By now, I’m basically obligated to write a blog post about artificial intelligence.

As a strategist in the creative industry, I’ve been monitoring the sudden proliferation of A.I. tools with a mix of skepticism and optimism. And while some tools have exceeded expectations, others have been a huge waste of time and energy. I wanted to figure out how to navigate this emerging landscape so I could help Red Six Media bring real value to our clients, delivering on the shiny promise that all of this re-tooling is worth the investment.

So I went and got a professional certification in Generative A.I. Through that process, I learned that artificial intelligence can indeed live up to the hype. From art direction to content creation, marketing teams — and their agency partners — can create better work faster than before.

But to get that value, you have to understand where the value really lies.

This rise of digital slop

Have you ever woke up one morning with a weird headache, googled your symptoms, and been bombarded with so many articles warning of unspeakable fates that you shut away your phone into the nightstand drawer, pull the covers over your head, and pray it’s not a brain-eating amoeba? Not only have you learned literally nothing, but you’re also stuck with the intrusive feeling that you’re probably about to die.

Generative A.I. lowers the barriers to entry for producing this kind of digital slop. The problem is so pervasive that, according to a survey by Digitas and Vox Media, 81% of respondents debate whether the content they see online is even “real” — with more than half noting that A.I. is flattening everything to the same, mid-grade quality.

Social strategy, content marketing, and SEO are important parts of brand development. But as more and more companies produce content for its own sake, the more and more crowded the marketplace becomes. This kicks off a race to the bottom, as the brands who are most rewarded are the ones who can crank out content with the greatest efficiency — content we can tell exists solely to place a brand at the top of your Search results or social feeds to extract ad revenue from clicks. You wanted to know more about your medical symptoms, but instead you discovered which diseases have the best SEO.

That is not real value.

Real value comes through making meaningful contributions to the communities our brand wants to build. If we’re not doing that, then what’s the point of producing any of this content at all?

How brands should use artificial intelligence

Anyone who cares about their audience and wants to use these technologies to add value needs to keep a firm grip on why people should come to you in the first place.

They should come to you because you offer a perspective; because your approach to content creation stands apart from the rest of the slop on their feed; because — more than making a lot of content — you care to make your content good.

The questions of why people should come to you, how they should arrive, and how to keep them for as long as possible are difficult to answer. But they’re precisely the questions that allow us to foster the kind of awareness, trust, and loyalty that grows audiences — in turn helping you grow your business.

Productivity is not the same as creativity

For us at Red Six Media, the true value of A.I. is not necessarily that it decreases the overall time it takes to produce X number of content widgets. It’s that A.I. shifts the balance of time from production towards creation.

Today, right now, instead of writing this article, I could use ChatGPT to generate 20 blog posts and have a Q1 content done in 5 hours. But — and this is the all-important question — how well would that content reflect the R6 brand? What are they contributing to communities we claim to serve? Let’s say they’re all the first hit in the search results — are we proud of that fact, or embarrassed? Are we really any better than a spam bot? Is any of this content meaningful, or is it just a bunch of sound and fury, taking up digital space but ultimately signifying nothing?

By emphasizing discovery and learning as much as possible about our clients, our team answers these questions with informed insights that lead to a compelling creative direction. By the time we’re ready to turn to A.I., we have a clear-eyed vision for guiding these tools to quickly produce everything we want to create.

That way, when your audience arrives, they’ll have found themselves in a place that’s worth spending time — and, if they’re in the right mood, maybe a little money, too.

A culture of creativity

Is artificial intelligence creative? Not by itself. That’s because A.I. tools are merely in the culture — not of the culture. Heinz can tell ChatGPT everything there is to know about the rap battle between Drake and Kendrick Lamar, but it’s never going to tell them to put “MUSTAAAAAAAAAARD” on a billboard. (And frankly, you shouldn’t need it to.)

We are the ones who participate in culture. So we have to be the ones to bring cultural fluency into our work with these machines. A.I. claims to have captured the human experience, but ChatGPT has never touched grass in its entire, silicon-based existence. Culture can’t be captured, it’s always on the move. A.I. can only go where we take it.

Where creative meets strategy

For all the talk about how A.I. will help you scale content creation, the reality is that it’s still a very tedious and labor-intensive process. Any strategic thinker knows that the right questions for working your problem don’t just fall from the sky. Crafting those questions into productive prompts takes additional time, and even then the outputs may be a little off the mark. When working with generative A.I., brand teams need a creative partner who not only thinks strategically but also has the editorial discipline to bring the vision to life.

Red Six Media creates strategic, imaginative work that exceeds expectations. Sometimes we utilize generative A.I. tools as part of our production strategy. It has helped us storyboard videos, establish art direction for photoshoots, reimagine large bodies of text for new purposes, and more.

If you’re interested to learn how R6 can help your team, reach out today so we can start making something SIXY.