A People-First Approach for Using AI to Improve Marketing

AI-first or people-first? That question crystallizes a debate among the pundits, investors, and practitioners of AI, especially generative AI. Lines are being drawn and sides being chosen. The AI-first camp believes in wielding AI like a blunt instrument to wipe the slate clean and rethink how businesses orient themselves around AI. This rethink includes replacing people with AIoperate (it already is) including how marketing is done. And I am excited about this evolution of a powerful technology that will bring long-term value to businesses that are willing to use AI strategically. 

AI-First 

If you’ve been following the news lately, you’ve seen the startling announcements from companies leaning into AI to enact staff reductions. Since May 2023, U.S. firms have announced 4,600+ job reductions, as they seek to allocate resources for the recruitment of individuals with AI expertise or due to the technology taking over certain tasks. This figure comes from the outplacement agency Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. (However, this number likely falls short of the actual total, as Senior Vice President Andrew Challenger mentioned in an interview.) 

This is a result of AI-first thinking, a term that gets bandied about a lot. Venture capitalist Jeremiah Owyang summed up the AI-first mentality best in a recent New Yorker article about the resurgence the economy in San Francisco that is fueled in part by the rise of AI-focused businesses:  

“The A.I. industry is currently, but not for long, composed mostly of humans, and these humans are a social bunch,” Jeremiah Owyang, an entrepreneur and investor who works out of an Airstream trailer, said. “I’ve been to meetups on the beach, bonfires. I’ve been to house parties. That is their life stage. This is when you get your partners, get your V.C.s.” Such human pleasures wouldn’t last, he said. Workplaces in the industry were transitioning to a model known as A.I. First. “A.I. First means you turn to A.I. before you talk to a human. A.I. First means you turn to an A.I. before you hire. If the A.I. doesn’t do it, you build it. If you can’t build it, then you hire someone.” He added, “That is a precursor of what’s going to happen to corporate America.” The downtown of the future, then, will be a smaller, tighter, less worker-oriented place. 

This kind of mentality has produced an industry of consultants from large and small businesses who position themselves as AI gurus. They seek to make money by counseling businesses on how to define completely new models, new ways of working, and new breakthrough ideas with AI. This is not to say they are wrong about the potential for AI to achieve massive breakthroughs. But the difference between AI-first and human-first thinkers is that the former camp views AI as the lens through which to view the entire business, including the expendable role that people play. 

People-First 

The people-first camp is just as strongly wedded to AI as the AI-first camp, but they believe AI should permeate the organization to improve it. If this means rethinking the way the business operates, then so be it – but AI is a catalyst, not the North Star. The people-first camp is more likely to ask how they can use tools such as Microsoft Copilot to improve how work is done, not to eliminate people. A recently published New York Times column by LinkedIn’s Aneesh Raman and Maria Flynn, president of Jobs for the Future, expresses nicely the collective thinking of the people-first camp. They argue that with AI already demonstrating its power to rethink how we work, simply replacing people with AI undercuts the value of AI. They write: 

Ultimately, for our society, this comes down to whether we believe in the potential of humans with as much conviction as we believe in the potential of A.I. If we do, it is entirely possible to build a world of work that not only is more human but also is a place where all people are valued for the unique skills they have, enabling us to deliver new levels of human achievement across so many areas that affect all of our lives, from health care to transportation to education.  

They also observe that over 70 percent of executives surveyed by LinkedIn in 2023 said soft skills were more important to their organizations than highly technical AI skills. And, a recent Jobs for the Future survey says that 78 percent of the 10 top-employing occupations classified uniquely human skills and tasks as “important” or “very important.” If those skills are indeed so important, why not lean into AI to improve them? 

To bring things full circle: Jeremiah Owyang, who I cited above, also acknowledges this reality. Recently on LinkedIn he wrote: 

Notice the part about AI being integrated across every marketing role. He got that right! 

A People-First Application of AI in Marketing 

So, how might a people-first approach improve marketing? It’s all about applying AI to do work better and to challenge your teams to envision new roles for themselves. AI keeps proving itself everyday as a valuable aid to workflows, such as how IDX helps businesses manage digital assets more effectively by applying AI-powered search in marketing middleware. This is something people don’t even necessarily see. But AI is working behind the scenes to unlock the value of the assets they need to use content effectively. AI can be front and center, too. But the important thing is to keep people front and center.  

Learn more about how we use technology to improve marketing.