AI and The Future of Marketing | Viewpoint

Welcome to the first of our viewpoint articles, here we look at the world of Social Media Marketing from a slightly different perspective, with open eyes. Today we want to look at the future, with 5g and AI all coming into our workplace it creates both equal opportunity as well as threat. 

It's the threat element we want to explore today, why, well most publishers fail to raise and discuss the real impact, but as marketers you need to be ready because that change is coming quicker than you realise. 

Let’s start with Google Duplex, impressive, and well a little scary, for those who have not heard, Google’s bot successfully booked a table at a restaurant, this in turn caused opentable’s share price to drop 6% on the same day losing $5bn off the share price.  That’s the sort of impact AI can have, while it is revolutionary, it also has the ability to impact your business without being a fully formed off the shelf product. 

For many of us, marketing with new tools is exciting, technology has the ability to open up doors and move the game on.  

OK so how does this impact on me?

It may not, truth be told, you may thrive in the new world, however when the Bank of England, Oxford University, McKinsey, World economic forum, Forrester, OECD and PWC all predict automation will remove millions of jobs from the workplace despite creating new sectors.  

Over the last few years many individuals have been making a good living out of social media management. Taking basic copy and stock images and posting it on client social accounts, if this is your current business model then you need to start looking at what is happening.  Start looking at more creative skill sets that you can offer and start changing your business model, this type of content production and basic social media management will be the first thing that is swallowed up. 

Are you working in a large brand or agency doing basic administration and basic account management, you’re at risk, now might be the time to start getting some specialist qualifications and beginning to plan your longer term future, according to Oxford University 64% of marketing specialists jobs will disappear due to automation. 

So take this as a wake up call, it's no good agreeing with all the latest research, no good waiting for it to happen, it's time to get off you backside and upskill, automation will create plenty of great new opportunities, but if you are not already in skilled position or your fledgling agency is ticking along posting for a handful of SME’s you need to start thinking seriously about making some changes. 

What about the good news?

Yes, there is some good news, in the same Oxford University research automation will only effect 1.4% of Marketing Manager jobs, which points to those creatives with the right mix of experience and qualifications behind them being well placed to best use and embrace the new technology.  

If you want to hear more about AI and its role in Social Media Marketing, you can check out some of the SocialDay keynote from Katie King below, day one of our event was looking at the future of Social Media Marketing through future technology to Generation Z.