Summary: We explore what GenAI could mean for brands, their audiences, and the holiday season.

Consumers don’t want to feel like they’re just one of many when it comes to marketing campaigns. Generic, inauthentic content isn’t likely to convert today’s consumer base, who are accustomed to tailored experiences—instead, you need messaging that makes them feel understood and recognized as unique individuals.

This is where generative AI (or GenAI) comes in. After bursting into the public’s consciousness at the end of 2022 when OpenAI launched ChatGPT, the much-hyped technology has been transforming how businesses communicate with their audiences, from personalized ad copy and custom social media posts to customized video production and email marketing.

With generative AI, businesses aren’t just keeping up with the holiday rush— they’re leading the charge into a new era of highly customized, data-driven marketing that resonates with today’s consumers. Despite the undeniable benefits that GenAI brings, there is a lingering fear among some marketers that this technology may eventually replace human roles entirely. Consumer sentiments toward Gen AI aren’t exactly always rosy either.

Research conducted by BBC highlighted that people are looking for GenAI to add value to their experiences, especially through useful, relevant content. They also emphasized the importance of ensuring human control over how GenAI is utilized, particularly in media settings, to maintain a sense of authenticity and trust.

While these issues are complex and demand a litany of adjustments, we shouldn’t shy away from exploring how GenAI might benefit your brand. In this blog, we will dispel the major concerns about GenAI and consider four practical ways in which it make a positive difference for your marketing efforts during the holiday season.

• No More Creative Blocks

Generative AI content creation plays a pivotal role in shaping the holiday shopping experience by capturing attention, building excitement, and guiding purchasing decisions. During the holiday season, consumers are not only looking for specific products, but also seeking inspiration, gift ideas, and emotional connections with brands.

Dynamic creative optimization (DCO) can prove exceptionally helpful here. In a survey conducted by Digiday and Clinch, 99% of respondents highlighted the importance of DCO in their roles. DCO enables real-time adaptability, scalability in personalization, enhanced engagement, and the ability to iterate on creative and copy multiple times.

For example, a brand can increase efficiency in creating copy by tapping DCO to generate dozens, hundred, or thousands of variations of creative copy and imagery. This process can spark ideas for subsequent drafts, which will then be reviewed. A/B tested, and approved by the human.

• Flexibility and Efficiency

A strong holiday strategy requires careful planning and foresight, typically established months in advance. However, it is not enough to simply implement the plan and assume its success throughout the holiday season. You might encounter multiple curveballs during campaign execution and have to adapt to changing circumstances.

This is where GenAI can assist marketing teams. When confronted with the need to produce or revise content and/or strategy within a limited time frame, GenAI can alleviate a lot of the pressure and workload. By furnishing it with information about your brand, brand guidelines, and the specific concepts and tones you desire, GenAI tools can generate relevant content templates and even prescriptive insights to reshape your marketing content and tactics on the go—saving time during the holiday crunch.

Personal-clothing service Stitch Fix, for example, uses gen AI to help stylists interpret customer feedback and provide product recommendations. Instacart is using gen AI to offer customers recipes and meal-planning ideas and to generate shopping lists.

• Quicker Audience Insights and Efficient Monitoring

Relying on siloed reporting and analytics, where data and analysis are kept separate within specific departments or teams, can result in increased time lags and hinder accessibility across the organization. With GenAI, you can now generate analytics for your holiday campaigns in one platform and with increased speed, eliminating the need for retrospective efforts.

Time is a luxury when it comes to adapting your holiday marketing tactics. With GenAI, a lot of the hard work is eliminated, Minimal effort is required to track consumer sentiments and obtain real-time insights on your target customers' motivations, behavioral patterns, and pain points—all at a deeper level.

These productivity gains from gen AI are beginning to ripple across the marketplace. A recent McKinsey report estimates the productivity of marketing alone due to gen AI could increase between 5 and 15 percent of total marketing spend, worth about $463 billion annually.

GenAI empowers brands to analyze extensive data, streamline content creation, unearth deeper insights, and personalize customer experiences at scale and in real time. In spite of the understandable apprehensions about the technology, brands can leverage it strengthen their customer engagement efforts during and beyond the holiday season—with the right mix of planning and oversight.

Learn how RESUL can boost your customer engagement.