A tool is powerful in the hands of a craftsperson

A paint brush can a powerful tool in the hands of a gifted artist. A trowel can be a powerful tool in the hands of a master gardener. When it comes to marketing communications, AI can be a powerful tool in the hands of an experienced creative professional.

What I’m about to share may be self-serving, giving you reason to work with FocalCraft to help you create powerful brand impressions for your business. That said, whether you ever work with us or not, it’s information I hope you consider for the good of your business.

As a tool used to produce marketing creative, AI can help with research, generate options for the wording of text, offer creative ideas and even be used to produce graphics including motion animation. It’s new, exciting and even amazing at times. But the marketing creative you get out of AI is only as good as the person or people you have using it. If you’re asking yourself, “Why hire marketing creatives when someone in-house can have AI produce my marketing communications?” ... let me answer that question by asking some of my own.

1.  Do you have the right “someone” in-house?

Every message you put out there about your business is important. Whether it’s to inform your current customers or to attract new ones, your message is intended to produce a result. Before the message is created, it needs to be informed by thoughtful communications strategy. This includes understanding your business, what makes it special, the voice or character you want to convey, and how to position your business to make it more appealing than your competition’s. Experienced marketing professionals – creative directors, writers, graphic designers, etc. – consider all of these issues and more before they ever move to executing messages for their clients. Execution is guided by thoughtful, customized purpose. If you have experienced marketing people in-house who can do all this for your company, great. If you don’t, and you’re trusting just anyone on your team to jump to executing your messages – with AI or any other accessible tools – you’ll get out what goes in. And it may not be the best message for your brand success.

2.  Can software evaluate human reaction?

Producing creative options for your marketing messages isn’t the end of the process. Or it shouldn’t be. Before any of those options are posted, aired, emailed or pasted onto a billboard, they should be evaluated. AI may be one tool used in the process of creating the messages. But you shouldn’t trust that anything AI software generates is good. “Good” is something that projects your brand strategy AND that truly connects with the people your business is courting. You’re trying to connect with people. People have feelings, emotions, biases, senses of humor, consciences, hopes and fears. And they have choices – namely, to engage with your business or to engage with one of your competitors. As a collection of software code, AI can’t evaluate how a human being willfeel about your marketing messages. Humans, who understand your strategy and that have the ability to think – and feel – like your target consumer should be evaluating if your messages are launch-worthy.

3.  Do you value objectivity ... and even push-back?

Creating and evaluating your creative messages should be a team effort. Most marketing professionals – and definitely we at FocalCraft – value and rely on our clients’ knowledge of their businesses and industries. Our clients play an important role in what we do. We play an important role too. Of course, they hire us because we’re good at crafting effective messages. Part of that is being critical of our own work, listening to our clients’ input on our work and, when necessary, challenging our clients’ thinking. The client always gets the final say. But our job is to think like the person your business is trying to influence, not like you. Not being on your staff helps us do that objectively and honestly. If we think we’ve got a better idea than yours, we’ll share it with you and the rationale. Then you’ll make the call. The importance of your marketing messages may be worth an investment in outside input.

4. What is “free” really costing you?

Many off-the-shelf AI tools that businesses use are basically free. The AI tools we use at FocalCraft are not. Nor are our services. But for the reasons mentioned above, working with us – or people like us – to help craft your messages may be a small investment that goes a long way. First of all, paying people on your staff to produce your messages isn’t free. If marketing creative isn’t their expertise, you may be spending a portion of their paychecks to have them produce marketing creative that is ineffective or, worse, communicating the wrong message. Perhaps it would be more cost effective to have your staff focus on what they do best for your business, and shift the dollars you’re saving there to pay experienced marketing creatives do what they do best for your business. At the very least, might it be worth giving it a try and doing your own cost/benefit analysis? Finally, “renting” creative expertise, talents and tools only when you need them can be far less costly than paying to develop and sustain them in-house.

Remember, when it comes to your business’s marketing messages, AI is like any other tool: Powerful in the hands of the right ... person.