenure of a Fortune500 CMO is 4.2 years – not bad. That encouraging stat is tempered by the fact that 1 in 4 CMOs of the same sampled companies have been in position for less than 12 months. With leaders dotting around companies, how can they promise, achieve, or celebrate consistency?
It’s common wisdom that consistency improves marketing. It allows you to build brand assets and trust with your audience. It also has the added benefit of efficiencies in creative and production processes as staff have clarity in what good looks like. A silly example, but valuing consistency over novelty means you can run an advert several years in a row – just as effective but maybe not as attractive for a new CMOtrying to come in and stamp their mark.
Many companies are struggling with AI adoption: the steps needed, where to apply it first, how fast to go etc.. Often, their application is down to a handful of evangelists, or the smart execs who have figured out how to complete tasks quicker but outside the guardrails of their IT policy.
There are massive success stories for AI. Klarna’s rapid adoption of tools for customer service and creative processes has already saved 37% in costs. “Klarna has started to use AI for ideation, image creation and translation efforts to create more personalized campaigns for consumers across its 45 markets” (source). Results like this will mean more marketing teams will either choose or be quietly encouraged to find impactful uses for AI throughout their teams and ways and working.
The next year will see an acceleration of companies looking for their own solutions. In this space, I believe there are two possible futures for how AI will impact consistency.
At this moment in time, there is enormous opportunity but also substantial risk. Countless high quality AI products will be built and introduced to businesses; this is a certainty. My hope is that the people at the top of our industry are not too single-minded about the type of tools they require to grow their business.
If I had one wish related to this topic it would be for CMOs (with the help of their agencies) to leave their teams, processes, and creative cultures in a better position than when they arrived. Not just through their knowledge and leadership but by creating tools and AI frameworks that put greater value on defining and sticking to what’s working. [LB4]
AI will not inherently be better at making our marketing and branding more consistent unless leadership teams train their tools that it is valued by the organisation. The great advantage is that once they are trained you know they are not going to act with emotion or to be self-serving – the CMO will never beat AI on that front.
The good news is that some things don’t change. It will come down to us humans to set the strategy and vision for teams (and now tools) to follow. This is a period of reinvention for everyone in marketing. Old problems will be fixed by new technologies, but only by people willing to redefine how their value is judged.