Marketing Creativity Needs an AI Assist, Forrester Says

Companies must integrate machine learning and automated intelligence into their creative marketing processes because human creativity cannot reach its full potential alone, Forrester Research Principal Analyst Jay Pattisall stated in a recent report.

Creativity in today's marketing relies oninstinct, Pattisall says, but he insists that instinct alone will no longer suffice as consumers increasingly see advertising as irrelevant. About a quarter use ad-blocking technology and only about 40 percent find advertising useful for finding new product information.

To combat increasing irrelevance, he suggests marketing leaders employ a new strategy of integrating artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and intelligent automation (IA) with human creativity to improve customer experience, increase brand relevance, and restore emotional connection with customers.

He calls this new approach "intelligent creativity," which he defines as "a process of creative problem-solving in which teams of creators and strategists conceive, design, produce, and activate business solutions with the assistance of AI, intelligent automation, and data."

The new strategy can be implemented throughout the entire creative process, but the report identifies four primary activities that make up the intelligent creativity process: preparation that explores the problem's dimensions and focuses on the mind; incubation, which can be defined by problem solving and boosted by AI; illumination/collaboration, which relies the most on human intuition but can still be boosted by the automated elements; and verification, where the antiquated intuitive approach has the creative idea applied and confirmed.

With intelligent creativity it is much easier to apply and scale creative ideas with automated intelligence and automated data input, according to Pattisall.

"Right now the emphasis is on scaling the execution, but there are other areas too," Pattisall notes. "It's hard for us to understand that the machines can help pick up patterns that others can't. The machine just kind of picks up the anomaly."

Pattisall also notes that while automation and machines provide a huge boost to the creative process, they aren't necessarily a replacement for human labor. "The machines can't replace the people. The machines are not going to disrupt creation inside the agency. They'll make it more powerful and strengthen the relative output if the talent in the agency knows how to use it."

Pattisall illustrates this point with a reference to the movie "The Martian." When the protagonist is stranded on Mars, it is not until he begins to alter the surface of the planet that NASA notices him. Though it was a human analyst who interpreted the data that recognized shifting elements on the planet's surface, it was a machine that first noticed the anomaly. Proving, Patisall insists, that humans and machines must work together to produce the best results.

A combination of technology and human creativity can differentiate companies with hyper relevance, better meet the emotional needs of customers, and empower employees by automating the tasks they hate and elevating the tasks they enjoy, he adds.

"The routine tasks that are being done by agency employees… eventually 10 percent to 11 percent of those jobs will be automated over time," he concludes. "We further predict that by 2030 about 23 percent of agency jobs will be automated. A majority of those jobs are the routine, repetitive tasks, leaving all of the more high-value, strategic, creative decisions for the employees to make on their own."

Though machines are most intently used for scaling and implementation right now, Pattisall sees no limit to what this unified strategy can produce. He emphasizes the importance of hiring a new type of creative. "The real prescription is to train and hire people that are adept at this tech and have a willingness and inquisitiveness to push the boundaries. It's not one or the other; it's both. Intuition and accuracy coming together--human intuitive reasoning in combination with the machines' accuracy and precision."