When to USE AI for Marketing?

By now, we’ve all come across AI-generated content in our feeds. What was your first reaction? What was your first impression? It’s amazing that we live in a time when you can type a few sentences into a chat field and have a robot generate a blog, social media calendar, visuals, branding strategy, media plan, even poetry… but is it actually effective?

The corporate world today runs on short-term thinking. You’re expected to show immediate results for recent decisions. Long-term impact? That’s the next person’s problem. By the time people realise a decision was a mistake, you’ll have moved on—making new mistakes somewhere else. This is why the age of corporations has been on a downward spiral, just like the age of empires: short-term thinking for short-term results.

So it shouldn’t surprise you that companies are handing content creation over to AI. Whether it’s effective or not doesn’t matter. Susan from marketing can get applause in a boardroom by showing she saved the corporation 13% by replacing humans with AI that can “basically do the same thing.” Susan will one day realise she has to top up the AI tokens and that the system’s glitching—but hopefully she’ll have interviews lined up before her company finds out how much she’s messed up and fires her.

AI absolutely has its place. Use it to automate repetitive tasks, simplify workflows, and make things more efficient. But please—hire an AI specialist who actually knows what they’re doing. Certain types of content can and should be created by AI, but deciding where and which ones requires real strategy.

The different types of content
What’s your communication and content strategy? Or do you just make content and hope for the best? For most companies, it’s the latter. There’s no vision, no structure. And even when there is a framework, most people don’t know what it means or how to apply it. So let’s break it down:

Type 1: Frontline content
This is the first step in your user’s journey—the first thing they see while scrolling, walking down the street, or trying to watch a YouTube video but can’t because your ad just popped up and can’t be skipped. This is your first touchpoint.

Your goal here is simple: get their attention. On a good day, with a great message, maybe 3% will move to the next step. That’s being optimistic. On average, 99% will skip or barely notice your content. It sounds ineffective, but the goal is awareness—making your brand stick in their mind. Nike, for example, is associated with winning and achievement.

If you think AI can create a message powerful enough to move that 3% or make the other 99% remember you, you need to put down the Kool-Aid. This is where you should never use AI. This is where you need storytellers, innovative thinkers, creative geniuses—all working toward the hope that a small percentage of your audience will be compelled enough to move forward.

Type 2: Momentum content
By some miracle, someone clicked your ad. Congratulations. Your chances of making a sale have now gone up to about 6%. It’s a brutal world. Around 94% will scroll straight to the bottom and close. The top of the page is prime real estate—you need to keep them engaged long enough to build momentum.

Ideally, that first touchpoint made someone connect to your brand and see it as a solution to a problem. They’ve clicked, landed on your page, and started to trust your brand. If you’re selling a lifestyle or identity, this is the moment to convince them that you’re it.

Do you really want to leave that job to AI? It can help here—but it shouldn’t lead. People connect through storytelling. And no, storytelling doesn’t always mean “Once upon a time…” or a German fairytale. It’s in the colours you choose, the shapes you use (or don’t), the tone, the layout, the details. If you don’t get it, AI certainly won’t. But storytellers know it’s what makes the difference between being remembered or forgotten.

Type 3: Functional (legally required) content
Nobody reads it, but your legal team will hate you if it’s missing. Some of it’s required by law; some is just information die-hard enthusiasts want. It’s often what clients insist you include—like “32 GB storage” or “recyclable packaging.” This is the foundation your other content builds on, but it doesn’t need to appear front and centre.

Take Apple’s iPod launch in 2001. At the time, every tech company was making MP3 players, with ads that looked like this:

In case you missed it: this MP3 player plays MP3s. Mind-blown.

And then there was Apple’s version:

Sure, the technical specs were listed somewhere—on a box, in a brochure, or some other BTL thing nobody read—but their first touchpoint said everything it needed to. The white earphones alone made it iconic in a sea of black ones.

The MP3 player ad is what your product manager wants to write for a first-touchpoint campaign. They might even throw in a math equation like “129.99 – 50 = 79.99.” Wow! And I don’t even have to pay the full 80 dollars. Take all my money now.

You might think we’ve evolved past this in 2025, but I still have to fight clients to approve the Apple-style ad instead of the MP3 one. Business owners—even some marketers—insist on including a laundry list of specs in awareness ads. They’ll even tell you to delete the benefits. Luckily, they’re now using AI to create their “ads” with half-arsed prompts that generate complete rubbish.

Creatives using AI vs clients using AI
Who do you think creates better AI content? Someone who writes a prompt like: “make me a visual of a sneakerhead taking a picture of a Nike shoe on a TV screen”…and ends up with this:

Or someone who writes this prompt:

“Generate an image where someone is taking a photo of what’s on their TV screen with a purple iPhone 14. On the TV, we see a Nike Air Jordan worn by someone mid-jump on a rustic wooden basketball court. On the phone screen, there’s a close-up of the shoe. The person taking the photo is a Gen Z sneakerhead (male, early 20s) in a modern, slightly messy living room. A bowl of crisps sits on the table beside a remote, a few crisps scattered. The image should look like it was captured with a disposable Fujifilm camera using a 35 mm lens.”

…and gets this:

If you're wondering why we'd need such a visual, you'll see the full case study in my portfolio.

​Not trying to be sassy—I’m just demonstrating. And that’s not even my best prompt. But it’s obvious the second visual could actually work as Type 1 or 2 content, while the first would just make people scroll away, or leave these comments:

AI is an incredible tool for creatives—but it’s still a tool. It needs a human brain behind it to steer it toward the right outcome. I’ve used it to create agents that write product descriptions, gather insights, update stakeholders, manage reviews, check CVs, create Instagram-worthy visuals, edit videos and more. It’s exciting, and it offers incredible potential—especially for scaling personalisation and automating data analysis.

But please, stop making terrible AI ads and assuming you’re an AI master just because you ask ChatGPT to write your emails.

Would you like me to share some useful prompts for content creation? Let me know in the comments what you’d like to see on my blog. Cheers!