Will ChatGPT and Sora disrupt the marketing industry?

With the emergence and iteration of artificial intelligence products, the marketing industry seems to be disrupted and some professionals will lose their careers. But in fact, although AI can improve efficiency, human strategic thinking can never be replaced; the resulting technological gap will further widen the advantage gap between marketers, making the strong stronger and the weak weaker.

The marketing industry is disrupted every now and then. The last time it was disrupted was when ChatGPT and Midjourney appeared. At that time, many people were saying that copywriters and graphic designers would soon be out of work.

This time, it is Sora that is disrupting the industry. Many people believe that Sora has made video production no longer difficult, and directors, editors, photographers and other workers will soon be unemployed.

It makes sense to say that these AI tools have revolutionized the marketing industry. The above tools have greatly improved the efficiency of copywriting, posters, and TVC production. Sometimes, they can directly complete these tasks. In the past few years, the marketing industry has not escaped the three major weapons of manuscripts, posters, and TVC. Many marketers don’t know what else to do without these three.

Some companies are recruiting prompt engineers, which means that these companies do not need professionals who can write or design specifically, they just need to be good at communicating and interacting with AI.

If this continues, copywriters, designers and other workers in the marketing industry will indeed be unemployed.

But from my observation, although the marketing industry is depressed, not many people have lost their jobs directly because of ChatGPT. Most marketing agencies use AI to assist marketers rather than replace them, because at present, although AI is powerful, there are still some core tasks that can only be done by humans.

1. AI cannot replace human strategic thinking

In my daily work, I interact with many marketing and advertising suppliers, and I also get some information from them. In their feedback, I found a problem. Although they are interacting with the same business under Party A, the people they interact with are different, and the working methods, efficiency, results, etc. are very different.

Some people describe their needs very clearly, and suppliers know what to do and how to do it as soon as they read the brief, and the final product is satisfactory to the client. Some people do not describe their needs clearly at all, and after many phone calls, the supplier still does not understand what the client wants, and the final result is of course not much better.

We can think of the brief as a description of needs when communicating with AI. People with high skills and rich experience can clearly tell AI what they want, and AI can also give appropriate results based on their prompts. However, people with low skills and little experience find it difficult to describe their needs clearly to AI, and it is also difficult for them to get what they want through AI.

Giving a brief may seem simple, but behind it is actually the client's multi-faceted understanding of the market, project, boss, and target audience. This is also the core of marketing. Combining the specific work modules of marketing, let's see whether AI can replace humans.

1. Strategy: AI is the core of marketing and cannot be replaced

Marketing work seems simple, with copywriting, posters, and TVCs reflected at the front end, but the most critical thing behind it is strategy. All senior marketers understand one thing: if the marketing strategy is wrong, no matter how touching the copywriting, how exquisite the design, or how good the story is, it will be meaningless.

If you ask ChatGPT to give you a marketing strategy for a certain brand, it is powerless. If you force it to give a marketing strategy, it will most likely give you a media strategy. Answers like the following are completely unsatisfactory.

Insight is needed behind the strategy. In the first episode of Mad Men, when Don Draper was thinking about strategy for a cigarette, he went to a bar and talked with the waiter, trying to gain a deeper understanding of consumers' choice motivations and their emotional connection with the brand. This scene shows Draper's insight as an advertiser and how he finds advertising ideas that can touch the target audience from the details of daily life. This is obviously something that ChatGPT is powerless to do.

For marketing, whether the strategy is correct or not is related to whether the marketing goals can be achieved. In terms of providing marketing strategies, the gap between AI and senior marketers is very large.

After the strategy, let’s talk about the specific copywriting, posters and videos.

2. Copywriting: AI can provide ideas

ChatGPT can now help marketers do a lot of writing work, especially in press releases that have a certain pattern. Its completion rate can reach more than 60%, but ChatGPT cannot directly give out copy that 100% meets the requirements.

For example, writing a slogan for a brand may seem like a simple slogan, but behind it is the aggregation of multiple needs of the market, consumers, bosses, etc. In this case, AI cannot achieve the goal. As in the example below, you can ask ChatGPT to give as many results as possible, but these results are unlikely to be used directly.

The role of people here is to communicate with ChatGPT in multiple rounds to let it understand what changes have taken place in the market, what consumers’ needs are, and what the boss’s requirements are. Based on this, AI gives a reference, and you combine these results to optimize.

3. Poster: AI can improve efficiency

AI has indeed greatly improved the efficiency of designers in visual design. Take e-commerce image production as an example. I have a friend who is responsible for producing e-commerce images for a brand. In the past, it might cost 10,000 or even tens of thousands to produce a picture through a traditional agency. But now, with the help of AI technology, he can produce pictures in batches and quickly at a price of 1,000 yuan per picture.

The header images of some of my recent WeChat articles were all made by Dall-E, and these images basically meet my requirements. The following image with the theme of "AI replaces visual designers" was generated by Dall-E.

However, not all images can be directly completed by AI. For example, for brand posters that are related to brand image, to make such posters, designers generally need to first refine the unique features of the brand and then express them with artistic techniques. At the same time, most posters also require appropriate copywriting. AI certainly cannot meet this requirement.

Currently, most of the brand posters on the market are not made by AI. Some posters may be assisted by tools such as Midjourney. A small number of brand posters made with AI are more gimmicks than practical functions. They often mark the pictures as generated by AI to trigger discussions in the industry.

Like the AI-made advertisement below, regardless of how well it was made, the core point expressed in the picture, "50% off on all items", is definitely not something AI can provide.

A good application scenario is marketing proposals. When Party B makes a proposal to Party A, it is very suitable to use AI to make pictures. In order to express a scene in the proposal, it seems unconvincing without a sample poster, and it is not cost-effective to ask the designer to create it. Using AI can solve this problem.

4. Video: Script and topic selection skills cannot be replaced by AI

Since Sora came out, there have been constant rumors that directors and editors will lose their jobs. Judging from the finished video provided by Sora, it can generate videos up to 1 minute long with a very high degree of completion. It seems that Sora can also complete shots that previously required real shots or special effects.

But for videos, the core competitiveness lies in the story, not the visual presentation. For example, Jia Zhangke's "Xiao Wu" did not cost much to shoot, but because of its rich story and profound meaning, it became a classic in film history.

The core reason why many Disney movies are classics is that their original stories are touching, not how good the special effects are. Facts have proven countless times that no matter how good the special effects are, if the story is not good, the movie will not be good. Marvel has so many works, but the ones that really make people remember are those with good stories.

When videos first became popular in the past two years, Banfoxianren's works had a very high number of views on Bilibili. Now it seems that his videos can be made by AI, because most of these videos are made by uncopyrighted emoticons. The content of such videos can be described as crude, but because of the excellent scripts, the audience also likes them. He himself said that the core competitiveness of the video is the script.

Sora is a good thing for short video platforms like Tik Tok and Video Account. It can help such bloggers to quickly produce content. However, there are still two points that cannot be replaced by humans. One is the script mentioned just now. If you don’t even have a good script, then you will definitely not be able to produce a good short video.

Some people say that I can ask ChatGPT to give me a script. Of course I can. This brings us to the second point. What kind of script do you want ChatGPT to give me? What kind of script do you think can produce good content? Here, the blogger's ability to select topics is very important, and this ability is precisely what AI does not have.

Finally, let me give you an example. Suppose you are the marketing director of a company, and you have copywriters, designers, photographers and other employees under you. The most important ability you need as the director is to understand the market, make strategic decisions, and then let your subordinates execute them.

You can regard copywriters, designers, photographers and other employees as AI, but if you cannot clearly define goals and strategies, cannot clearly convey them to employees, and cannot accurately describe your needs, then employees will not be able to provide appropriate content.

2. The technological gap makes the strong stronger and the weak weaker

As previously analyzed, ChatGPT and Sora will not make marketers unemployed, at least they will not make senior marketers unemployed, because the strategies, insights, and clear output of needs behind marketing are capabilities that AI does not currently possess.

However, these tools do improve the efficiency of marketers, and marketers who are good at using these tools can quickly widen the gap with others.

There is a saying that if you can use ChatGPT 4, you have surpassed 90% of people, because the threshold for obtaining ChatGPT 4 is not low. If you can apply ChatGPT 4 to your work for a long time, you are probably ahead of 95% of people.

If a senior marketing staff can make good use of AI tools, it is equivalent to having copywriters, designers and other employees under his command. He can complete the work that previously required a team to complete by himself. For such a person, technology can increase his output efficiency several times. However, for those junior marketers, they lack strategies, insights, and the ability to clearly output requirements, which also means that it is difficult for them to make full use of AI tools.

The gap in experience and ability already exists, and when coupled with the difference in technology utilization, the gap between the two will only grow larger.

Therefore, ChatGPT and Sora will not make experienced and skilled AI users unemployed, but will instead strengthen their advantages.

Author: Xunkong

Source: WeChat public account "Xunkong's Marketing Revelation (ID: xunkong2005)"