Social Samosa successfully hosted the Festive Marketing Camp 2024 on September 24, which is an event designed to uncover key insights behind festive marketing. It brought together professionals from India’s advertising, marketing, and media industries to explore strategies for optimising their festive season campaigns.
In a fireside chat with Hitesh Rajwani, CEO of Social Samosa Network at Festive Marketing Camp 2024, Deepali Naair, Group CMO of the CK Birla Group, shared an insightful perspective on the role of generative AI (Gen AI) in marketing, drawing from her diverse experience overseeing a wide array of brands ranging from healthcare, technology, to automotive components. She emphasised that the term ‘generative AI’ is often misused, with many marketers confusing it with AI more broadly. She pointed that the real question is how these technologies can go beyond marketing communications.
Naair highlighted three distinct ways AI is currently being leveraged in marketing: the general misunderstanding between AI and Gen AI, the differentiation between product offerings and marketing communications, and the narrow view that limits Gen AI’s potential to just creative outputs. For Naair, marketing professionals need to focus on using Gen AI to create enterprise-grade products, not just enhance marketing communications.
Gen AI reshaping creative workflows
Naair discussed the value of AI tools like MidJourney for marketers needing speed and multiple adaptations in creative processes. She forecasted a future where traditional creative roles might morph, especially in agencies, as Gen AI will replace certain tasks, such as the work done by graphic artists handling routine adaptations. However, she highlighted that while Gen AI can handle this repetitive work, the role of creatives will evolve to focus more on editing and scrutinizing AI-generated content, ensuring quality and truthfulness.
Naair’s advised marketers to explore AI-driven platforms to maximise productivity. She cited examples such as LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator and PubLive, both of which utilize Gen AI to enhance business-to-business (B2B) marketing and content repurposing respectively. LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator, for instance, can scan a target audience’s recent content to provide tailored insights, while PubLive converts written articles into multiple formats like web stories, newsletters, and social media posts—streamlining the content creation process in ways marketers can barely imagine.
Naair also cautioned marketers about the difference between personal productivity tools like ChatGPT and the enterprise-grade AI tools they should be seeking. For brands serious about utilizing AI, she stressed the importance of investing in scalable, SaaS-based platforms that can truly harness Gen AI’s capabilities. She suggested marketers to look beyond the surface level and explore the deeper applications that can transform how businesses operate at scale, rather than just focusing on small-scale, gimmicky applications in creative outputs.
Utilising data to its fullest
On the subject of data, Naair spoke at length about how brands often underutilize data, particularly first-party data, in their marketing efforts. She highlighted that while service industries like financial services and telecom have already embarked on the data journey, FMCG brands lag behind. She observed that many FMCG brands assume they can’t leverage data because they don’t have large datasets, but tools like AudiencePro offer opportunities for brands to access and use first-party data in a cookie-less world.
Overall, Naair’s message was clear: marketers need to get comfortable with AI, but they must go beyond the hype surrounding Gen AI in creative marketing and dig into its potential for creating enterprise-level solutions that can transform their businesses. With the right tools, marketers can move from simply creating content to reshaping entire product offerings, driving efficiency, and future-proofing their strategies in a world increasingly dominated by AI.
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