For years, the expensive part of digital marketing was production. Writing, designing, editing, testing. AI has made a large part of that cheaper and faster. That sounds like good news for everyone, and it partly is, but it also shifts where the advantage lies.
When production gets cheap, attention gets expensive
If everyone can produce more content for less, the volume of content goes up and the attention available does not. The scarce resource is no longer production. It is judgement, taste and distribution.
The businesses that win in this environment are not the ones producing the most. They are the ones who know which few things are worth producing, and who understand where their customers actually are.
What gets cheaper, and what does not
- Cheaper: drafting, variations, first-pass design, summarising, translation, repurposing.
- Not cheaper: strategy, positioning, relationships, trust and knowing what to say.
The practical implication
AI is best used as leverage on top of a clear strategy. If you know who you are talking to and why, AI lets you produce more good work faster. If you do not, AI simply lets you produce more noise faster.
That is why we start with the problem and the customer, and only then reach for the tool.
