A survey by a UK public relations company shows despite the majority of CMOs using or trialling AI tools, half worry about data quality and integrity.

A third of those surveyed worried about the potential for AI to dilute ‘the human touch’ according to a press release from the company. Yet the survey identified benefits of the technology in content creation and idea generation.

Analysis of data continues to be problematic for many CMOs, and the survey findings suggest that while martech helps with content creation and strategic planning, there’s a lag in implementation of analysis tools, and many struggle to find the time to properly consider campaign metrics, which continues to be a more manual task.

Traditional product marketing materials are becoming less effective, and nearly three-quarters said they place thought leadership and webinars as equally important. Direct engagement continues as central to B2B marketing.

The survey [email submission required] highlights a disconnect between marketing investment and business impact in terms of ROI. Qualified sales and marketing leads are easier to quantify than customer acquisition costs, with only 30% of CMOs monitoring the latter.

Lead generation, marketing analysis and PR are the main activities of most marketing departments, but many also cover sales enablement – the message is that marketers are expected to cover more areas of the business, and levels of overall responsibility are increasing.

Comment: AI and data are not silver bullets

There is a disconnect between the use of generative AI and thought-leadership content creation. Media creation models (LLMs and their image/video equivalents) can only respin existing materials, making any such material produced derivative by definition. Ideation suffers from the same problem: ideas published to the internet and consumed by an AI model will be surfaced by generative AI, albeit altered by a small randomising factor at the point of inference.

This tendency can be combated by the presentation of live events, webinars, and online discussions, and the production of original media: content created by informed humans.

Data analysis of absolute metrics (such as qualified leads) remains an easy algorithmic challenge for software. Measuring the success of broader campaigns has never been easy, and technology can only quantify representations of a brand’s impact in its digital manifestations – social media presence, search engine (and AI search) results, for example.

Digital indicators such as posts being disseminated, shared and commented on, rankings by search engines or the surfacing of default answers by AI searches, are consistently manipulated by platform owners, users, or third-parties using bots or other gamifying technologies.

The commissioning company behind the survey stated that “49% worry about data quality and integrity,” yet: “The findings highlight the importance of developing a defined AI strategy for marketing […]”

While AI promises, to varying degrees, to be the magic bullet that will transform marketing, it’s becoming apparent in other sectors (creative arts, software development, customer service, medicine) that the technology is one tool among many. AI has specific abilities that may be of use in certain contexts. But like most tools, is best used alongside others.

Marketing functions placing AI and data at the centre of their strategy are akin to house builders planning their work around their investment in a fleet of mechanical diggers: useful tools without doubt, but only capable of a few tasks on site and requiring human operators.

(Image source: “silver bullet” by eschipul is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.)

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