Out of the creative destruction wrought by Generative AI there are opportunities to thrive

In 2011, the year Marc Andreessen declared that ‘software is eating the world’, I was sitting in global role at Ogilvy, managing our relationships with the key digital platforms; Facebook, Google, twitter, Snap, Instagram et al. I could see the way these well funded and fast moving beasts were out manoeuvring us and having what looked like an enormous amount of fun in the process. Sensing that a transfer of revenue and power to these platforms was the inevitable direction of travel, I wanted to learn more about how they operated and why there were so successful. To see just how they were managing to eat the world, I went to work as the VP of Customer Success at one of our partners, the content distribution platform Spredfast. And so began my education in SaaS and the way of tech firms. 

Now almost a decade later that transfer is accelerating as Generative AI rapidly transforms the marketing industry. On the vendor side there is a fast growing bench of deeply funded ‘AI first’ startups as well as the existing tech platforms that are absorbing AI into their products to increase their utility and adoption.

I have experienced the transformative nature of this first hand, helping my customers adopt the new AI tools that ON24 was bringing to their existing digital engagement platform and before that, as I developed the customer success teams at AI-first startups Spirable and Ad Lib. Working with the customers of these tech companies I was able to bring a brand and marketing sensibility from my time as a digital planner at Ogilvy and earlier at a number of digital agencies. From that vantage point, I have seen how both agencies and brands are being impacted and both the strengths and weaknesses of the tech companies’ approaches. 

While there is no doubt that there are significant structural changes underway in the marketing industry, I do not see it as a zero-sum game. For those participants who are able to adapt to the new environment and to adopt the best practices of the tech world, there are opportunities for growth.

To make the most of this opportunity I am focussing on translating the practices, processes and skills from the world of tech and startups into the worlds of brands and agencies, specifically;

- For brand marketing teams: Harnessing the transformative capabilities of AI and automation

- For marketing agencies: Adapting their approaches to take on board the scalable data-driven practices of tech firms

To scale this offering I am using a combination of human time-based effort alongside data-driven automation and in the spirit of Open Source will be sharing my lessons and insights as I go so please follow my consulting page for links, lessons and shortcuts.

As I build pace and processes I will be able to expand my client base so please do share this post with those you know at brands and agencies who want to take advantage of this unique moment of creative destruction.

I am a strategist, not a technologist and as such I am platform and vendor agnostic. So please do get in touch if you have an offering that you think could benefit any of my client segments.