As part of our always-on listening through our event pulse with Play Verto we know that AI in marketing is top of mind for our so many of our Members. This piece looks at how using AI without strategic clarity and human oversights risks producing volume over value.
AI is now embedded across marketing, but as expected with such a fast-moving, exciting tech, adoption has outpaced clarity. In a market flooded with AI usage, the real competitive advantage will go to those using it with the most discipline.
By now, marketers are versed in at least the basics of what AI can provide and perhaps the most attractive of this promise is generating content. Whether this is campaign plans, written copy, or even out-of-home, AI is very good at producing volume at speed. This may seem like a productivity and efficiency dream, but the practical reality is a different picture, and this is what marketers are fundamentally misunderstanding about AI.
Volume alone is just noise. While AI may be doing more faster, if the content produced is not high quality, strategic and deeply considered, has it really increased productivity? The age of AI has opened up more data than marketers could ever have anticipated, but again, volume without specificity does not provide value and can slow teams down rather than speed them up.
Clarity as the strategy
How do we then leverage AI whilst avoiding this common pitfall? For marketers, it is something that should be second nature to us anyway, and that is refining clarity. When positioning a client or brand, the first task any marketer faces is distilling the essence of who the brand is, what they do and who they do this for. One coherent message is what has always been needed for marketing success, and while this may prove difficult at times to render, it always proves worthwhile.
The principle is the same for AI - before even implementing AI tools in daily workflows, never mind using these Large Language Models (LLM’s) to create content, marketers need a coherent vision of what they are using them for and why. They also need to know the client thoroughly and they need to have carried out the strategic thinking themselves beforehand, having already mapped specifically what they are expecting AI to deliver.
Once a standard is understood, usage is targeted and tailored prompts are more instructive. This avoids large volumes of output which don't achieve what is needed.
"When layered on vague identities, AI spirals outwards producing incoherent and oftentimes weak outputs which have little audience resonance and impact. In other words, volume not value."
They don’t call it ‘hallucinations’ for nothing!
Where AI does (and doesn't) earn its keep
Viewed through a commercial lens, AI’s strengths are specific: scale, speed and pattern recognition. For marketers, that translates into two high-impact applications. The first is operational acceleration. This looks like automating repetitive workflows, generating first (not final), drafts and compressing production timelines to free up human talent and time. Second is intelligence amplification, such as extracting precise insights from complex datasets to inform sharper targeting, pricing, positioning and media allocation. In both cases, AI should either reduce cost-to-serve or increase return on spend. If it does neither, it's falling into the productivity paradox, producing volume without value.
Equally important is knowing where AI does not create value. Brand positioning, cultural nuance, narrative development, and client trust remain human-led disciplines. AI can surface signals, but it cannot exercise judgment, absorb reputational risk, or build and maintain relationships. Using AI for these things is at best useless (humans will always perform better here), and at its worst, it's hugely damaging to client relationships.
Essentially, using AI without human strategy and refinement erodes differentiation in client work and ultimately your own brand as marketers.
"The brands that extract the most from AI will be those that protect human strategic advantage while systemising its machine efficiency, overcoming the paradox."
