Marketing and GenAI: a mutual merger, or hostile takeover?

Generative AI is rapidly becoming part of everyday marketing — but is that a good thing? Professor Ekant Veer, award winning researcher and programme coordinator for our online Postgraduate Certificate in Digital Marketing, shares his thoughts on the opportunities and risks of AI, and why smart marketers should be both curious and cautious. 

Yes, let’s not deny it, generative AI (GenAI) has made a lot of our lives easier. I don’t know about you, but writer's block hits me from time to time especially when trying to meet a brief that's particularly complex. Then I look over at my browser and see ChatGPT open ready to help… ready to write that content and probably be done in a fraction of a second.

Then I could get onto other things it can’t do, like chat with my friends or keep my Wordle streak alive (seriously, I’ve never used ChatGPT for Wordle and now I’m thinking I should try it!).
 

AI is powerful and definitely has its uses

The temptation to speed things up and make our lives easier with GenAI is alluring and rightly so. It can generate a ton of ideas very quickly, and those ideas can feel hyper-efficient.

But at what point do you become a marketer who uses AI to improve your work versus a prompt engineer who can just get the most out of a tool? How valuable are you if you don’t add value beyond what a bot can provide?

Daily, we're hearing about new ChatBots, AI tutors, and even AI therapists that are being developed. All these ways that we’d normally have to rely on an expert to help solve our problems (sometimes at great expense) are now becoming available through AI — but how reliant are we becoming?

I remember when I was at uni wishing I had a better tutor — we always want something that is more suited to us, and so GenAI models can feel like a perfect solution. Sometimes, they are.
 

But relying on AI alone can make you vulnerable 
 

I’m not going to advocate that humans should be employed to carry out every task — that’s what technology is for, it’s there to improve what we do. But an overuse to point of reliance on AI devalues you and suggests to others that you are replaceable.

For me, the best use of AI in marketing is that stress testing space where AI can act as an adversary to suggest improvements to your ideas — it can force you to see multiple perspectives and perhaps even your own biases you may have brought into your work. GenAI can be trained as a content writer and you can copy and paste that straight into your feed, but most of us, these days, can spot an AI-generated post easily.

Use AI to enhance your skills not replace you

Taking your ideas and iteratively improving it, as if GenAI were a critical advocate with access to a huge amount of information, can now bring your work to the next level. It can ensure that you’ve explored a number of new possibilities for enhancing a small content post, all the way through to a full campaign strategy. But to start with AI and not develop it further makes you vulnerable.

We don’t offer a ‘how to use AI in marketing’ module at UC — both on-campus and online. It’s a purposeful move because we want learners not to rely on AI. We do show learners different tools and explain how AI is developed, its limitations and how to appropriately use it in marketing.

Indeed, I tell my learners in marketing that they must use AI to pass their course/ qualification. But, I urge marketers to use AI to enhance, not replace your ability.

Use GenAI to build your knowledge and refine your ideas. And then demonstrate your value back to your colleagues and clients by appropriately applying AI tools to your work.

Looking for more ways to upskill your marketing practice? Explore our online Postgraduate Certificate in Digital Marketing.