The Abstraction Apocalypse: AI in Marketing

AI in Marketing has gone overnight from unusual to ubiquitous.

It is here to stay. Smart business leaders are investing in it, either with their own inhouse LLMs, or with the sudden surge of Marketing Automation technologies that are now sporting AI capabilities, from analysis & insights, segmentation all the way through to brand compliant generative copy, images, and subject lines.

However, on the other side of the fence, Google, Microsoft, and Apple are putting a spanner in all that glorious automation you are investing in (and secretly hoping to cut your headcount with). That spanner is the Summarise feature within Gemini, Copilot and Apple Intelligence (pick a one-word name, Mr Cook).

With a single click on phones, tablets, and laptops, not to mention smartwatches where this will have huge uptake, Marketing Comms by any incoming channel such as Email, Push, WhatsApp, or SMS will be grouped together, content ground down to its essence and presented back in short form to the eyes of the user, your customer.

The cold hard reality then of the near future, unavoidable from where we are now, and in fact already with us for early adopters, is that all that effort on AI created and curated Marketing Comms, is now being pulled apart and out back together by another AI totally outside of your control. There’s an enormous risk of your CTA being misunderstood, misrepresented, or missed altogether.

The layer of abstraction between you and the customer, that you carefully plan for when deploying AI to solve all the problems of scaled personalisation and relevance is now two layers of abstraction. Yikes.

But what can you, and/or your army of Agentic AIs do about it?

Well, after racking our brains and drawing on our 400 person years of vendor agnostic MarTech experience and helping a few clients already to plan their way through how to avoid this impending disaster, we’ve pulled together some key tips that might help you, regardless of your vertical.

Depending on your level of AI deployment, they could be worked into your Campaign briefing and QC signoff processes or built into LLM guardrails for your silicon subordinate.

• Front-load key information and value propositions: your most important message must be front loaded in the first paragraph, as AI summarisers typically prioritise early content.
• Use clear, explicit subject lines that directly state the purpose or offer. Avoid clickbait or overly creative phrasing that might be misinterpreted by AI.
• Structure content with distinct sections and clear headings. This will help AI models understand the hierarchy and relationships between different parts of your message.
• Include specific numbers and metrics where relevant – AI systems often extract and highlight quantitative information in summaries, since it is easier for it to comprehend.
• Maintain a logical flow with clear transition sentences between topics, should you be conveying multiple concepts in a single paragraph. This helps AI models generate more accurate and coherent summaries.
• A little structured data goes a long way. Consider using structured data for key information like dates, prices, or product details – this makes it easier for AI to extract and present important details.
• The era of eye-catching imagery is over. Avoid heavy reliance on images for conveying critical information, as some AI summarizers will not process image content effectively, if at all.
• Consider a concise TL; DR or key takeaways section – not only helpful to human readers, but it can also guide AI summarisation algorithms toward your intended main points.

This is of course just the tip of the iceberg that your organisation is steering towards. For example, in iGaming, compliance issues are myriad and complex to interpret. Should mandatory ‘responsible gambling’ wording around sensitivities such as age restrictions fail to make it through to the summation, it’s all well and good being able to blame someone else’s AI to try and avoid the fine, but is that really doing the right thing by your customers?

How can we help?

For starters we’d recommend a much deeper dive into your Customer Journeys tailored to your vertical, and your position with it, to help to develop a much more tailored approach to the abstraction apocalypse. Our specialist solution consultants can review, workshop, finalise and bed in to your organisation an approach that future proofs your business against this very real future, which in a best case will see a significant drop off in Marketing engagement, and at worst, give you regulatory challenges, not to mention the flood of customer service calls from users who have misunderstood the abstracted proposition. Why not get in touch to discuss your bespoke requirements?

Furthermore, our Digital Marketing Analysts working in our Campaign Services arm are experts in administering safe AI driven marketing at scale, why not take a look at our product video and see which tier makes most sense for you.

All services now available for purchase via AWS Marketplace!