Last week I attended DigiMarCon in Philadelphia. Here are some notes/takeaways. As a general theme, AI was of course a major talking point, but interestingly as I reviewed my notes the topic Storytelling in marketing came up quite a lot in various forms. Here are some notes and takeaways from a fantastic 2-day event.

Using AI to enhance not create

This talk focused on using AI for content creation stressing that it’s a tool not a replacement. There was emphasis that we create the ideas and the AI tools help augment and expand. This was the first mention of marketing being about storytelling.Here are some notes on content creation:

Topics Vs Themes. Topic does not equal theme

• Example Time (topic) Time waits for no man (theme)
• Topics are too broad, you need a theme to clearly communicate

The “Lego” Approach

• Take a piece of content and break it into smaller, reusable chunks.
• Use AI to help expand the main piece into other uses like social posts, blogs, etc

Ai Prompting

Chain of thought prompts

• This means providing more detailed and stepped prompts for getting better result
• Include at the end of your prompt the instructions for the AI to ask you questions so that it can better do its job.

Perpetual Relevance

This one was interesting to me because it was more theoretical than technical. The idea of perpetual relevance is similar to the “adapt or die” concept and is basically the idea that if you get too comfortable and rest on your laurels you are doomed to get passed by no matter how popular you may be. The main example was Blackberry, which was the hottest, must-have communication device before the iPhone and Androids blew passed it. It had such a lead and didn’t take advantage only to become irrelevant.  

The speaker, Umang Shah, laid out what he considered 5 points to help stay relevant.

1. Invest in culture – The example given was at Campbells they create a “Marketing Innovation Lab” and anyone in the company could pitch new and interesting ideas. They would then fund the most interesting ideas. After some time the culture changed that they didn’t need the MIL anymore as the concept became just a part of their everyday.
2. Brand Above Product  – This one is pretty self explanatory
3. Further Together – This is the idea that there is nothing wrong with seeking partners to get to new levels. An initiated that brings together two groups an chive more and be beneficial to both parties
4. Open and Honest – Another one that is self explanatory
5. Vote with your money – in terms of reinforcing your culture and beliefs.

AI in Marketing

This presentation was very thoughtful. It started out talking about Ai adoption and then transitioned to once again touch on the storytelling aspect of marketing. Here are some quick hitters”

• It’s not Performance – It’s persuasion at scale
• Impact follows when the story gets sharper

• AI and the customer journey
  • Fragmented journeys are losing customers
    • Use AI to create seamless journeys
  • “Now” is the standard
    • Deliver instant, human like services with chatbots
  • Scaling Support
    • Ai can automate 50% of customer support
      • Layer AI for speed, humans for trust

• Storytelling that lands
  • Stories are more memorable than facts
  • Emotions-led storytelling grows brands 2.5x faster
  • GenAi is flooding the market with content – sea of sameness
  • Emotion cuts through the noise, your story is your signal

• Emotion Drives Discussions
  • Emotion over logic
  • Stories powers the brain
    • AI helps augment
  • People forget the numbers. But they’ll remember how you made them feel

Ai and Marketing Automation

This presentation was likely the most technical when it came to more advanced AI concepts like Agents and Automation.

There were some more prompting tips, including”

• Can’t be generic
• Tell the AI who it is “Act as a X”
• What is your target market
• Define Success
• Ask it to ask you questions

AI Growth Engine

An interesting topic was the idea of AI use in a “Growth Engine”

• Data input
  • – CRM, traffic, etc
• AI insights
• Trigger and Action
  • Automated Follow-up
• Feedback Loop
  • Continuous improvement

While the topic of just about every marketing conference is always AI, over the 2-day event it was interesting to see how others think about AI. How they apply it, and how it can be looked at from many different aspects of our daily professional life.