Reflecting on the Intersection of AI, Automation, and Marketing

Seth Godin, a marketing guru I admire, once talked about the role of marketers and the impact of their choices on the whole profession. His advice? Don't take part in anything that tarnishes our field. Instead, strive to improve it. This piece of wisdom has been on my mind a lot lately, especially as automation and AI become more prevalent in what we do.

I keep seeing new tools pop up, and many are impressively efficient. Yet, every time I come across one, I have to pause and ask: Will using this tool—or even creating it—enhance the marketing industry? There's always that tempting thought: "If I don't do it, someone else will." But I've realized that using this rationale is risky. It can lead you down some odd paths and isn't always the best way to make decisions.

Take content creation as an example. The trend now is to create once and replicate endlessly—shoot one video and spin it into dozens of blog posts, tweets, and social media updates. The market's getting flooded with content that's either AI-generated or AI-assisted, and it's becoming a bit much. Don't get me wrong, AI can be a powerful helper, but there's a fine line.

Consider this: if you take any old video and squeeze out every last drop of content from it, you risk saturating the market. This can actually weaken your brand. Keep in mind, the secret sauce that makes marketing and branding impactful is the human touch—the creativity and connection that real people bring to the table. Big companies with hefty marketing budgets can throw money at the problem, but that doesn't always win the game. I mean, think about it—why does a teenager on TikTok sometimes get more traction than a big-budget ad? It's the human connection, something that all the AI, analytics, and money can't replicate, at least not yet.

Now, about sheer volume—businesses are pumping out social media posts and videos, leveraging AI to skyrocket their numbers. But if it costs them their originality, they're going to see their brand's value water down over time.

So, where do I stand in all this? I've put together an automation that rewords video transcriptions into coherent blog posts, maintaining the essence of the original content. This is very different from churning out dozens of cookie-cutter pieces or generating a slew of AI-driven videos based on one single post.

AI as an assistant to the creative process is one thing; replacing creativity and removing the human aspect from marketing is where I draw the line. Marketing should be about making genuine connections, and that's where I believe the true power lies—not in the volume AI can produce, but in the value and authenticity that only humans can deliver. In the end, those who lean too heavily on automation, forgetting the human element, may just find themselves facing a branding crisis.