Survey finds marketing pros have conflicting views of generative AI

Generative AI has the potential to alter nearly every job, and perhaps none more so than marketing. So perhaps it shouldn’t come as a surprise that a survey of 2400 marketing pros by Morning Consult, on behalf of graphics tool company Canva, found that while marketers recognize the transformative power of the technology, they are also somewhat ambivalent about the overall impact on their work.

It should be noted that vendor-driven surveys can have some element of bias, but the general trends in the results are still worth exploring. Companies are clearly looking for areas where they can take advantage of AI, and the marketing department is one of those places.

Canva head of global marketing Emma Robinson says the survey suggested that marketing departments are heavily exploring areas where AI can help them move faster. To that point, 90% of respondents had AI budgets in place last year, with 75% saying they intend to increase those budgets this year.

While marketing pros see a variety of use cases, text is where the majority are reporting using AI with text creation, text refinement and image and video creation topping the list.

It’s interesting to note, however, that marketers see AI as a double-edged sword with respondents seeing the potential of AI, yet worrying about it watering down the content. On one hand, 80% say it enhances productivity with 77% saying it enhances creativity too, but at the same time, 72% are concerned that AI could reduce creativity and lead to homogenized content. 

That sounds confusing and contradictory, but Robinson says that this ambiguity is actually understandable and reflective of the nuanced reality marketers are navigating today. “To me, it’s less about confusion and more about marketers being realistic about AI's strengths and weaknesses,” she said. 

“On one hand, yes, 77% of people see AI boosting creativity by handling the tedious stuff and sparking fresh ideas, but at the same time, they're savvy enough to recognize there's a real risk of everything starting to look and sound the same if everyone leans too heavily on the same AI tools.”

And there are actually other legitimate worries, as the chart below illustrates, with concerns about lack of customization, a steep learning curve and difficulty integrating AI solutions into existing workflows topping the list. 

But in spite of the concerns, the consensus is that AI is here to stay and marketing teams, and indeed everyone, have to come to grips with that with 92% stating that AI literacy is going to be a must-have skill within two to four years.

Robinson believes we are still early when it comes to AI use cases. “Whilst AI is core to people's workflows and their strategies, it's still in the early phases in terms of impact,” she said. One of the key factors driving the success of AI projects is having your data house in order. Large language models are only as good as the data used to train them, as we’ve noted previously.

“We still have a long way to go to get the data right in a lot of ways,” Robinson said. Without that strong data foundation, she says, it’s harder to implement strong use cases around AI, and that applies to marketing or anywhere else in the organization.

For now though, Robinson says it’s about keeping the human touch, even when AI is completing some of the tasks for you. “They're treating AI as a starting point, not the final answer. They're setting up guidelines, reviewing the work, keeping humans in the loop, and making sure the technology actually enhances their unique brand voice, rather than replacing it,” she said.

Featured image by Melanie Deziel on Unsplash