In an exclusive interview with Manuel Denoual, General Manager of NP Digital Singapore, we explore the dynamic world of Generative AI and its profound impact on the advertising industry. Denoual, a seasoned expert in digital marketing, shares his valuable insights on how Generative AI is reshaping business workflows, enhancing campaign quality, and influencing creative authenticity. This insightful discussion offers a deep dive into the strategies businesses can employ to harness the power of AI while preserving the essential human touch in their marketing campaigns.
1. In your view, how is Generative AI transforming the landscape of advertising and business workflows, especially for companies without extensive creative staff?
Business workflows
While AI has already been implemented and used by the creative industry, Generative AI is disruptive and revolutionary for the following reasons:
● In contrast to normal AI which addresses tasks within predefined parameters, Generative AI focuses on generating new ideas and content via machine learning to learn patterns and generate new data. Generative AI is therefore ‘creative’ – it has the ability to produce diverse outputs and can adapt to different scenarios via user prompts, and is often used for tasks such as image creation, text generation, etc.
● Creatives can create engaging content faster and more efficiently with Generative AI. Productivity is also improved as repetitive tasks are automated, freeing up time and resources to enable creatives to pursue tasks that demand human input and attention.
Transforming the landscape of advertising
While most people associate Generative AI with content generation, it can be used to optimise advertising in the following ways:
Generative AI can be used to create content at scale by automating the writing, generation, and video creation processes. It can also be used in lead generation, engagement, conversion, SEO optimisation and gaining insights into customers, enabling more targeted and personalised marketing campaigns.
One of the more exciting areas for creatives involves leveraging Generative AI predictive analytics to forecast future outcomes based on pre-existing data. Creatives can now better predict customer behaviour, identify potential leads, and optimise strategies to achieve the best possible outcomes in a campaign.
The impact of Generative AI is particularly significant in the realms of SEO and SEM. On May 25, 2023, Google introduced Search Labs, integrating Generative AI into users’ search experiences. The resulting Search Generative Experiences (SGE) mark a fundamental shift in how consumers engage with SEO and SEM. Brands need to take note of these changes to distinguish themselves in the ever-evolving marketing landscape.
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While we still don’t exactly know how ad placements or Generative AI optimisation will work, one thing’s for certain – having rich and relevant crawlable content will be the key to standing out in the Generative AI era. The key to this lies in the personalisation and localisation of content. The increase in globalisation, changing consumer preferences, and advancements in technology have made it essential for brands to localise their approach to connect with diverse audiences, navigate cultural nuances, and deliver highly personalised experiences.
On SEO/SEM specifically
We can anticipate generative AI to significantly impact how search marketing, both organic and paid, will evolve in the next few months.
1. Organic traffic will shrink: SGE has been built to provide the most adequate answer to any query in real time and this without any need for the user to visit a particular website. As such, even if we do foresee search to continue being one of the top drivers of discoverability and traffic in the near future, the value of owning the No. 1 spot in the SERPs might have to be reconsidered.
2. Digital PR has a bright future: We recommend companies to look beyond their own website for opportunities to get as many top-ranking pages talking about their products as possible. Establishing relationships with authoritative websites which already rank well on their target keywords will pay off in the SGE paradigm.
3. Content will remain king: More than ever before the relevance and quality of content will make or break success on search engines. Companies will need to deliver value and information over and above what they’re able to provide or else nobody will have any incentive to read your content and be picked up by the AI.
4. Diversifying channels selection: The rise of generative AI is changing behaviours beyond the search realm. We suggest companies thoroughly analyse where their audiences are spending their time and consuming content and adapt their strategy accordingly. Given the difficulty in measuring ROI on new platforms, prioritise a test-and-learn approach.
2. As Generative AI becomes more prevalent in the creative industry, what strategies can businesses employ to maintain the human touch and authenticity in their marketing campaigns?
In today’s marketing landscape, hyper-personalisation is the key for businesses to win over their target audiences. Generative AI allows businesses to implement personalisation on a large scale, resulting in enhanced customer engagement, and satisfaction, enabling business expansion through its ability to analyse vast amounts of customer data, such as demographics, purchase behaviour, browsing history, social media interactions, etc. Through this, businesses can create marketing campaigns that are highly personalised and resonate with their customers, with product recommendations and offers that are tailored to an individual, creating highly personalised marketing messages that resonate with each customer.
In APAC, for example, a study that came out in April found that consumers crave experiences that are personalised. 91% of those surveyed prefer companies that offer personalised experiences. This is important as consumers are increasingly dissatisfied with inconsistent digital experiences. With the amount of content widely available, it is paramount that brands offer personalised experiences that resonate with their target audience.
Also as mentioned earlier, Generative AI can be leveraged to create content at scale. This is done by automating workflows via analysing the vast quantity of consumer data to generate content that is highly personalised, e.g. social media captions, email subject lines, and specific tailored content, thus reducing workload. Generative AI also enables the creation of virtual assistants or chatbots that are capable of delivering personalised and contextually relevant content when interacting with a customer by having the ability to comprehend customer preferences, offer real-time recommendations, and guide purchase decisions, thus improving customer satisfaction, potentially enhancing conversion rates.
There is no doubt AI is revolutionising the content creation process and is opening new opportunities for companies to talk about their products and describe them in a compelling manner to their target audiences. The possibilities are literally endless (in terms of hyper-personalisation for example) and probably far beyond what we can currently imagine. As such it is fair to expect AI to become a critical tool in every creative team’s arsenal and for all the good reasons.
However, as long as companies are looking to get actual human beings to buy their products or subscribe to their services, the expectations from these same human beings will be that the content they are exposed to sounds authentic and sincere. “Humanizing” AI-generated content is the only way it will make a lasting impact on its readers and create a desire or an action.. Think about the most famous taglines created over the years such as “just do it” or “think different”. Could they have been created by AI? Probably not. Let me correct myself, probably not yet.
3. How do you think consumers will react to the increasing use of AI in marketing, considering the growing demand for brand authenticity?
Authenticity is one of the most important things that consumers value in addition to highly personalised content. They want brands to represent their values and beliefs. The content that Generative AI creates is only as good as the data it is trained upon, and it doesn’t have self-awareness and consciousness like humans have. Generative AI can potentially create content that is inaccurate, biassed, and harmful. Worst of all, it can plagiarise content that is already copyrighted. Therefore, businesses must monitor and validate the content produced by Generative AI to ensure authenticity.
We do not foresee any major pushback from consumers on the use of AI as long as it creates value for them (in the form of hyper-personalised content for example) and is done in an ethical way. Marketers have long been looking for ways to enhance their capacity to execute their marketing campaigns at scale and deliver their message to their target audiences in real time wherever they are. This is not new.
Freelancers have long been providing support to companies looking to outsource part of their work (creation of creative assets, translation of content etc.) in a cost-efficient way. AI is the latest tool made at the marketers’ disposal to achieve their goals.
4. What are your thoughts on preventing over-reliance on AI-generated content to ensure campaigns remain original and inspiring?
We suggest companies to thoughtfully and carefully define the areas AI can add the most value to their marketing efforts and communicate transparently about it internally. This groundwork should be a collaborative one and should involve all departments, even those who aren’t directly benefiting from the use of AI. This approach would ensure the whole company is aware of how AI is used, understand its purpose, get adequate training and allow for strict guardrails to be put in place. This is an important step that each company should prioritise ahead of jumping on the AI bandwagon.
5. Could you share some best practices for businesses to effectively integrate Generative AI tools while ensuring campaign originality and creativity?
- Ensure that the context, tone, target audience, and goals are precise and accurate when inputting a prompt to ensure the Generative AI captures all essential elements. Go through several integrations to ensure that the output is accurate and refine the prompts where necessary.
2. Only use Generative AI in tasks such as drafting, note-taking, idea generation, and research. Thoroughly scrutinise all AI-generated content before publication to rectify any errors. Employ plagiarism checkers to ensure content is ‘original’ and avoid publishing AI content verbatim without editing first.
3. View Generative AI as a collaborative tool rather than a replacement. Capitalise on its strengths while addressing its limitations. Continuously train the AI by providing examples of high-quality, on-brand content. Monitor content marketing metrics to gauge the impact of AI-generated content and refine approaches as needed.
4. Businesses can also leverage the opportunity of commanding a premium on human-made content by implementing a watermark: With Generative AI content becoming commonplace, there will be a growing demand for human-generated content. The creative industries can leverage this demand by creating content that utilises social and cultural context heavily. Cultural contexts are currently too nuanced for generative algorithms to understand, and using them can create a sense of familiarity and personalisation which leads to an increased sense of trust. Watermarks can also be implemented to help consumers differentiate between AI and non-AI content.
All the above will obviously require upskilling marketing/creative teams and whole departments on the use of AI and its implications in a business context. This will take time and the adoption of AI will likely face friction (I personally know several companies which are currently banning the use of ChatGPT for example). We recommend not to overlook this step even if it means delaying the use of AI by a few months.
6. Given that AI is not infallible, what are the key areas where human oversight is crucial to ensure the quality and effectiveness of AI-generated content?
Generative AI may make mistakes due to outdated and/or biassed datasets and learning models.
Having a human in the loop is thus needed to prevent the following:
● Factual errors
● Plagiarism
● Formulaic & repetitive content (Lack of authenticity)
● Repetitiveness
● Harmful content (Racism, sexism, etc)
Human oversight is thus needed in the areas of topics that require a depth of knowledge and subject matter expertise when using Generative AI, such as niche topics, culturally relevant content, emotionally resonant content, and creative works.
As with all major technical disruptions, some of the current roles we are used to seeing advertised on LinkedIn will be replaced by new ones specifically designed to facilitate the type of process we mentioned above and to be accountable for the work done through and by AI. Head of AI and Machine Learning is already a well-sought after role and training on how specific teams/departments need to think and integrate AI will most likely pop up in the next coming years. We are witnessing the creation of a whole new ecosystem.
7. Looking forward, how do you envision the evolution of Generative AI in the creative sector, and what should businesses be preparing for now?
Content Creation
AI will play a more significant role in automating routine and repetitive tasks, such as generating drafts, basic design elements, images, etc. Businesses should be prepared to leverage Generative AI tools to streamline their creative processes to reduce costs and increase efficiency.
Improve Content Quality
Generative AI can generate personalised content that is tailored to a specific audience. Businesses should leverage this, keeping in mind to keep a human in a loop, and not view Generative AI as a replacement, but rather, a tool that complements creatives in their work.
Human-AI Collaboration
Collaboration between humans and AI will become more prevalent. Creatives will use AI as a tool to enhance their capabilities rather than replace them entirely. Businesses should encourage collaboration between creatives and AI systems to create a symbiotic relationship.
Continuous Learning and Adaptation
Generative AI models will continuously evolve and improve. Businesses should stay updated on the latest advancements, adopt new models, and provide training for their teams to stay competitive and relevant.
Enhance User Experience
Generative AI can be employed to create immersive and interactive experiences for users, whether in gaming, virtual reality, or other creative applications. Businesses should explore ways to integrate AI-driven enhancements to improve user experiences and satisfaction.
As we conclude our enlightening conversation with Manuel Denoual, it’s clear that the advent of Generative AI marks a pivotal moment in the advertising and creative sectors. Denoual’s expertise highlights the importance of balancing AI-driven efficiency with human creativity and authenticity. Businesses are encouraged to stay abreast of AI developments, fostering a symbiotic relationship between human ingenuity and AI capabilities. As we look towards a future where AI plays an increasingly significant role, Denoual’s insights serve as a guiding light for businesses aiming to navigate this new era with success and ethical consideration.
