How Will GenAI Affect Consumer Trust in Brands in 2024 and Beyond?
As everyone knows, AI is all the rage!
But is it just the next shiny object to capture the imagination of techno-geeks and the inherent compulsion of corporate CIOs to be first – or is it much more than that?
Only time will tell, of course.
Like the time it took for the dot com to make a few people very wealthy, but most lost their shirts at the end of it all.
Will Generative AI be just another fad that will fade away... or will it become so ubiquitous that it'll some day be like the microwave or paper towels...
We can't remember how we got along without them?
As CMOs and other marketers are scrambling to figure out how to integrate GenAI into their tool kit, the market research firm, Gartner, recently published a report that I thought you may find interesting:
Let's look at these 5 insights, and you can dive much deeper, if you choose to download the excellent report they offer.
#1. By 2025, a perceived decay in the quality of social media sites will push 50% of consumers to significantly limit their use of major platforms.
The impact: Over 70% of consumers expect AI to negatively impact social channels. Many social channels have already begun to incorporate AI, which has the potential to hasten the perception of diminished quality.
As a result, consumers are already actively limiting their use of major platforms.
Question: How will you alter your current social media practices to counteract this movement?
#2: By 2026, 80% of creative talent will use GenAI daily, allowing for more strategic work, resulting in increased spending on creative endeavors.
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The impact: The use of GenAI in marketing will enable the faster development of more creative variations for hyper-targeted, personalized experiences. Managing this will increase CMO spending on agency and in-house creative talent toward more strategic, creative endeavors.
Question: How will this impact your current staff, and your planning for future staffing?
#3: By 2027, 20% of brands will lean into positioning and differentiation predicated on the absence of AI in their business and products.
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The impact: As AI becomes more prevalent in marketing, addressing consumer trust and confidence issues will be a significant challenge. A segment of customers may shift their behaviors and seek out AI-free, “acoustic” brands that prioritize authenticity and ethics. - Brands that embrace acoustic positioning, which is really customer experiences, can differentiate themselves and potentially target premium or safety-focused markets, with more personal messaging.
"This ‘acoustic’ concept will be leveraged to distance brands from perceptions of AI-powered businesses as impersonal and homogeneous.”
Question: Will you choose to differentiate your brand, with a 'No-AI' positioning?
#4: By 2028, brands will see their organic site traffic decrease by 50% or more as consumers embrace GenAI-powered search.
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The impact: The rapid expansion of GenAI in search engines will significantly reduce organic search traffic for brands, as individuals obtain information directly from AI-generated results. - CMOs must prepare for the disruption to revenue and lead generation by adapting channel investments and focusing on conversion-focused keywords, gated content and potentially repositioning traditional channels like email.
Question: Will you get ahead of the curve and start now to create strategies to speak more directly to your prospective customers in a personal 'No-AI' way? I sure would.
#5: By 2026, 60% of CMOs will adopt measures such as content authenticity technology, enhanced monitoring, and brand-endorsed, user-generated content (UGC) to protect their brands from widespread deception unleashed by GenAI.
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The impact: To safeguard their brands, organizations must prioritize the implementation of content authenticity measures and establish responsible-use guidelines for GenAI. - The lack of existing frameworks and best practices necessitates transparency and trust-building mechanisms that compel brands to demand clear policies from vendors and agency partners, while integrating content authenticity features into technology.
Question: Have you begun to think about how you'll implement 'content authenticity' measures?
Transparency and trust-building mechanisms will take time to plan and implement, but extremely vital, I think.
In Conclusion...
At a time when brand trust is at an all time low, brands must implement strategic measures that prioritize transparency, accountability, and authenticity.
So, with the newest blessing (and possible curse) of GenAI, there's a new elephant in the room that cannot be ignored.
I predict the brands that recognize that elephant, and start now to prepare for its health and well-being... will be like the few in the dot com era that didn't lose their shirts.
I'm taking a course on prompt engineering with ChatGPT and learning how to ask the right, iterative questions to get the best out of its vast knowledge.
My chats are helpful in some cases like research, perspective, or to brainstorm ideas.
If you need help with 'hyper-targeted,' personalized marketing messages — or strategies to best utilize GenAI — I'd love to help.
How are you planning to address this AI-Elephant?
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Always forward,
Carolyn Permentier
#Go4MoreIn24