Author: Alphabet®

industry

AI vs. Automation: Is It Intelligent or Just Useful?

Imagine a life completely automated. Your coffee brews, pours, and mixes itself as you wake up. Your emails are sorted before you start work. And the work itself, well, it’s completed with little more than a well-crafted prompt. 

Life on autopilot is closer than ever. Artificial intelligence (AI) dropped on the scene like a led zeppelin and automation is advancing daily. From the high tech tools we use at work to the everyday appliances at home. 

It’s hard to keep up, don’t you think? Specifically, with AI and automation. There’s a mix of fervour and fear. Will this technology help us level up faster, launch our work to higher ground? Or will it steal our jobs? 

There’s confusion, too, with some using the terms interchangeably, even though they’re two different things. So, let’s clear the air by exploring what these technologies are, their differences, and how they’re being used in the creative industry.

What is artificial intelligence, exactly?

For some of us, artificial intelligence triggers memories of John Connor, the Terminator, and Skynet. For others, it’s less science fiction and more technical—a computer analyzing complex data, recognizing patterns, and making decisions based on what it learned. 

We call this machine learning, where AI improves through experience much like humans do. It’s what recommends movies to watch on Netflix and music to play on Spotify, based on past viewing and listening habits. It’s what suggests the quickest routes in Google Maps (especially useful when being hunted by a cybernetic assassin from the future).

Another example of AI is Google’s Neural Machine Translation system (GNMT). GNMT recognizes patterns in large datasets and learns to translate languages in real time.

Then there are generative tools like Midjourney and OpenAI’s ChatGPT. 

Midjourney employs deep learning models to create detailed images based on text prompts. The process involves neural networks trained on a range of images and styles, allowing the AI to produce varying artworks. Users can make nearly any type of image they want, from highly realistic to abstract to graffiti-inspired illustrations.

A neural network in AI is like a web of tiny brains talking to each other, learning and getting smarter as they find patterns in pictures, sounds, and words.

ChatGPT uses a Large Language Model (LLM) to create fully written content from a short prompt. It’s been trained on massive amounts of online text to learn the patterns and relationships between words and phrases. The use cases are almost limitless, from copywriting and storytelling to summarizing research and transcripts to writing jokes (badly).

This is AI on the surface. Where and how it’s being used, along with all its varying forms, is an essay in itself. If you want to dive into the nitty gritty, prompt ChatGPT to act as a research expert and provide a complete list of AI applications. (Be sure to ask nicely—you want to be on their good side when robots rise to power.)

How is automation any different from AI?

Set it and forget it. Automation is all about efficiency, doing things faster, consistently, and with less input. Consider the thermostat in your home. Based on your presets, it automatically changes your home’s temperature without any additional work on your behalf. 

You see automation a lot in manufacturing lines—the robots assembling parts without day-to-day instructions from humans. Unlike AI, these systems don’t learn or adapt. They perform the same task, under the same conditions, every time.

Then there are chatbots, and here’s where lines become blurred. 

Basic bots are programmed with set actions or responses to set prompts (think of an autoresponder on a business’s social media page.) This falls under automation. But more advanced chatbots use a Natural Language Understanding engine (NLU), allowing them to interact with users. Input from you is still required, but these types of bots can ask questions, interpret responses, and execute actions. They replicate AI, but they aren’t capable of true machine learning.

Is there one big difference between AI and automation?

You probably picked up on the big difference: machine learning. AI mimics human intelligence, learning from new data and improving its responses over time. In advertising, AI can suggest highly targeted ads based on audience behaviour. 

(Is your phone listening to your conversations? Maybe. Is AI learning from the sites you visit online and the content you engage with? Definitely.)

On the other hand, automation works with a fixed set of information and can’t adapt beyond its programming. As mentioned, automated chatbots in customer service are often confused as AI. They can handle basic inquiries, but they don’t understand context or grow from their interactions with users. 

Remember, a robot on an assembly line isn’t sentient. No need to worry about the T-1000… Yet.

How is the creative industry using AI and automation?

The goal is to liberate human creativity and make room for innovation. To let you play and create while AI and automation tackle mundane tasks, like data processing and summarizing boring research papers. 

Simply put, the technology [AI and automation tools] can be used to save you time.

But how are they being used specifically? Here are five ways marketers and advertisers are using AI and automation:

1. Content creation: This includes drafting article outlines and helping with research, creating preliminary design layouts and image editing, and suggesting topics for content and editorial calendars based on your specific target audiences.
   
2. Personalization and targeting: AI analyzes massive amounts of data to identify patterns and insights that would take humans days (or years) to process. This speeds up and refines segmentation and targeting in campaigns, leading to more personalized marketing and messaging.
   
3. Automated workflows: Automation streamlines repetitive tasks, such as scheduling social media posts, optimizing ads, and managing email marketing campaigns. This not only saves time but also allows creative teams to focus more on strategy, design, and messaging.
   
4. Customer insights and analytics: Since AI analyzes large datasets quickly and provides useful insights, it helps guide strategic planning. This includes forecasting consumer trends and tracking campaign performance in real-time.
   
5. Assisting creativity: AI is becoming a creative partner. AI-driven design tools can create mockups in minutes to help sell ideas, while generative text tools can help writers brainstorm and edit content faster and more effectively.

That said, AI and automation tools are not replacements. The content created is often generic and unoriginal; it can be riddled with errors and sometimes plagiarized. Without you and your input, before and after, the result is blah at best. And let’s face it, sometimes glitches occur—a scheduled post isn’t published or the system crashes and workflows are cancelled.

Most importantly, human connection is needed now more than ever, with deep fakes and misinformation taking over the internet. Remember, machines are soulless. Trust and relationships are built by real people interacting with each other—from me to you, brand to consumer.

Was this article written by AI?

Full disclosure, AI was used to create an outline for this blog post. It also aided the research phase, helping summarize content and provide insight into the topic. But the Terminator references and the real-world examples came from the human writer, along with the style and tone. It’s an example of how the two work together. 

(Oh, and automation was used to publish the social posts promoting the article on our Facebook and LinkedIn pages.)

With that out of the way, let’s wrap this up:

• AI is the brainy tech that learns and gets smarter over time. It helps you personalize ads, create content, and may even suggest your next favourite song.
  
• Automation is the dependable workhorse. It’s there for the repetitive stuff, like scheduling your banger tweets and speeding up the production line of your favourite car manufacturer.

These technologies aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. In fact, AI and Automation are evolving rapidly and will continue to impact the creative world. They’re more than buzzwords or the stuff of sci-fi movies—they’re real tools we’re using right now to make jobs easier and complement creativity. 

These technologies are taking human talent to the next level, not replacing it. Their most effective use is doing the grunt work, giving you more time to do what you love and enjoy most—whatever that might be. 

Here’s to the future of creativity. Hasta la vista, baby!

industry

She’s All That: Exploring Lipstick Theory, the Beauty Industry, and the Purchasing Power of Women

Whether it’s from a personal, professional, or economic viewpoint, the achievements of women often go overlooked in favour of our male counterparts. Take sports for example. Male athletes will simply be referred to as “the greatest athlete of all time,” but female athletes are “the greatest woman athlete”—even if their accomplishments are more notable. It feels as though there’s always an asterisk for the accomplishments of women, trying to find a way to diminish our success.

But to do so is to simply ignore facts. Ignore prominence. Ignore power. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez captured it perfectly, when she said “any attempt to make femininity trivial or unimportant is an attempt to take away my power. So I’m going to wear the red lipstick.”

The history and impact of Lipstick Theory

Red lipstick signifies more than just a style choice or bold statement. It’s an indicator of economic change. There are stats that specifically connect an uptick of sales in lipstick to an impending recession. In 2022, Forbes noted that as a recession was threatening, the sale of lipstick and “other lip makeup” grew 48% year-over-year in the first quarter. That’s twice as fast as any other beauty products. In 2023, the analytic firm Circana reported an 18% increase in Canadian beauty sales—again, even as the country was on the verge of recession. 

This is what’s known as the Lipstick Effect, or Lipstick Theory. 

Originally brought forward in 1998 by Juliet Schor in her book, The Overspent American, the theory is that during times of economic hardship, “[women] are looking for affordable luxury, the thrill of buying in an expensive department store.” Plus, they’re more likely to buy higher-end brands for beauty items they’ll be seen using in public, while the at-home items are an area where they can save. They’ll buy a high-end tube of lipstick, knowing it’ll be applied at work, bars, restaurants, etc., and in turn buy lower-end products they’ll use at home, like moisturizer, face wash, and serums. 

This can carry over more broadly, suggesting as money becomes tight, people are more willing to splurge on a “little treat” that makes them feel special rather than a big-ticket item. But at its core, it’s a fascinating look at how the beauty industry—a space predominantly held by women—can be used to predict, navigate, and analyze the overall economic market. 

Understanding the purchasing power of women

While the beauty industry might be the most well-researched area of how and when they spend, women have extreme purchasing power in other areas. When the 50 Shades of Grey book series was released in 2012, it couldn’t stay on the shelves. Neither could the adult toys associated with the content. The purchases directly related to the growing popularity of the books actually helped bring Britain out of recession by 1%. Three books. That’s all it took to create the biggest market stimulant of the time. 

While that may be a funny example to use, the overall message is clear. The purchasing power and spending habits of women are extremely valuable indicators of economic health, and can lead to noticeable changes.

Need more convincing? Here are some stats: 

• Nielsen projects women will own 75% of discretionary spending by 2028.
• Women are expected to control $40 trillion USD in consumer spending worldwide by 2030. In 2024, the forecasted total consumer (men and women) spend is $60.6 trillion USD.
• 89% of women say they have shared or primary responsibility for daily shopping.
• Women make 65% of new car purchase decisions.
• Women make 70% of all travel decisions.
• Women drive 70 to 80% of all consumer purchasing through buying power and influence. 

It’s not “just lipstick.”

The ugly truth of the beauty industry

If we’re looking towards the beauty industry as an economic indicator, then we need to fully understand what the beauty industry brings, and look a little more closely at why women feel obligated to keep up with beauty trends even in times of financial crisis. While it would be nice to believe every cosmetic purchase is born out of a love for one’s self and a desire to express creativity through makeup, societal pressures would point to that not being the case. 

Between the “#NoMakeup” movement being a constant undercurrent, and the latest boom of “Sephora Kids” taking over, there’s not only contradicting messaging being pushed on women, but also extreme pressures to be up to date with the latest trends—or else. 

Does no makeup really mean no makeup?

One of the most prominent showings of beauty industry contradictions is the #NoMakeup movement, which has been around for years now. The premise is that women choosing to wear no makeup are embracing their natural beauty, signaling to society or to themselves that they’re comfortable and confident in their own natural skin.

Going truly no-makeup involves little to no beauty work. It’s liberating in that it literally frees up your time and money. But this new #NoMakeup movement does the opposite. Unrealistic dermatology appointments, expensive serums and acids—to name a few—costing way more, ironically, than just applying the makeup you’re now supposed to reject. 

Alicia Keys famously announced she was going makeup free in 2016, saying her decision to go bare-faced was to combat her own superficial feelings towards beauty and the constant pressures to live up to other peoples’ expectations of her. She no longer wanted to cover up, and instead wanted to be her authentic self. Alicia Keys’ no-makeup routine was reported to have cost $455 which included “ice work to tighten the skin” and grated cucumber face masks (and much, much more).

Does this mean “no-makeup beauty” is just an extensive skincare routine that makes your skin more perfect, so you don’t need makeup? And doesn’t that undermine the entire purpose of the movement? Not to mention that most serums, creams, and treatments make the movement more daunting to those who can’t afford these types of luxuries. Is it gently and subtly signaling that the sort of beauty that is available to the masses, is therefore not beauty at all? The sort of expensive, behind-the-scenes upkeep needed to achieve this new, idealized no-makeup is now the new height of beauty? 

Rosanna Smith, a lead author of a research study that examined the relationship between the rise of the #NoMakeup movement from 2009 to 2016 and its correlation with makeup sales in the United States, said the #NoMakeup movement actually exacerbates a key tension that women have to manage. 

“I don’t know how much natural beauty movements actually help women,” Smith said. 

So the issue isn’t make-up. It’s the beauty industry and the system it operates under, and the rhetoric that keeps women in a constant state of questioning their worth through the lens of beauty. 

Makeup, no makeup, makeup, no makeup. It does two things: it keeps women buying whatever the latest product or regime is to meet the standard society dictates, and it keeps women competing against each other—continuing the giant wheel of oppression that puts women’s physical appearance at the forefront of their worth.

The role of brand in society 

There is a valid argument for makeup as a form of self expression, and basic grooming as self care and necessary for your health and functioning. But the large majority of beauty standards are about oppression and power, and we are participating in our own oppression by adhering to the standards without question. 

Brands play an important role in dictating a fair amount of the social narrative surrounding beauty. If consumers choose brands that are a direct reflection of their own set of beliefs, isn’t there a phenomenal opportunity for brands to speak up and engage consumers on a different set of values? 

In today’s society brands should draw attention to these cultural issues in a bid to promote more equality and inclusivity, and empower women rather than continue to divide and oppress. It’s up to brands to step into something of substance and adopt a rhetoric that says “buy our products, or don’t buy our products, just don’t buy into the feeling you have to.” And moreover, it’s up to the people buying those products to sit back and ask “why”?

Harnessing this knowledge as an industry

The importance of Lipstick Theory is two-fold. First, it’s a fascinating look into spending as a whole and how purchasing decisions can be driven by a desire for luxury while experiencing an economic downturn. But it’s also an eye-opening view into how we as branding and marketing professionals should be embracing the female audience even when the product or service isn’t specifically targeted at women. The product may not be for them, but the purchase is statistically likely to cross their purview, so don’t discount decision-making power they hold. 

These are some things to consider:

• Invest in research about the challenges your female audience may be facing. The easiest way to pose a solution is to understand the problem.
• Identify how you can make their lives easier or more efficient. As the person in charge of household spending, not to mention many other responsibilities, getting time back can be a large swaying factor.
• Appeal to the unique experiences of being a woman without pandering. Don’t try and force something, be authentic.
• Include women in the process throughout your entire ideation, development, and deployment process. It’s extremely evident when an advertisement for women is created by men.
• Avoid societal stereotypes. Anecdotally, advertisements where Mom is the buzzkill while Dad is the fun parent read tone-deaf and jurassic.
• Respect not only their time, but their intelligence. Belittling, condescension, and assumptions of inferiority aren’t going to take you far. 

And for the love of God, don’t make everything pink. 

industry

Touchdown or Fumble? Brand Consistency at the Big Game.

Once again, the ads run during America’s biggest sporting event are sparking a whirlwind of discussion. Some are calling them the best of the last five years. Others are disappointed, saying they lacked relevance or leaned too far into nostalgia skewed toward an older demographic.

Wherever you land on the field, you likely have a favourite or two. As brand integration consultants, we tend to reflect on the game-day commercials not in terms of favouritism but which brands were most faithful to their fundamental messaging.

After all, when the chatter dwindles, you’ve got to wonder which ads will be most effective in the long-run. Which will reinforce a brand’s core purpose and value proposition?

On that note, here are three that worked for us.

Dove’s Hard Knocks

Dove’s advertising is a masterclass in brand consistency, starting with its “Real Women” campaign in 2004, which drove sales by 700% in its first six months and earned the brand $150 million in free media time by 2007. 

Since, whether it’s redefining beauty or shining a light on mental health issues, Dove has been consistent with its message of superior care for all. This year’s spot is no different. 
The ad balances playfulness with an eye-opening resolution about girls’ self-esteem and confidence in sports. It’s clear Dove knows its brand, audience, and, most importantly, the values it wants to impart on viewers. 

Microsoft’s Copilot

Microsoft is on a mission to empower everyone to accomplish more. The brand says so itself, putting people at the heart of its purpose and focusing on a “mindset as opposed to a demographic.”

So, regardless of where you stand on AI, it’s hard to argue the link between the company’s mission and its new ad for Copilot, “your everyday AI companion.” The spot is a gritty underdog story grounded in defying the odds. It focuses on average people feeling galvanized to achieve their dreams with Copilot as their sidekick. And it lines up with the company’s promise.

Pfizer’s Here’s to Science

Firstly, isn’t it nice to talk about Pfizer outside the context of a global pandemic? In terms of its mission, the health-sciences company, founded in 1849, is in relentless pursuit of breakthroughs that change patients’ lives. In 2022, the company brought on its first CMO, Andreas Panayiotou, in an effort to focus on the storytelling behind the brand while still putting science first. 

Its ad, accompanied by Freddie Mercury belting “don’t stop me now,” celebrates 175 years of these breakthroughs. Better yet, it looks to the future, the next fight, and leaves viewers with an emotionally charged call to action. It’s safe to say the brand’s goal of entering into “a new era” is strongly represented, and it achieves Panayiotou’s goal of being modern, innovative, and patient-first. 

Here’s to the long game.

Big budgets, big celebs, big effects – the big game’s commercials are a tour de force, but what’s more important, a moment or a movement?

Yes, we all loved Arnold poking fun at his inimitable accent (talk about a good sport), and Michael CeraVe was downright hilarious. But is comedy always on brand? Is CeraVe funny any other time of the year?

Like football, brand building comes down to making incremental headway, and that comes down to building relationships and being consistent in conveying your value, beliefs, and purpose over time.

Ready to play the long game? Let’s uncover the truth of your brand and tell that story at every touchpoint. Contact us today to learn how.