Marketing strategy group Warc partnered with TikTok on a new report that explored the influence of artificial intelligence tools on marketing workflow. The study also examined how marketers can integrate insights to drive better AI outputs and improve overall campaign performance.
The study incorporated feedback from 400 marketers in the U.K., U.S., Australia and Brazil, and offered a broad scope of industry insights into how the rise of generative AI has impacted the creative ad sector.
The report found that the key content trend of the moment was relevance rather than volume, and this can’t be fully replicated by AI tools.
“The brands winning today are not the ones generating the most content,” TikTok Global Head of Creative and Brand Ads Andy Yang said in the report. “They are the ones learning fastest from the people they serve. That speed of learning is what we call cultural intelligence: the ability to read what a community values, in the moment it is forming that value, and to respond with something that feels native rather than inserted.”
The expanded AI push has put marketers under pressure to produce more assets, with AI tools facilitating faster and expanded workflows, per the report.
Most marketers found AI tools useful for this purpose, and the majority agreed that AI has become a key part of the creative process.
However, for copywriting and scripting, the value of AI tools is lower on the list. That suggests that AI tools can support and facilitate new ideas, but simple automation systems can’t undertake the whole creative process without human intervention.
The report also looked at the weaknesses of AI, and examined concerns regarding its lack of creative originality.
In order to address these gaps, marketers felt that more cultural insights could help improve the relevance of AI outputs.
That’s where TikTok comes in.
TikTok’s cultural influence could help to guide creative approaches by tapping into what’s gaining traction at any given time, per the study.
Understanding these trends and applying them to creative approach could help marketers better align with their target audiences. This could also help brands create content that resonates and sparks conversations.
Using this framework, the data showed that marketers could refine their creative briefs to better align with what’s working. Meanwhile, AI tools can help interpret key signals and drive improved creative choices.
The full report includes in-depth breakdowns of each element and offers insights into how marketers can make better use of data signals to drive their strategies.
In other words, as a complementary component, AI can help to enhance community connection, but AI tools need the right context to best shape their outputs. Platforms like TikTok can provide the relevant insight and bring together these two elements to power a more effective strategy.
Informa, which owns a controlling stake in Informa TechTarget, the publisher behind Social Media Today, is also invested in WARC and Omdia. Informa has no influence over Social Media Today’s coverage.
