Metamorphosis

Great marketing is neither art nor science. It's both.

Read on to learn why:

① Advertising platforms are using AI to adapt ads based on user response.

② No one ever made a decision because of a number. They need a story.

③ Global investors look to domestic investors for validation.

④ UK fintech has more advocate bodies than it needs.

⑤ The toxic relationship between news and search is getting more complicated.

⑥ Hype can be friend and foe.

⑦ Quality journalism has nothing to fear from artificial intelligence.

What's new

Meta announced this week that it’s using AI to overhaul its advertising business - and marketers can’t agree whether that’s a good or bad thing, the FT reports.

Source: The Financial Times, 28 February 2023

① In short:

“A Meta offering launched in August called Advantage+ uses artificial intelligence to automatically generate multiple adverts according to the specific objectives of the marketer, such as whether a brand is seeking to sell products or win new customers. The algorithms can run tests of potential ads and select what they think will be most effective, with the option to automatically alter text and images.”
“Because it can no longer track Apple users beyond its own app without permission, Meta must lean more on so-called first-party data — such as whether users like or comment on a post, or tag or mention specific brands.”
“Over time, Meta hopes to use generative AI — a fast-emerging technology that can be used to produce novel content such as graphics — in its ads systems to allow it to rapidly tweak text and images in campaigns based on users’ responses to them at faster rates than ever.”

Why it matters

This matters because, just in case you missed it, what Meta is really doing here is applying new tactics to an old strategy: keeping eyeballs glued to content - irrespective of whether that’s a good thing for the content consumer or its creator. No doubt the AI campaigns will outperform traditional ones, the metrics will look great, but will the end result be desirable?

By ceding control of their ad content to Meta’s algorithm in the pursuit of eyeballs, marketers will also be surrendering their brand’s most valuable asset: their voice, their unique message. They will likely get more attention but will the right people be watching, and will they be doing so for the right reason? High engagement - in the form of views, likes or comments - don’t necessarily translate into sales or even visits to your website.

That’s because marketing isn’t a science. Or at least it’s not just a science. At its best, marketing combines a data-driven approach with some fundamental creativity, some humanity. Without that, it won’t connect with your audience.

What to do about it

Take action

Despite what Zuckerberg and his ilk would have you believe, software isn’t the answer to every problem. The best marketing teams are a diverse group of

Scientists: They use data analysis to understand your market’s trends, your competitors and - most importantly - your target audience. They sift through the numbers to figure out your customers’ pain points and which channels to use to reach them.
Artists: They take your product’s message - which in B2B finance or technology is often hugely complex - and turn it into something simple, attention-grabbing and compelling. They apply wit, humour, and flair to create images, videos or words that your customers will relate to on an emotional level.

② As Daniel Kahneman, 2002 Nobel Prize winner in Economic Sciences wrote:

“No one ever made a decision because of a number. They need a story.”

What happens when your marketing team is just one person? Well, I hope they can metamorphose from scientist to artist and back again - half a dozen times a day.

Get help

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Join the InMarketing community, either on Twitter or on Substack (you’ll need to download the Substack app and head to the chat tab). Either way, you can ask questions of me and fellow senior marketing practitioners.

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Top stories

The other articles that are worthy of your time.

FINANCE

Is London's stock market losing its lustre?

③ Global investors look to domestic investors for validation. The UK’s are MIA.

“Daily trading in Apple shares alone is almost double the value of all trading on the London Stock Exchange. Over the past two decades, the percentage of UK pension fund assets invested in UK companies has fallen from over 40% to under 5%. They too prefer to do their shopping abroad. ”
“London staged something of a fightback in 2021, with its best year for new public listings since 2007. But 20 times as many companies raised 50 times as much money in the US - in the same period.”
“Just this week, the chief executive of a large international bank told me he remained confident that London and the UK would remain an attractive place for companies to raise money. The old virtues of time zone, language, trusted English law and a deep pool of talent remain valued. But for many companies, new and old, the most important value is the worth of their company, and as long as its worth more in a US shop window, the more companies will want to be displayed there.”

TECHNOLOGY

Centre for Finance, Innovation and Technology launches to boost UK fintech

④ UK fintech has more advocate bodies than it needs.

“The Centre for Finance, Innovation and Technology, a new private sector-led body, has officially launched in the UK with the aim to draw on expertise to set national strategy and drive growth in the sector.”
“Born out of the 2021 Kalifa Review, CFIT will bring together ‘coalitions of experts’ across finance, technology, academia and policy to help support fintech sector growth and the creation of ‘high-income’ tech jobs. The body will also aim to ‘power up’ the UK’s financial innovation sector, maximising economic growth across all regions of the UK and ensuring better outcomes for fintech firms, small and medium-sized enterprises and consumers.”
“CFIT will establish financial innovation hubs across the UK’s regions including Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland, as well as major cities such as Leeds, Manchester, Newcastle, Birmingham and Bristol. These hubs will enable cross-sector experts with a local focus to input on barriers to growth and ensure solutions benefit the whole of the UK and support the work of existing regional clusters to advance fintech innovation.”

MEDIA & MARKETING

AI is reaching behind newspaper paywalls

⑤ The interdependent, slightly toxic relationship between news and search is getting even more complicated.

“News organisations, which in the past two decades have seen most of their advertising revenue disappear online, accuse search engines and social networks of profiting from content that is not theirs. Google and Facebook retort that they merely display links and a few lines of text, rather than articles themselves, and that by doing so they drive traffic to publishers.”
“[But] search engines have been getting better at displaying information without referring visitors to external sources. About a quarter of desktop Google searches now end with no onward clicks. Artificial intelligence promises to improve this capability dramatically. Ask the old Bing for a summary of Canada’s last election results and it points to sites including CBC News and the Globe and Mail. Ask the new Bing and it gives a decent account by itself (along with footnoted links to sources). A user trying to find the New York Times’s recipe for macaroni and cheese will be stopped by a demand for payment and subscription. But ask Bing’s AI and it serves up a paraphrased version of the whole recipe, complete with a licking-lips emoji.”
“The chief counsel at one large media company argues that AI-search companies should be made to license the content they regurgitate, just as Spotify has to pay record labels to play their songs. AI’s use of others’ material is ‘the copyright question of our times’, he says. For years the complaints of publishers against platforms have rung somewhat hollow. Now they have a real story on their hands.”

WILDCARD

The uses and abuses of hype

⑥ Hype can be friend and foe. Use it carefully.

“An obvious temptation for entrepreneurs is to take advantage of the hype by making wild—even deceitful—promises. Wilful exaggeration might be a perfectly logical strategy if entrepreneurs are raising money once. But if they want to build a business, tap capital in repeated funding rounds or maintain a close relationship with investors and users, hype might become a liability.”
“Some dangers are obvious: disappointment and damaged credibility if things do not turn out as well as promised. Other dangers are more subtle: being too associated with a specific technology can reduce the room that startups have to pivot to a new product or business model.”
“Hype calls for care. A recent paper by Danielle Logue of University of Technology Sydney and Matthew Grimes of Judge Business School looked at the different paths taken by a number of social-investment stockmarkets that were set up in 2013 as the buzz over impact investing grew. The authors contrast the glitzier approach of an exchange in London, which attracted high-profile endorsements, promised a financial revolution and subsequently collapsed, with its more successful Canadian peer, which has relied more on expert advice and incrementalism.”