The stratospheric growth of AI has shaken up marketing and the creative industries. Amid the stories we’ve heard of creatives losing contracts to AI and being asked to rework AI generated content at a lower rate of pay, you’d think it would be hard for us to take a positive view of its impact on our industry. Not necessarily. What we’ve found is that clients still want the human touch and when everything sounds or looks the same, true creative work stands out.
We can’t pretend that the relentless march of AI isn’t happening, but we can work with it, rather than struggling against it. So the question we are asking ourselves is how can we use AI to strengthen what we already do and use it to assist us rather than replace us?

How we think AI adds value

Data support

We pride ourselves on being a creative bunch of outside-of-the-box thinkers, so having AI support in areas such as data analysis and insights allows us to spend time on the original thinking and crafting of creative ideas.

Research

Using AI for research can be like having a super-fast and efficient research assistant. Type in your query and it brings up all the sources, facts, and figures you need in the blink of an eye. However, AI user beware, you still need to check the information for accuracy. AI has been known to make things up! 

Automating tasks

Thanks to AI, we can easily get transcripts of interviews we’ve done and minutes of meetings we’ve had in a fraction of the time it would have taken to type them up. The way we look at it is, if AI can take on the time-consuming day-to-day things, that leaves us more time and mental energy to spend on the creative and strategic work that helps us and our clients grow. 

What AI can’t replace

The human touch

While we have no doubt that some businesses will go all-in with AI, we know that clients who value real ideas and who want to tap into what their audience is thinking and feeling will always want the human touch. Human emotions and the ability to empathise and create a sense of connection gives us a definite advantage over AI. What AI can’t do is draw on lived, relatable experience and understand people’s pain points and needs at a deeper level. All of this has huge value when clients ask us to create messaging that resonates and connects. 

The authenticity of human generated content means it is also ranking highly in Google’s search results. Increasingly, answers given by people on forums such as Reddit are appearing near the top of search results. This is because Google rates it as being more relevant and authentic, as well as being more likely to answer the searcher’s question. 

And we can’t forget that the sector we work in is based on human contact. Agriculture is built on human interaction and trust and while AI will increasingly have a place, it won’t replace the human element. 

Real creativity

Because AI learns from the information that’s already there, it won’t be long before much of the content online sounds and looks the same. What that means for agencies like us is our authentic creative work is going to stand out. Our clients don’t want what’s been done before, they want something show-stopping. 

So our view on AI is that it should be used for assisting us with the mundane or repetitive admin task occasionally.
Delegating creativity to AI is a slippery slope, and we hope that it never replaces human ingenuity, or the desire to create just for the love of it. As for us at RDP, we’ll use AI as an assistant, but we’ll keep on doing as we always have done; going the extra mile, building genuine relationships, and helping our clients grow through our creative and strategic brilliance. That’s all down to the irreplaceable human touch.