Do You Need AI to Develop Creative or Just a Good Copywriter?

Do You Need AI to Develop Creative or Just a Good Copywriter?

Artificial intelligence, or AI, is the hottest technology in marketing. AI is helping marketers understand and predict human behavior to deliver more relevant and personalized products, services, and content. Here are 15 ways marketers are using AI.

This is exciting stuff. But this recent article in the Wall Street Journal about how JP Morgan Chase & Co. is applying AI to marketing stopped me in my tracks.

Chase is using AI to write better headlines and calls to action for email and online ad campaigns for loan products. Response rates are up and Chase plans to expand AI in creative going forward.

This sounds like a success story and for Chase, it certainly is. Other marketers are using AI for creative development, too.

But it got me thinking: Do you need advanced technology like artificial intelligence to develop good creative for a smart marketing strategy? Or do you just need a talented, insightful creative team?

Here are my thoughts.

Using AI and Technology to Develop More Effective Creative: Do You Need it?

As a marketing consultant, I’m always looking for innovative ways to apply technology to planning and implementing marketing strategies. Artificial intelligence is a prime example of how technology can give marketers big strategic advantages.

But as the Chase story illustrates, AI is also changing how advertising and marketing are created. And there’s lots more. Snapchat just announced Instant Create, a fast-track way to create a Snap ad in three quick steps. No people needed.

Why use technology in creative development? The Journal reports that Chase’s goal was to “make marketing messages more effective.”

Amen to that, of course. Every marketer everywhere wants their marketing to be more effective. But did this hugely sophisticated marketer really need AI to write better copy to boost email response rates? Wouldn’t a smart, experienced direct mail copywriter have been able to come up with the headlines and calls to action that achieved these results?

What Bob Stone Might Say

I confess that I approach this question from a biased point of view. I started my career as a direct mail copywriter. I still love direct marketing. When I develop a marketing strategy for a client, I almost always recommend targeted marketing campaigns and tactics.

So I found the Chase story a bit unsettling. Is it becoming old school to use real people to tell your marketing story? Are the days of human copywriters and designers numbered? Am I a dinosaur?

I also wondered what the founders of direct marketing would say about this, so I dusted off my copy of  Successful Direct Marketing Methods by the legendary Bob Stone.

Stone’s landmark book, first published in 1975, defined the industry and the best practices of planning and creating direct mail (an updated version is still available on Amazon).

Stone says “a good, professional writer should be able to paint pictures with his words. To go beyond the nuts-and-bolts details he gets from a product fact sheet and weave a benefit-packed story. To translate a common mattress into a heavenly night’s sleep.”

Here are some of the direct response copywriting guidelines (“techniques the pros use”) Stone shares in his book:

• Does the lead sentence get in step with the reader at once?
• Do your opening paragraphs promise a benefit to the reader?
• Have you fired your biggest gun first?
• Is there a big idea behind your proposition?
• Is what you say believable?
• Does the letter have a “you” attitude all the way through?
• Does the letter have a conversational tone?

Granted, this was written decades before the web and social media, even before email. But in my experience, advances in technology haven’t changed the principles of effective marketing, especially good copywriting.

Think about Stone’s guidelines in relation to direct response copy, whether for a direct mail letter, online ad, or email. Proponents of AI would probably say that AI gives them better ways to get in step with the reader. They could be right.

But I’m not convinced about the outcome. No matter how good technology gets, I still believe the ability to understand human emotions and needs – to relate to the real lives of individuals, to find the words and images that will move people and make them feel something in their hearts, to paint pictures with words – requires a skilled creative team with empathy, creativity, superb listening skills, and genuine interest in the audience.

That means you need real people. Insights from AI can help creative teams develop better approaches, but it won’t replace them.

Why Every Smart Marketer Needs to Understand AI

Whether or not you ever use AI to develop the creative approach for a marketing campaign, there’s no denying the powerful impact AI in already having on marketing. Every smart marketer needs to understand it and how to apply it; I’m certainly planning to learn lots more about it. The Marketing Artificial Intelligence Institute is a terrific resource for getting started.

What do you think? Is AI the future of creative marketing? 

Gianfagna Strategic Marketing, Inc. is a marketing consulting and creative services firm in Cleveland, Ohio that helps great organizations do great marketing. Contact us if we can help you.