AI content at scale has finally been tamed

Talk to people about generative AI's potential to supercharge the content supply chain and you'll get very different reactions. Performance marketers are thrilled. No more waiting on the creatives for inspiration to strike! They see a future where AI has unlocked the power to test and iterate with extraordinary speed, to respond immediately to marketing moments, to generate hyperpersonalized content, to keep evergreen campaigns eternally fresh.

Brand managers and creative directors, on the other hand, see a nightmare. Everybody thinks they're a designer... They see the brand equity they've worked so hard to build drowning in a flood of low-quality, off-brand content, rife with reputational and even legal risks. They know that if anyone from the CEO to their brother-in-law sees a subpar ad, the creatives will catch the blame. They're not about to hand over the keys to the brand to a rogue alliance of marketers and robots.

But is that clash inevitable? Can an organization enjoy both the unprecedented benefits of content iteration at scale and maintain the integrity of its brand? And maybe even free up its creative teams and agency partners for higher-level, higher-value strategic work instead of cranking out minor variations of assets?

We're here to tell you it can be done. And not in some distant future. Right now. With some judicious change management, a little openness from all parties, and Adobe GenStudio for Performance Marketing, you can have your gen-AI cake and eat it too.

Wait, what's Adobe GenStudio for Performance Marketing?

Adobe needs no introduction. Maybe you're already using Workfront as your operating system of record, producing content in Creative Cloud apps like Photoshop or InDesign, running your site on Experience Manager, and/or managing files in AEM Assets. Late in 2024, GenStudio for Performance Marketing was announced as the newest addition to that world-class suite of apps.

In short, it allows performance marketers to self-serve gen-AI content at scale, from emails to display ads and social posts, within brand governance guardrails. You can see it in action in Adobe's launch demo.

Brand teams can upload brand guidelines, templates, approved assets, and user personas. Marketers can prompt GenStudio to create new brand-compliant assets for specific campaigns, occasions, channels, audience aspect ratios - whatever they need. They can then invite stakeholders to approve those assets right there on the same canvas they're created in. A process that used to take weeks now takes hours or even minutes.

And Adobe GenStudio for Performance Marketing also takes analytics to another level. It tells you not only how well assets are performing, but why. Both automated and human-entered tags break down what aspects are common to the most effective creative. Producing more high-performance assets is as easy as clicking a button, putting the "real" into "real-time iteration".

Sounds great, right? Can it be that easy? Well, getting the most out of it will take some planning, some cross-functional buy-in, and some organizational groundwork. Focus on a few core guiding principles:

(Re-)Align Stakeholders

First, it begins with clearly defining (or re-defining) stakeholder roles and responsibilities across marketing, brand management, creative/agency, and, where applicable, regulatory compliance.

Chances are, you'll still have good reason for certain material to go through one or more layers of additional sign-off before publication. Sometimes there's still no substitute for human eyes.

If these use cases are clearly defined, then consistent workflows can be enabled right there in the app. Review cycles will remain a fact of life. But GenStudio's AI mitigates many of the issues that currently consume early rounds of review and revision. That means lighter work and higher velocity, while still providing the assurance that human team members have seen and approved any potentially delicate content.

(Re-)Define Creative Success

Admittedly, this is where it gets sensitive. What constitutes good creative is inherently subjective. And, as humans, we naturally feel a need to see our own fingerprints on the work we touch. If creatives didn't care about the output, they wouldn't be very good creatives.

But the major advantage in performance marketing is that you have access to very clear and objective performance metrics that ultimately define the success of your content. Discussions of individual aesthetic preferences or biases can be set aside to focus on facts. 

Provided the appropriate guardrails are applied around brand guidelines, tone, voice, and imagery, training stakeholders to apply a more disciplined lens to their feedback will ultimately yield a culture that embraces a test-and-learn philosophy over the need for (perceived) perfection. 

Take note: this is easier said than done and will take time. Be patient with yourselves and each other. You'll get there.

(Re-)Frame the Brief

When design teams are set free from churning out massive versioning outputs, the initial briefing approach probably looks a lot different. Rather than a collection of finished assets, creative teams will be asked to deliver scalable design templates, master visuals, key messaging, and an inventory of interchangeable modular assets. 

The better you get at anticipating versioning and testing needs upfront, the more bang for your buck you'll get. A relatively small number of component assets can be configured into an exponentially greater number of output variants.

This doesn't mean eliminating creative prerogative from the review and revise cycle. Slight adjustments to design and copy might be called for in some variants. But the manual intervention lift will be dramatically reduced, so creatives can concentrate on the kind of strategic work only they can contribute.

(Re-)Engineer Key Processes

OK, a one-stop shop for all your creative is fine and dandy - but what if your performance marketing channels are just a subset of your overall media mix within an integrated omnichannel strategy? 

In cases like this, we'll need to think about GenStudio not as a self-contained solution, but as a new production line within your overall supply chain. Maybe your overall campaign planning, intake, and executional orchestration take place within Workfront as your marketing system of record. Maybe Workfront Planning is the high-level hub for your whole marketing lifecycle. Perhaps you already use AEM Assets as your enterprise DAM. Not a problem -- in fact, quite the opposite.

You can easily connect GenStudio to AEM Assets and leverage the same assets across omnichannel activation rather than store your assets in its native repository. Integrations between Workfront and GenStudio are already on the roadmap, too. And custom integrations can be easily augmented using Workfront Fusion. From there it's just a case of identifying the appropriate on- and off-ramps between your full end-to-end processes and these specific channel sub-processes. 

The crucial point remains that you'll produce more content faster, whether your performance marketing assets follow an omnichannel campaign's lead or not. GenStudio's benefits, from content velocity to real-time performance iteration, can apply to whatever inputs you're working with.

Don't wait for the future, seize it now

AI-driven content at scale isn't just the future of interactive experiences. It's viable now - in the right use cases, with the right controls, and most of all with the right organizational approach. 

At WNDYR, that's what we do. Our Adobe-certified experts are ready to help you be among the first to reap the benefits of that crucial transformation. From tech implementation to change management, we have the expertise and experience to scale up your marketing ops and power up your people. Contact WNDYR today to get moving. There's not a moment to waste.