3 Themes for Brand Leaders in ‘23

CMOs and brand leaders are facing reduced budgets and increased expectations heading into 2023. As a result, we are seeing an increased consideration of AI solutions to bridge the resource gap. Here are three themes that brand leaders will have top of mind entering 2023:

Generative AI ELI5: Solutions that create artificial video, image, text, and/or content.

Why it matters: If content is king, the barrier to create it just came crashing down (see our post generated by one such solution). By no means does this mean it’s objectively “great” content, but the rate of innovation in the category in the last six months alone has been staggering. Between OpenAI’s general release of DALL-E2 and GPT-3, these solutions (see ChatGPT, Jasper and Copy.ai) are quickly gaining traction. Producing this very kind of post may soon become obsolete.

Synthetic Media ELI5: Content created either partially or entirely by artificial intelligence. (i.e. Content created by generative AI)

Why it matters: From deepfakes to highly personalized marketing videos, synthetic media has proliferated quickly. As VCs shift their focus away from web3 moonshots to more practical generative AI, more and more solutions for marketers will emerge. Looking ahead, a key factor for brand leaders will be curation, governance, and management of such content. Many of the existing content management tools are not well equipped to manage personalized synthetic media, causing a greater governance challenge over time. 

Brand Safety ELI5: Ability to ensure a brand’s reputation is safe when it advertises online.

Why it matters: While brand safety has traditionally been about ad placement, the rise of auto-generated, personalized content will mean brand leaders will have to carefully curate and manage the increased volume of synthetic media they can now generate AND distribute. Until there are strong failsafes to prevent AI blunders, curation will have to remain the fallback solution between content production and distribution.

Add that to the governance gaps on media platforms (Exhibit A: Twitter Blue’s recent launch), brand safety will be an area of focus in 2023 across a brand’s content lifecycle. Real world example: $8 spent to tweet “we are excited to announce insulin is free now.” from a faux Eli Lilly Twitter “verified” account impacted the company’s market cap by $15B….a little over a ⅓ of the amount that Elon paid for Twitter.

If you’d like to learn more about applying Generative AI to your marketing and brand efforts, reach out to the Winter Sun team.

Note: The image for this post was created by DALL-E2 using the prompt “Winter sun over snowcapped mountains”