Why Prompting Well Will Stop Being Impressive and Judgement Will Become the Real Skill

0:00I think one of the biggest mistakes marketers could make with AI is assuming the future of marketing is simply doing exactly what we do now, but faster. So, let's discuss. Welcome to the most prolific AI marketing podcast out there in a nutshell. This is the daily 10 minute podcast where I take out all of the techie talk around generative AI, focusing on what the everyday person, content creator, and marketer wants to hear. Now, I've only got 10 minutes, so I can only focus on one subject. And today, I want to just give you my thoughts about the future of marketing. Now, I've got a lot of thoughts about this. This is just one thing that I think will happen when it comes to marketing. And I've only got 10 minutes as well. So, that's the other thing as well. So, I'll probably do a few of these over the next. What between now and the end of the year. And if you look at marketing now or in the previous world, for years,

1:05being good at marketing, often being good at producing things. So, you would write copy, you would build presentations, you would create campaigns, you would pull reports, you would plan the content. And then you'll probably do the same thing again, the following week, and then the week after that and the week after that. AI obviously makes that a lot quicker. But if AI can produce 10 versions of something in the time it used to take you to produce one, your value can't continue to be based entirely on your ability to produce things. It starts moving, your value starts going elsewhere. And I think, if you look at music, like, music is a really good example. As you know, I worked in a music industry for 10 years. So, I always like to use music as examples. And if you look at a producer, so imagine a music producer working with an artist. The producer doesn't necessarily play every instrument or they write every lyric or sing every vocal or mix every track.

2:06Their value is being able to listen to everything and say, that works. That doesn't lose that section. The chorus needs tweaking here or there or do that again. They're valuable because they know what good sounds like. And I think marketing is starting to move in that direction because imagine you're running a campaign and AI gives you 20 headlines and five emails and free landing pages and a campaign plan before you've finished your first coffee in the morning. Sounds brilliant, but somebody still has to decide what's actually worth using. And that's where I think the conversation about AI and jobs sometimes goes slightly wrong. I've heard many people say if AI writes copy, what happens to the copyrighter. But I think there's another question that's starting to emerge and that is what becomes more valuable when producing the copy becomes cheap. Same thing happened with music. Music went from 10 pound for audio cassette, 15 pounds for CD to music is free.

3:13So people needed to work out the value. And ultimately what we're going to see is judgment. I think judgment is going to play a big part knowing which idea is actually interested or knowing when something sounds completely off brand or known when AI has produced something technically competent but boring. More output doesn't automatically mean better marketing like it used to Netflix could release 500 new programs tomorrow that doesn't mean you suddenly have 500 things worth watching probably about 300 because Netflix pretty good. But it doesn't mean more content that means we're better. They do a lot of content not necessarily for us, but that's another conversation. Anyway, someone still has to make the choice. Someone still has to make choices and this is why I don't think the marketing of the future is simply somebody who becomes incredibly good at prompting. Obviously prompting matters and I still say prompting is one of the fundamentals of AI.

4:16But the more capable these systems become, the less impressive it is that you can get AI to produce something. Ultimately the question then becomes whether you can direct it properly. So it's almost like marketing directors, but directors not as head of marketing. I'm talking directors like a film director because I feel that the roles will include things like instead of sitting down thinking I need to write free emails today. Maybe you start thinking how do I create a process that consistently gives me free good emails and where do I need to step in? And then I can build that workflow because that's a completely different skill because now you're thinking about the outcome or the standards, the checks and the decisions rather than just like doing everything. But don't get me wrong. There's a danger here as well. AI can give you something that looks finished and finished looking work and create the impression that the thinking has already been done. But a beautifully written campaign idea can still be a bad campaign idea.

5:18I remember hearing somebody said, I remember I think it was in the fresh prints and I remember somebody said, will that's the idea and he said, yeah, but that's a bad idea. And I always remembered that so it can give you ideas and idea generation is one of the 12 AI essentials that I talk about. But sometimes it's a bad idea. I've seen AI come up with really good polished reports and then when you kind of read it a bit more, you realize that it's wrong. Or like a social media post that structured beautifully and then you read it is absolutely nothing interested in what's been said. So I don't think expertise becomes less important as AI improves. I think it changes where expertise shows up. So maybe instead of spending all your experience expertise producing the first version on the first draft, you might use it more of it deciding what should exist in the first place and whether what AI has created is actually good. Now don't get me wrong. If you like creating and create to your hearts content, you know, still do that.

6:23But I would also look at this version as well, start practicing now. And maybe just focus on one thing, something that you produce like repeatedly, maybe it's a weekly report, like your social media report, something like that. Maybe it's email copy, maybe it's turning one piece of content into different formats. Then ask yourself, could I create a process where AI does more of the production or the creation and I concentrate more on the decisions? Because this is a muscle that marketers I feel needs to start developing, not simply using AI, but directing it. So in a nutshell, AI isn't simply making marketers faster. It's starting to change where the value of the marketer actually sits. If machines can produce more of the first draft, the human advantage moves towards direction and judgment and taste and knowing what good actually looks like. Because the future marketer probably isn't the person who can create the most work. It will probably be the person who can make the best decisions about what gets produced in the first place.