Ireland Marketers… This is the Way of Future Marketing!

Last week I had the pleasure of giving a masterclass on generative AI (GenAI) as a keynote at DMX, the annual National Digital Conference organized by the Marketing Institute of Ireland (MII). This year, the conference was hosted at one of the new campuses of the Technological University Dublin (TU Dublin) by Grangegorman. And there were 3 main themes:

• Brand management
• AI best practices
• Leadership and management

My Takeaways from DMX 2024

Whenever I participate in an industry event like DMX, it’s always a learning experience for me. Because in these domain-specific conferences, I am usually never a subject matter expert. Rather I am invited to bring my unique expertise (e.g. AI, ML, etc.) into these disciplines. So I am very fortunate, as I often find myself at the intersection of many different disciplines. As such, I always learned a great deal from the other presenters (usually domain experts) and attendees (usually domain practitioners) who live and breathe a different air than myself.

Clearly, I am no expert in marketing, let alone brand management or leadership. So here are a few of my quick takeaways from my fellow presenters and panelists

• Branding is NOT Marketing
• Many people can be marketers, but few can be brand builders
• While marketing is taught in many programs and business schools, branding is not
• The brand must be simple and make sense to everyone and anyone within the company, otherwise, you will have a harder time convincing customers outside the company
• LLMs’ collective knowledge about a brand can serve as a 24/7 virtual focus group; moreover, asking the LLMs about a brand can avoid self-selection and other forms of biases
• Don’t let people experiment with AI in the dark; bring them to light, empower them with resources, and make them shine
• With the help of GenAI, marketing could be so good (i.e. not just hyper-personalized, but hyper-contextualized) that maybe it’s something that people want, and would even pay for
• Be curious, it makes you a better leader if you are willing to learn from those you lead
• Be frequently reminded that we are all humans in the grand scheme, it connects us better with one another

This is the Way… To Get my DMX 2024 Presentation

If you landed here, you are probably looking to get the PDF slides that I said I would provide during my keynote. Don’t worry, it’s right here (below). I always keep my promises! There are a lot of slides, and to be honest, I wasn’t even sure how I was going to cramp all 78 slides into 60 minutes. But thank you for your undivided attention and lively interaction. Your cooperation made it seem like a breeze.

Conclusion

Overall, I was delighted to be back in Dublin to keynote this year’s DMX 2024. As Shane McGonigle (CEO of MII) mentioned, you can learn all the digital skills and all the marketing tactics anywhere, but some things you can only learn at DMX. I certainly learned something, and I hope you did too. So I hope that by the next time I see you, I will be learning from all of you about how you have used GenAI in your respective marketing work, whatever they may be, and what kind of performance and business outcome you are able to drive.

Although there are currently no established best practices for GenAI in marketing, because this tech hasn’t been around long enough for best practices to develop yet. However, with a deep understanding of the tech and science behind GenAI (which you all have now), you are well-equipped to make good decisions about how best to experiment with this fascinating tech. And I believe that together, as an extended MII family, we can create the GenAI best practices for future generations of marketers.

This is the way!