By: Vice President & Integrator Sarah Morgan and Account Manager & Statistic Analysis Reporting Specialist Jeff Schwartz
AI is having a moment, and by “moment,” we mean it’s barreling through industries like the internet did in the early 2000s.
From content and image generation to predictive analytics and writing your out-of-office email (shoutout to the robots who love a witty sign-off), it’s an understatement to say that AI has changed the game.
But before you throw your brand voice to the bots and let them run wild with your social strategy, let your marketing agency talk to you.
Driving innovation that serves our clients and agency well is what we strive for. (After all, “Be Smart” is one of our core values!)
So, with AI, we knew we couldn’t just ignore it, but that we had to understand it and know how to harness it.
As we have used AI thoughtfully, we’ve gathered some opinions and actual experience on what works and what doesn’t.
First Things First, Your Audience Still Wants You
Let’s not forget the golden rule of marketing: Know your audience!
Audiences (no matter who they are) crave authenticity.
According to Forbes, authenticity sells, literally. Trust is one of the biggest buying motivators, and nothing shatters it faster than content that screams, “This was written by technology, a human.”
Also, people can absolutely tell when you use AI in a social post, especially in an image. Consumers know when the person selling to them is the LinkedIn version of children in a trench coat. They know, they care, and they don’t like it. (And, honestly, we don’t blame them.)
Does That Mean You Should Ghost AI Completely?
Nope. That would be like ignoring spellcheck because you once got called out for using “they’re” instead of “their.” (We’ve all been there.)
In fact, AI has real benefits when it’s used strategically.
Here’s how the LKF team does it and how we think our clients should, too.
The Do’s and Don’ts of AI Marketing
Do: Use AI to work smarter.
- Speed up repetitive tasks. Have AI handle the data-wrangling, number crunching, or laying out first-draft frameworks so your team can focus on strategy, not spreadsheets.
- Mine for insights. Want to know the best time to post based on real user activity? So did one of our clients! And we found it (Tuesdays at 10:00 a.m., if you’re curious).
- Use deep research. AI can uncover gold in niche industries and deliver competitive intel with speed.
- Build better starting points. Need a production timeline for a campaign? AI can set the table, but you still need to cook the meal.
Don’t: Hand over the keys.
- Don’t let AI write your brand voice. Your brand isn’t a generic LinkedIn influencer. Trust us, your audience can tell when your content has been through the AI rinse cycle one too many times.
- Don’t use AI-generated images as final creative. They’re often uncannily fake, can’t be copyrighted, and may accidentally violate trademarks (imagine Adidas using “Just Do It” because Nike used AI to write it. Oof!).
- Don’t trust it with sensitive info. AI remembers what you feed it. So maybe don’t submit your product roadmap or legal brief, unless you want it to show up in a chatbot’s next casual conversation.
- Don’t automate without oversight. Ask KFC Germany, which let AI run their promotions and ended up posting a “celebratory” message on Kristallnacht. (Yes, really. Here’s the source.)
- Don’t rely on AI to teach you everything. Just because it gives you an answer doesn’t mean you’ve learned anything. Spoiler alert: AI isn’t a substitute for strategy, intuition, or experience.
Here’s the Gist of It
If someone didn’t know what they were doing in marketing before AI, they’re still not going to know now. AI doesn’t replace strategy; it replaces some of the heavy lifting so we, as your marketing team, can think bigger.
Great marketing has always required deep audience understanding, brand authenticity, and a little bit of intuition (plus a lot of testing). That hasn’t changed.
What has changed is the speed at which you can access insights and act on them. (If you know what you’re doing.)
And guess what? We do.
Need a partner who knows when to use AI and when to trust a human brain? Let’s talk.
