What I told St Andrews postgraduates about marketing in the age of AI.
On Monday, 2 November, I was invited to give a guest lecture at the University of St Andrews Business School. The title was “Integrated Marketing Communications in the Age of AI”. The room was full of management and entrepreneurship postgraduates, each team building its own venture.
They were all about to tell a brand story for the first time, just as the rules were changing.
My argument was simple. Integrated marketing asks a brand to tell one consistent story across every channel. AI has not retired that idea. On the contrary, it has made it even more pertinent.
A person rarely compares a brand’s website, press coverage and reviews side by side. AI does. Where they disagree, it fills the gap with whatever it can verify, including a version of the brand you never knew existed.
The lesson holds for every brand: be clear about how you want to be described, make that language consistent everywhere, and give your beautiful stories findable facts.
The students were bright, curious and a little anxious about what AI will leave for them to do. My answer: AI is good at repeating a story, but it cannot decide which story is worth telling or, in fact, true. That’s where you come in.
Production is now cheap. Judgement and taste are more valuable than ever.
