Generative AI in Marketing: A Paradigm Shift, Not Just Automation

Automating the writing of texts, social media posts, creating Instagram photos, banner images, and churning out landing pages — these are indeed the current applications of AI in marketing. But they are merely the tip of the iceberg. I’d go even further: these uses are temporary.

In reality, generative AI doesn’t just automate or optimize the processes we’ve carried out for decades — it either alters or often entirely eliminates these processes. Let’s look at some examples.

Product descriptions and images on Amazon or other marketplaces have always been a critical factor for sales success, assisting customers in finding your products and making a purchasing decision. However, we’re now in a world where your smartphone, your search engine, and even Amazon itself find the optimal product for you based on set criteria. This means the product’s text and images are now read by AI assistants, not humans. No longer can you sway a decision by inserting a glamorous model next to a bicycle. So yes, you could save 80% of your budget on creating product descriptions, but the very essence of marketing through product cards and pages is irrevocably changing.

Another example is data analysis. Sure, GPT could write SQL queries for you, draft code for sales and traffic analysis, and even draw conclusions based on that data. But the traditional paradigm of “event → periodic event analysis” is something out of the leather-bound-analyst era of marketing. Instead of accumulating and subsequently analyzing data, compact generative AI allows for real-time analysis during each session. In other words, before a visitor even closes your landing page, you’ve already identified their persona, buying tendencies, demographics, and your back-end LLM has rewritten the pricing section to maximize the likelihood of a purchase. A/B tests become irrelevant in a world where every customer simultaneously tests the entire range of latent marketing offerings.

The takeaway: generative AI is more than a tool for automation; it’s fundamentally changing how we think about and implement marketing strategies.