Welcome To Sophisticated Mediocrity

AI Is being marketed completely wrong. The problem is some are falling for it.

Jul 30, 2024

It’s Tuesday. And, are you watching the Olympics? Simone Biles is on fire - and her mom had a delicious troll of Snoop Dog.

Now - there’s a sentence I thought I’d never write.

But if you’ve been watching, you might have also caught the new ad by Google. In it, a father uses Google’s Generative AI tool help his daughter write a letter to an Olympian she idolizes.

Oof - cue dying Pacman sound. That was cringy at best. I mean what were they thinking?

Before I go on - speaking of cringe…

<cue “and now a word from our sponsor”>
We’re currently working on the coolest project for a client. In a world where Content Marketing is now about how to distribute your content to the most channels to be seen - we’re developing a new content distribution approach for a B2B technology company. It’s about how we transform their owned media strategy into a media distribution approach to get more reach.
If this kind of marketing project is similar to something you’re looking to do - let us know. We’re ready to burst into the end of Summer with another client.
<scoots off stage>

Okay… Let’s get focused and talk about this AI marketing problem…. In this week’s edition.

Gen AI Isn’t a Creativity Problem To Be Solved
An incredible marketing story at the Olympics
CrowdStrike shows us how to strike out

Let’s roll….

ZOOM LENS: SOPHISTICATED MEDIOCRITY

We’re headed down the wrong road with generative AI.

Google’s Ad during the Olympics is just the latest marketing campaign from AI vendors to come down with foot in mouth disease. Over the last few months, I’ve been struck by the silliness of messages from major gen AI solution providers. Unfortunately, those messages feed the frenzy for implementing generative AI in creative roles - and especially those that fall into the marketing and communications functions in business.

Take, for example, this recent quote from OpenAI CTO Mira Murati in response to a question about AI replacing humans: “Some creative jobs maybe will go away, but maybe they shouldn’t have been there in the first place.”

Really?

But she’s not the only one making statements along these lines. Open AI CEO Sam Altman has claimed that AI would handle “95% of what marketers use agencies, strategists, and creative professionals for today.”

And, of course, there’s this famous quote from economist Richard Baldwin at the 2023 World Economic Forum Growth Summit: “AI won’t take your job. It’s somebody using AI that will take your job.”

<sigh>

Now, it’s not that these statements are entirely true or false. If you peel any of these statements apart, you’ll hear some people say, “Well, what they meant by that was….”

That’s the problem. It’s not the accuracy of the statement — it’s the interpretation.

Tech companies are making AI technology the hero of the story. They’re telling people that we should feel lucky to be worthy of such amazing tools. And they’re frothing up the argument that human creativity is a problem to be solved.

That’s pretty rich when you consider how every one of these technologies used the products of human creativity to evolve their capabilities.

That way lies sophisticated mediocrity

During this gen AI gold rush, business leaders are rushing to tell investors, analysts, customers, and audiences how many roles they can replace with the technology in the name of efficiency.

I see this happening in some companies that have replaced content creators with generative AI. Yes, they are producing more content than ever — they’ve succeeded in creating efficiency in producing content at scale.

And the content they create? It’s average. It’s neither bad enough nor good enough to be remarkable. It’s just average. The Google Ad is a perfect example. Go try and use the prompt they suggest in the ad for yourself. You’ll likely get what author Josh Bernoff did.

It’s leading us into what I’m calling an age of sophisticated mediocrity.

Wicked problems in content and marketing

I wrote about the “wicked problems” in businesses’ content and marketing strategies a couple of years ago.

A wicked problem is hard to solve because of “incomplete, contradictory, or changing requirements that can be difficult to recognize.” Information researcher Jeff Conklin described wicked problems as those “not understood until after the formulation of a solution.”

Wicked problems are rampant in marketing. Your content or marketing approach might be working OK. You know it isn’t quite humming on all cylinders, but there’s nothing so dysfunctional that fixing it becomes a priority.

For example, about three months ago, I worked with a fast-growing technology company to roll out a new governance model, workflow, and content life cycle plan. The people who’d been with the company less than a year rejoiced. They loved it.

But senior leaders and some veteran marketing and content practitioners didn’t. They agreed that the new plan sounded good. But they didn’t consider the problem it would solve as important enough to spend time on.

That’s wicked.

I often hear CEOs and CFOs ask, “What’s the benefit of fixing this marketing problem?” The answer is, “We don’t know yet.”

Why gen AI isn’t a wicked problem (probably)

Unfortunately, those hyperbolic statements about gen AI replacing people or teams have created what appears to be a wicked problem in creative and marketing.

Business leaders hear about gen AI developments and think, “This is such a cool innovation. We must have a problem it can solve — we just don’t know what it is.”

Then, because of the hyperbolic promises about gen AI replacing agencies and creatives, the sentiment shifts to, “Some of our creative jobs probably are redundant and outdated. Maybe that’s the problem generative AI can solve for us.”

Now, to be clear, I’m not saying there aren’t some organizations that employ more people than needed or that could improve efficiency or productivity. And those are wicked problems.

But implementing gen AI as a (theoretically) cost-effective replacement for creative humans who interact with customers or create content usually isn’t a way to solve a wicked problem.

It’s solutionism.

Resisting the solutionism message

Solutionism, a term popularized by tech critic Evgeny Morozov, describes the belief that every problem can be solved with a technological solution.

And solutionism is at the heart of all these statements made by generative AI solution providers.

When Mira Murati says that some creative roles “shouldn’t have been there in the first place,” she’s feeding into the notion that the need for creative roles is a problem that can be solved with technology.

When Sam Altman says “95% of what marketers use agencies, strategists, and creative professionals for today” will be handled by AI, he’s suggesting that inefficiency in the art of creative marketing needs to be corrected.

And the bumper sticker warning “AI won’t take your job, but someone using AI will” suggests that generative AI is the hero we should demonstrate our worthiness to.

Buying into these statements pushes us into the era of sophisticated mediocrity. It means we accept the trade of diversity of human thought for a sophisticated solution to a nonexistent problem.

No CEO wakes up and says, “We have too many people with too many creative ideas. Let’s save some money and get rid of them.” But when CEOs tell their teams to figure out how many (or which) resources they could jettison by implementing gen AI, they’re forcing that calculus.

There are things we can do to avoid this trap. The biggest is to take one all-important first step: Understand and document the opportunity to which you plan to apply AI. That may sound like a no-brainer, but I see more and more companies fail to do it with generative AI.

Have a great week.

WIDE ANGLE LENS: MARKETING SNAPS

Let’s get it all in frame. Shall we?

🏆Want to see an amazing marketing idea? - When marketing solves a problem - THAT’s great marketing. So, Olympic running has a sponsor problem. The problem is that not all runners are sponsored. But the ones that are, of course wear their brands - adidas, Nike etc… Those that aren’t have to make a choice - wear nothing, or wear one of those big brands and provide them with free advertising - or don’t and tell the world they aren’t sponsored. So, sportswear company Bandits came up with a solution. It’s sponsoring these 30 athletes with logo-less, brandless apparel. Just simple black outfits. The goal: call attention to their lack of a sponsor, but give them the freedom to get sponsored if they do well. The benefit to the brand? Demonstrating their dedication to great athletes. It’s a wonderful thing.

🤮 CrowdStrike Strikes Out (again) - So - you all probably know about the huge cyber bug that security company CrowdStrike caused. So, how did they respond. Well, one of the ways was to (yes, really) offer up a $10 UberEats coupon to those that were affected. I just…. I just…. Can you imagine being in the meeting where that was discussed and ultimately approved. “We should do something,” says someone in communications. “I know”, says someone else, “let’s offer everyone a $10 snack through UberEats for their inconvenience at having their computer bricked for a day.”

“Geeeeenius” bellows someone at the end of the table. “Meeting adjourned.”

The lesson? Just don’t. Sometimes it’s just better to continue to work the problem and communicate your apologies and going-forward actions. Sometimes a free cup of coffee isn’t going to get you out of the brand dog house.

LENS FLARE: - TCA Events & Happenings For You

Did you miss any of our Webinars
We’re back in August - reviving our new season of Webinars. And August kicks off with Content Modeling? What does that mean? How does it work? Why is it important? Well - come find out. Also, if you missed any of the Spring Season Webinars - check out the on-demand versions.

LENS CAP: Let’s Finish With A Flourish

Two weeks ago, it was reported that 20,000 energy giant Chevron employees are testing Microsoft’s Copilot, a suite of AI-powered chatbots and other tools in Microsoft’s Office 365 apps that can answer questions and generate email drafts. The problem? According to Bill Braun, the company’s CIO: “We’re a little dissatisfied with our ability to know how [well] it’s working.”

My take is they will continue to be. You can’t give 20,000 people a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist and expect them to report back accurate value.

I’m not arguing against using generative AI. I’m warning against using specific arguments to advance the technology. There are plenty of wicked problems to uncover in content and marketing. And many activities we do every day might be improved with technology like generative AI.

The key is understanding the difference between solving a real problem and forcing technology solutions to problems that don’t exist - you know, like having a little girl write a fan letter to one of her heroes. Is that really a problem that needs to be solved?

Let’s avoid sophisticated mediocrity.

It’s your story. Tell it well.

See you next week!