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A marketing boss is set to lift the lid on AI strategy during an event in York.
Bethan Vincent, managing partner at Open Velocity, will host a workshop on AI at the York Business Festival next week.
Her workshop, How AI is Changing Marketing, will take place at the York St John University on Wednesday and Thursday, and will explore how marketers can use artificial intelligence to improve their operations.
Bethan said AI must be used as a tool to help marketers but should not be seen as the sole answer to their problems.
She said “most marketing teams are already using AI in some form”, whether that be for research, analysing data or drafting content.
But Bethan said: “The mistake is treating AI as a single thing. It’s a category of tools, and the work is figuring out which ones suit your business, your team and the specific problem in front of you.”
She said marketing businesses are using AI to save time, adding that the technology “lets smaller teams punch above their weight when their fundamentals are in place”.
Commercially, she added, “if you know who you’re selling to, what problem you solve for them and how you make money, AI accelerates every step of getting your message in front of them.
“If those things are unclear, AI accelerates you in the wrong direction, more expensively than before.”
Despite the time-saving benefits brought by AI, Bethan urged marketers to “slow down” when considering how they would use the technology at work.
“AI amplifies whatever you feed it, including unclear positioning, weak audience understanding and messy data,” she said.
Bethan said she is a “healthy AI sceptic who is also at the same time building an AI product”, which she admitted “sounds contradictory until you hear the nuance”.
“Scepticism is a competitive advantage right now, because the market is being sold a story that AI solves every business problem. It doesn’t. What it does well is accelerate execution for teams that already have their strategy right.”
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Meanwhile, Andrew Fairley, business management lecturer at York St John University, will be delivering a Top 5 AI Myths Masterclass at the university on Thursday.
Andrew said there is “currently loads in the news about AI” but he is looking to explore what the technology “actually means” for small business in York.
“We’re going to break down some of the highly dramatised claims about AI, and instead ground things by taking away the hype and focusing on the practical. Ultimately, businesses need to understand their fundamentals, and think about where AI fits into their operations and everyday processes.
“This talk will encourage a return-to-basics mentality: rather than blindly adopting tools and assuming they will 10x your bottom line, look to where AI can reduce friction and free you up to focus on more valuable activities.
“Ultimately this talk is about bringing common sense back to business – technology is a powerful tool but it won’t do much to help if it doesn’t support your core value-adding activities.”