It’s hard to believe that it has been less than two years since OpenAI introduced ChatGPT to the global marketplace, thereby unleashing a firestorm of interest, debate and early, uneven adoption of generative AI technology. The discourse and buzz around GenAI has been so intense and ubiquitous it seems the technology has been with us much longer. ChatGPT is currently one of the top 20 search terms on Google, both in the United States and worldwide.
Of course, artificial intelligence was around long before November 30, 2022. Yet, the advent of generative AI — with its game-changing capacity to use large language models to intelligently develop original content, write code, analyze vast amounts of data and much more — has dramatically accelerated the hype cycle as well as corporate investment and evaluation of AI technology. If you need proof, just consider the 6-fold increase in the stock price of NVIDIA, the leading AI chipmaker, since the launch of ChatGPT.
The rapid rise in recognition of AI as a transformational technology means business executives are scrambling to understand its competitive implications. How will generative AI impact revenue generation, productivity, innovation and time to market in their respective industries? The good news for business leaders is that the technology and its application are still in their infancy. It’s not too late to become a successful early adopter and achieve significant market advantages. On the other hand, delaying initial action would be foolhardy. Business leaders simply must begin exploring and piloting uses cases or risk lagging behind the competition.
How can they get started? I firmly believe that marketing teams within corporations can and should play a leadership role in bringing generative AI into the enterprise. Marketing has clear and compelling use cases that can quickly deliver value to any organization. Marketing is also well-positioned to convey insights gained from its GenAI experiences to the rest of the organization based on its powers of persuasion and communication skills. Hopefully, marketing also possesses the moxie, tolerance for risk and creativity to take early and innovative action.
McKinsey estimates that generative AI will add between $2.6 trillion and $4.4 trillion annually to the global economy across 63 use cases it analyzed. That is on top of the $11 trillion to $17.7 trillion of economic value that McKinsey estimates nongenerative artificial intelligence and analytics could unlock. Also importantly, the firm points to marketing as one of the four most promising business areas for adding economic value through generative AI, alongside customer operations, R&D and software engineering.
The use cases within marketing are extremely compelling. Content marketing and creation, market research, curation of third-party content, campaign personalization and translation of marketing assets for local country markets are among the big opportunities. I don’t believe GenAI will eliminate marketing jobs, but it will empower teams to do more. It should increase Return on Employees (ROE) with marketing organizations. Marketing’s ultimate job is to drive revenue and growth for their business. Increasing return on marketing will accelerate and magnify success in delivering on that critical responsibility to grow the business.
Bringing AI into the marketing function is a process that should be underway at virtually every company. Marketing organizations should form AI study and leadership teams to define marketing objectives and explore where and how AI can most efficiently deliver value. Ideally this leadership team will bring in other cross-functional business partners such as IT, security, legal. AI brainstorming sessions with other members of the marketing team will be critical both to ideation and to building a sense of inclusion that is so important to managing change in any organization.
Marketing will then need to determine what AI tools can be synched with existing MarTech solutions in the organization to achieve its objectives. That includes understanding the AI product roadmaps of key MarTech vendors. Pilot projects leveraging and experimenting with AI tools can help provide proof of concept before committing to wholesale implementation. Those projects should be prioritized based on anticipated value to the organization, as well as the practicality, time and cost of implementation.
At my company, Foxit, our marketing teams are now engaged in this process. We are already using generative AI to refresh marketing content on our web site with the latest information on products, services and messaging. We’ve held workshops to explore further opportunities to integrate AI into our workflows.
At the same time, our software development teams have made major strides in integrating generative AI into the company’s PDF solutions to make users more productive and increase ROE. The innovations include automation and enhancement of essential document management processes, such as redaction, document summarization, editing, and an intelligent Chatbot to answer user questions.
Ensuring that generative AI delivers value for marketing will require investments not only in technology but in people. Employees will need training and support to make the transition to new ways of working and thinking. Finding fast learners and innovators within your teams to provide mentoring to others will accelerate the process of adoption. So will providing funding educational and training programs.
Lead with Marketing
Marketing can be a corporate leader in realizing the business value, use cases and skill sets needed for generative AI — perhaps alongside software development for code creation. Lessons learned by marketing about AI-enabled content generation, research, knowledge management and other work processes can ultimately have deep and lasting value to many other parts of the business. Marketing will be able to teach and mentor employees in other functional areas, including sales, service and support, finance, legal and others.
Without question, generative AI will transform the way work gets done in the 21st century. That disruption of the status quo has already begun and will undoubtedly unfold over decades of trial, error and innovation. For every company, this will be a journey of continuous learning and improvement. Marketing can help lead the way.
