(This is Part 1 of a two-part blog. Part 2 is set to be published January 10, 2024.)

December is always a great time to reflect on the past 12 months and how things have changed. I like to take a moment to look back on the trends from the year and consider what will move us into the future. This year, one major trend stands out because it’s completely shaking up marketing: Artificial Intelligence (AI).

AI has been around since the 1950s. If you asked Alexa or Siri a question in the last few years, you were using AI. But in 2023 it began to permeate our daily lives in a much bigger way. ChatGPT, the natural language AI chatbot, took the world by storm growing rapidly from 1 million users right after its launch in November 2022 to 180 million users now. ChatGPT is such an easy, accessible AI tool that 55% of users use it weekly.¹ And the ways people have found to use it multiply daily.

Meat Industry Early Uses

Some AI technology is already being used by the meat and retail industry. JBS USA, for example, announced in early 2023 they were implementing an AI tool to improve carcass sorting and cutting plans. The Stores Consulting Group is testing out a technology to manage markdowns in grocery stores with goals of reducing food waste and increasing revenue. The tools being introduced in this area have the potential to make a big impact.

AI Is Making Headlines

In our actual day-to-day business of marketing, the AI tools rolled out this year help us to be more efficient. We are using AI to optimize ads, uncover insights, draft copy and generate sketches, and we are just scratching the surface.

If you search for anything on Google, you benefit from AI. Google Ads uses AI for automated bidding, ad placement and audience targeting – serving you things you are most interested in. For marketers, it helps us get the right ads in front of the ideal audience for the best price. Facebook Ads Manager’s AI selects the best version of an ad’s creative for a selected audience. Data analysis and insights are also being supported by AI tools. By analyzing campaign data, sales numbers or other datasets, AI tools like Google Analytics and Tableau help marketers more quickly see valuable insights, identify trends and adjust based on the desired marketing objective. But none of this works like you want it to if you don’t have clarity on who it is you want to target and use good ol’ human expertise to gut-check and tweak your efforts to keep things on course.

New AI tools can assist marketers in generating ads by ideating headlines and other copy. Using user-set information on the tone and voice of the brand as well as the ideal audience, AI can provide suggestions to improve what has already been written or even provide multiple options to build upon.

To test this, I did a little experiment with my team. We asked ChatGPT to generate headlines for this blog based on two distinct prompts. Following are what we chose as the three best ChatGPT-generated headlines from each prompt:

Prompt 1: Write several editorial headlines about the uses of AI in meat marketing and mainstream marketing:

• "The Meat Industry's Digital Revolution: AI's Impact on Branding and Advertising"

• "Smart Campaigns, Savory Results: How AI is Reshaping Meat Marketing Landscape"

• "Digital-First Strategies: How AI is Leading Meat Marketing Into the Future"

Prompt 2: Write several editorial headlines promoting the following editorial blog:

• "2023 Trends: AI Takes Center Stage in Marketing - What You Need to Know!"

• "The Art and Science of AI: Navigating the Limitations and Possibilities"

• "AI Revolution: How Artificial Intelligence is Shaping the Future of Marketing"

For contrast, following are three AI-generated headlines for this article our copywriter modified:

• How AI Is Transforming Marketing and the Meat Industry

• What Happens When Meat Marketing Meets AI?

• Unlocking AI’s Potential Impact on Marketing and the Meat Industry

And the three top headlines our copywriter proposed for this article with no input from AI:

• How AI is Shaking Up the Meat and Marketing Industries

• How AI is Opening Up Opportunities in the Meat and Marketing Industries

• How Will AI Change the World for Marketers and the Meat Industry?

Would I copy/paste an AI generated headline into this blog and run with it? Not a chance. For all I know AI pulled one of these headlines from someone else’s original work. What AI did was create options that we can build upon. (In case you are wondering, as part of this exercise I looked at all the headlines, not knowing which were which and ultimately picked one not generated with any AI support, proving a great human copywriter is still the best option!)

Interested in how AI is generating art and the things you must be cautious of when utilizing AI? Check back on Jan. 10 when Part 2 is published.

¹107 Up-to-Date ChatGPT Statistics & User Numbers [Dec 2023] (nerdynav.com)

How AI is Shaking Up the Meat and Marketing Industries (Part 1)

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