By Nicole Bowman, MBA, CEM-AP | Vice President of Marketing & Communications | IAEE
Growing up, I heard about IBM Watson over the years, but never really understood what it meant. I saw “Minority Report,” “iRobot” and other movies of the like when I was younger, and artificial intelligence was always this doomsday technology that would take over the world and knock human beings out of the workforce. In the wrong hands it would be too dangerous. Corporations would use it to reduce staff.
Here we are today. Even though AI has been around for decades, it’s making its waves through mainstream society. 2024 seems to be the year that AI has been accepted into our lives, not to take over, but to enrich.
Enter the world of the modern-day marketer.
I am making a stand, right here, right now. AI is my friend! Why? Because I am a marketer. Because I have a small team that is pulled a million different directions every day. Because our time is precious, and we need to streamline where we can. Because we need more resources to be even more amazing than we already are (special nod to the awesome IAEE marketing team).
I am in an AI program almost every day. It is like having the brain power of an infinite number of marketers at your beck and call, and who wouldn’t want that? I get tired. My team gets tired. I have no problem saying today that AI gets our creative wheels turning when we need it. And that is not a bad thing. I think that is where the rub is with those that are resistant to using AI. “It won’t be our original content.” “It’s not my original thought.” Not true! There is a saying and most people have heard it (at least in the marketing world): It’s always easier to edit someone else’s content than create your own. Sound familiar?
Here are some examples of how I have used AI just recently.
Expo! Expo!
We needed fresh ideas to describe our LA event and give it “Hollywood and Southern California vibes.” Could I have googled this? Yes. But I asked the right prompt in my program and it gave me treasure trove of sayings that I never thought of. WIN! Did I copy and save all this text? Oh yeah! Now the team has it to sprinkle in emails, social posts, etc.
IAEE Branding
We just launched a new brand and whole new UX on our website. Using the right prompt, our program created a simplified branding guideline document IN SECONDS. Did I take it as is? Of course not. But the heavy lifting was done. All I had to do was edit and make it my own.
Summaries
This is where AI is absolutely amazing and saves me tons of time. I take notes or recordings from various activities, upload it to specific AI programs and it transcribes everything, summarizes my notes and create action items. There are many times that activities like this would take hours to review, synthesize and then create action items. AI does it in seconds.
I could go on and on with examples. The key here is to use AI as another brain (hello – artificial intelligence). Use YOUR brain and real-world knowledge as oversight. Use AI to help and augment your creativity, not replace it. As a marketing team of three, I can tell you that we are all in using what we can to knock out fabulous copy, social content, workflows, and the like.
At IAEE, not only is it used in the marketing department, but many departments have welcomed it into their workdays with various programs. Are we being responsible with it? Absolutely. Do we have policies in place? They are in the works. With any new technology, there should be guardrails in place to use it responsibly.
Is AI the answer to everything? No. But it is a great way to get some help along the way. Hit me up if you want to chat about what we are doing (or not doing) with AI at marketing@iaee.com.
About the Author
Nicole Bowman, MBA, CEM-AP, is the Vice President of Marketing and Communications for IAEE. With over 20 years of experience in event and marketing management, she is responsible for developing and managing all marketing functions of IAEE including corporate branding and event marketing, as well as creating and executing the comprehensive strategic marketing plan for all IAEE initiatives including chapter relations, membership, councils, events and advocacy initiatives. Nicole has a Master of Business Administration from the University of Texas at Dallas and achieved the CEM-AP designation from IAEE and is active her community as a local Girl Scout Troop leader and PTA board member.
