营销和传播中的人工智能 ： 也能提高生产力和创造力 ？

AI in Marketing & Communications: Boosting Productivity—and Creativity, Too? Marketing & Communications Center 2 AI in Marketing & Communications: Boosting Productivity—and Creativity, Too? ConferenceBoard.org The recent emergence of AI, especially generative AI, provides marketing and communications teams with new opportunities while also posing new risks. This benchmarking report, based on a survey of marketing and communications professionals by The Conference Board in collaboration with Ragan Communications, shows widespread AI use and experimentation, though there are concerns. Our survey shows that expectations about AI’s impact on creativity are positive overall, although some do voice more pessimistic views. Insights for What’s Ahead • For marketers and communicators, AI currently serves mostly as a productivity enhancement tool. Uses include summarizing content, doing the legwork/inspire thinking, and producing content faster, freeing up time for strategy and creative work. Half of our survey respondents say AI will help in future product and services innovation. Just 16 percent see AI as having a negative impact. • While they anticipate productivity, learning, financial, and innovation benefits as familiarity with AI use grows, marketers and communicators are less certain about its impact on work quality and creativity. On the downside, 40 percent see AI as having a negative impact on jobs in their function. Just 4 percent see a positive job impact. • Midlevel/junior marketers are at the forefront of adopting AI in their work, ahead of senior marketers, positioning them to shape the adoption and evolution of AI within their organizations. Compared to their junior peers and their communications colleagues, senior marketers are more optimistic about AI improving innovation, work quality, and creativity in the future. • Misinformation/lack of accuracy, legal uncertainties, and data security are marketers’ and communicators’ top AI concerns, suggesting cautious use and the need to be prepared to manage increased risks. As AI and regulations develop, the level of concern is likely to decline. • Most marketers and communicators are currently using a self-taught approach to learning AI, but in this rapidly evolving field, professionals could benefit from organized peer and knowledge exchange groups. 3 AI in Marketing & Communications: Boosting Productivity—and Creativity, Too? ConferenceBoard.org AI’s Current Use Serves Mostly Productivity Goals But Also Has Potential for Strategy Input Figure 1 AI is widely used, including for experimentation, by 87 and 85 percent of marketing and communications professionals, respectively, for at least one application. While marketing professionals use AI more for personalization and customer service, communications professionals use it more frequently for content and image creation. • AI serves mostly as a productivity tool, freeing up time for strategy and creative work. Ultimately, AI can aid product innovation by supporting idea exploration and providing input. 4 AI in Marketing & Communications: Boosting Productivity—and Creativity, Too? ConferenceBoard.org Figure 2 Mid-level/junior professionals see AI even more as a productivity enhancement tool than their senior colleagues. The latter use AI more as a research tool, presumably to explore topics and gather input for more strategic projects. 5 AI in Marketing & Communications: Boosting Productivity—and Creativity, Too? ConferenceBoard.org Productivity Is the Most Widely Anticipated Benefit of AI, While Impact on Work Quality and Creativity Remains Uncertain Figure 3 Communicators and marketers agree on the future benefits of AI for productivity, learning, financial results, and innovation—and on the negative impact on the number of jobs. But they are more divided on how AI might change creativity and work quality. Human intelligence, supplemented by AI, might be synergistic and help elevate creativity—if creatives can find ways to leverage AI as an assistant. 6 AI in Marketing & Communications: Boosting Productivity—and Creativity, Too? ConferenceBoard.org Figure 4a Senior marketers are most optimistic about AI improving innovation, work quality, and creativity—compared to their junior peers and communications colleagues. This might be due to their expectations of AI tools inspiring thinking by helping with research and by generating output that can trigger ideas. Figure 4b Senior and junior communicators are more aligned in their opinions, anticipating more positive quality and creativity effects from AI than negative ones. 7 AI in Marketing & Communications: Boosting Productivity—and Creativity, Too? ConferenceBoard.org Marketers Currently Make Greater Use of AI Compared to Communicators Figure 5 While 60 percent of communicators have embraced AI in their daily work, including to generate content and images, marketers’ greate