Generative AI Redefines Modern Marketing
Key Points
- Alexa Zamco likens the rise of generative AI in marketing to turning ordinary sand into glass, emphasizing that a simple, unremarkable material can be transformed into a powerful tool for new perspectives.
- As IBM’s global leader for intelligent marketing, she bridges C‑level marketing needs with IBM’s technical teams, using insights from marketers to shape AI‑driven solutions.
- Generative AI is already reshaping marketing in two major ways: automating content creation (blogs, banners, posters, etc.) through easy text prompts, and enhancing personalization by mining structured and unstructured data to uncover hidden patterns and insights.
- For large enterprises, successfully scaling generative AI requires rigorous brand, product, and legal alignment, ensuring the models understand company values and constraints before being deployed at scale.
Full Transcript
# Generative AI Redefines Modern Marketing **Source:** [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c54qSfmTT5U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c54qSfmTT5U) **Duration:** 00:11:59 ## Summary - Alexa Zamco likens the rise of generative AI in marketing to turning ordinary sand into glass, emphasizing that a simple, unremarkable material can be transformed into a powerful tool for new perspectives. - As IBM’s global leader for intelligent marketing, she bridges C‑level marketing needs with IBM’s technical teams, using insights from marketers to shape AI‑driven solutions. - Generative AI is already reshaping marketing in two major ways: automating content creation (blogs, banners, posters, etc.) through easy text prompts, and enhancing personalization by mining structured and unstructured data to uncover hidden patterns and insights. - For large enterprises, successfully scaling generative AI requires rigorous brand, product, and legal alignment, ensuring the models understand company values and constraints before being deployed at scale. ## Sections - [00:00:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c54qSfmTT5U&t=0s) **Generative AI Transforming Marketing** - In this opening, IBM’s Alexa Zamco explains how generative AI serves as the latest breakthrough—paralleling glass’s evolution—to help marketers move from broad, untargeted campaigns toward highly personalized, AI‑driven customer experiences by bridging CMO challenges with IBM’s technical solutions. ## Full Transcript
glass can give us New Perspectives from
the microscopic Universe to the farthest
galaxies but before glass could do or be
any of those incredible things it was
something else sand we learned how to
transform the unremarkable into the
extraordinary for marketers that moment
of Discovery and transformation is right
now with the arrival of generative AI
welcome to the AI Academy my name is
Alexa zamco I'm the global off ing
leader for intelligent marketing at IBM
and as such I do a lot of thinking
writing and Publishing about marketing
technology but at the core my job has
two parts the first is I have the unique
opportunity to work with Chief marketing
officers to figure out what their needs
and challenges are and how technology
can help them and Lead their teams to
deliver exceptional
performance now I take that insight and
Industry knowledge back and share with
the technical teams within IBM to help
them build Solutions to meet those
challenges today all of my conversations
increasingly revolve around AI
specifically how generative AI is going
to change marketing how we work how we
create and how we deliver exceptional
experiences for customers marketing has
come a long way from the Decades of mass
advertising and untargeted Direct Mail
Ai and Technology have helped marketers
be more precise as to who we reach out
to with what message and offers that we
feel are most relevant we've moved
towards customization but
personalization continues to be a future
State goal we're trying to create
moments when marketing helps us identify
exactly what we need or maybe discover
the one thing we didn't even know we
wanted and that's where generative AI
comes in with large language models and
multimodal models that have the ability
to make use of structured unstructured
unlabeled data across internal and
external sources to discover patterns
correlations and insights that we
couldn't see before for and to help us
gain insights and take action on those
discoveries and we don't yet know
everything that's going to come out of
this huge moment of generative AI
disruption but for marketers Genai is
already making its Mark in two key ways
content creation and
personalization the first wave of
generative AI content creation is
happening right now with marketers
exploring and using apps to generate
marketing blogs web banners posters and
so much more generative AI is unleashing
the power of advanced creative tools to
companies both large and small with the
ability to engage in the creative
process through Simple Text prompts that
provide guidance to the models as well
as flexibility to iterate and regenerate
at the Press of a button the creative
process for large Enterprises though
that requires us to step back and
recognize the need for the generative
models that we use to have a clear and
concise understanding of the brand the
company values the product portfolio
even the legal considerations for
generative AI to be used scale within
the Enterprise tuning and training
models to be brand knowledgeable it's a
necessity once we have models that
understand your company your brand your
products and services and most
importantly your customers how are we
going to take advantage of this powerful
capability let's start at the beginning
of the creative process and change the
way creatives ideate provide guidance as
to the customer need Persona concept and
put gen to work creating a raft of ideas
to jump start your product teams writers
and designers once you get past ideation
you can land on your idea and move into
what I'll call the creative production
process the magic of a big creative idea
it needs to be brought to life through a
series of discipline steps we call this
the content supply chain and for
Enterprise clients it's truly like a
production line once you've landed on
your target parameters your message your
offer and your creative got to put it
into the assets that can then be
executed across channels and all those
steps are incredibly timec consuming and
a lot of them are very manual like I
need to take this ad I've got to put it
into 16 different languages five
different formats executing on all these
derivative versions of your creative is
a production task that can be automated
with confidence that's where generative
AI can play a big role because it can
take those tasks and quickly and
effectively move them through the
production process a lot faster and
that's going to free up marketers from
doing very mundane and routine
activities to allow them to put their
Focus back on strategic and creative
work now the second disruptive
opportunity is personalization where
generative capabilities may have even
more impact for years AI has been
helping marketers identify targets
predict attrition recommend products and
more but the AI couldn't create content
generative Ai and its ability to create
or customize its speed means it's now
possible to personalize messages in much
more granular ways this allows for micro
segmentation addressing very specific
needs and attributes while still
ensuring a Brand's voice and offer is
properly represented with the power to
generate and create in near real time it
opens the door to much more relevant
perhaps even individual messages and we
call this personalization at scale
Imagine A system that can predict read
and react to customer inputs on the Fly
responding to and engaging with
customers now let me share an example
I'm a marketer for a chain of movie
theaters and I see a bunch of complaints
coming in I want to be able to respond
very quickly and even zero in on
appropriate responses to retain my
customers and the shared wallet so let's
say a customer named Stephanie complains
that the projector broke during the
movie she's watching generative AI can
read her complaint summarize it back and
generate a response very quickly
Stephanie I'm so sorry the projector
broke down yesterday at Queensway mall
and as a valued customer your next movie
is free
gen can assemble the information from
her viewing history with the incident
she experienced and provide a highly
personal response now that's just one
example but you can imagine that same
type of scenario playing out across
almost any point of customer contact
what we know about customers and what we
can infer from data about prospective
customers can let us create a really
engaging experience in near real time
but on a practical level how do we get
started
in our recent Global survey 67% of CMOS
stated that they plan on implementing
generative AI in the next 12 months and
86% in 24 months the writing's on the
wall so to speak but there's still a lot
of uncertainty as marketing leaders look
for ways to incorporate AI but to do it
safely responsibly and effectively and
complexity of implementation is the
number one concern Enterprises are
naturally cautious I get it how however
this movement toward generative AI is
driven not just by the big Tech firms
but by customers themselves they're
interacting with geni Solutions now in
their everyday lives and their
expectations of Highly personal
interactions are setting a new bar for
companies 76% of CMOS we surveyed
indicated they must Implement gen or
lose their Competitive Edge in the
market you want to put some thought into
what you can effectively buy and use Off
the Shelf versus what you should curate
yourself and how a blend of those things
might look in your
organization there will be generative AI
baked into a ton of products and we're
already seeing it this is AI at a
pervasive level think about gen AI built
into your word processors your image
editors it's a business accelerator but
it's not a differentiator everybody will
have access then at the next level
you'll have ai as a service with
marketing Centric offerings and API
Integrations available you'll start to
see some separation here as you can get
clever about how and where you implement
it but you may only have limited control
over the model or the data and
ultimately if the service is available
to you it's available to your
competitors too and finally you have the
platform approach where you have the
power and capability to customize and
oversee your own AI you can pick and
update models you can train and tune
with your proprietary data and you can
build the specific Solutions you need
when you need them this is your AI lab
atory to experiment with all the tools
and infrastructure you need to get
creative and start inventing to really
differentiate you need to get to the
platform level that's where your
proprietary data becomes an
extraordinary source of value it holds
the key to everything that makes your
business your business and for marketers
it truly reflects your brand data is
everything when it comes to AI there's
no AI without data so treat it like a
precious resource for marketers the
foundation of any any gen programs
ensuring that your model has a deep
understanding of your brand to do this
you need to collect digitize and connect
the data that reflects these elements
that's what you'll use to tune train and
refine your models legal compliance to
local laws is something we're all going
to need to consider as countries Define
how they're going to protect consumers
and customers in this new world of
generative capabilities and since the
data you leverage for customization is
sensitive you'll need to ensure security
and governance is built into your
processes now you can start doing all
this right now even before you have gen
in place one powerful yet challenging
aspect of gen modelist is is they're
continually learning so it's important
to build out a program that continually
refreshes and monitors your models with
access rules and evaluation to ensure
they're on brand and not demonstrating
bias you might think of this as your gen
model Steward it's all part of a
critical AI governance practice I talked
earlier with a focus on customer facing
applications but we shouldn't Overlook
the value of internal employee
applications There's an opportunity to
accelerate productivity but beyond that
internal Transformations create an
invaluable opportunity for Learning and
experimentation your marketers will
experience organizational change
management to embrace and harness these
powerful new tools this is a human and
Technology change we're experiencing
just think how generative AI can be an
active assistant you know riding along
with marketers to help them ideate
create and innovate this might mean
streamlining automating processes
aligning tasks to roles and building
real-time Dynamic training just think
how gen can be a GameChanger for market
research all that unstructured data
you've collected May hold customer or
product insights that you may not have
even known to look for but they're
visible with Gen and accessible to
marketers through simple natural
language queries the sky is the limit
here there's real value to be uncovered
internally and as you build Ai and data
skills in this environment you'll be
better prepared to create external
applications that wow your
customers generative AI is going to
change the way marketers work and almost
every activity will be affected in some
way but that doesn't mean that
everything has to change at once your
company is going to build up your AI
marketing capability the same way you
built up security expertise the same way
you learn data management find one great
use case and tackle that as you build
your gen muscles you're not alone we're
all learning and reimagining together
and there's help available if you need
it now thank you for watching I hope
I've brought some clarity to the road
ahead with Gen and maybe lit a fire to
start your
transformation but AI does go so much
farther than marketing if you'd like to
learn more about other aspects of AI for
business you can check out the rest of
the AI Academy library and watch this
space for upcoming
sessions