AI is ubiquitous at South by Southwest. It underpins hallway conversations, happy hours, onstage discussions, keynotes, and coffee meetups. The reality is that generative AI is changing everything, fast.
That’s as true for marketing as it is for any industry. AI is transforming workflows, speeding up creative production, upending predictable marketing funnels, and creating personalized targeting and product discovery.
A group of high-level brand and agency executives gathered at ADWEEK House at SXSW to discuss how they’re implementing and experimenting with new tech without losing human connection and creativity.
AI isn’t always going to save time
AI can bring efficiencies to workflows, but that doesn’t always mean that you’re going to save time overall, executives said. There’s a lot of legwork involved in adding new tech into an organization.
“You can’t take an AI capability and just put it on top of old processes, old technology, and expect that the people move—and expect that all of a sudden, your company culture is going to shift,” said Ndidi Oteh, global CEO of Accenture Song.
“How do we think about talent, or how do we make sure we have an operating level that supports that? How do we make sure we have a workbench that is more than a point solution, but transforms the way that we work?”
Stephanie Mencarelli, vp of design for Adobe’s document cloud, pointed to a study showing that about 15% of people working in tech are AI “power users.”
“The cognitive dissonance right now is real,” Mencarelli said. “What is the hype versus what is the reality?”
People using AI aren’t necessarily working less, noted Allison Stransky, CMO of Samsung. Instead, they’re actually putting in more hours. She said they’re energized by AI, and time saved is redeployed elsewhere.
Know AI’s boundaries
For marketers, it’s critical to understand where ethical guardrails need to be enforced, executives agreed.
“Connectedness matters more than ever,” said Attica Jaques, CMO at Ancestry. That’s especially true within companies, she said, highlighting the close collaboration that exists between tech, engineering, and marketing at Ancestry.
