AI has been the buzzword of 2023, and agencies that plan to drive growth in 2024 have accepted AI as a must-have. They know they have to understand how to leverage it to win more business, retain clients, expand contracts and increase revenue. For over a decade, Resonate has been helping agencies efficiently and effectively drive growth using AI — long before AI became a household name. And now it isn’t just tech people and marketers talking about its power. It’s everyone.
That’s made it even more critical for agencies to tap into its power. All of your customers are talking about AI. They know they should be leveraging it. They know their competitors are using it. Whether or not they understand the why or how, it’s on the agenda of every board planning meeting. Every CMO is being tasked with figuring out a plan to incorporate AI into their 2024 marketing.
That means your value is immeasurable if you proactively tap into how to offer AI-driven services to your clients. Yes, that will include using generative AI to create content, but it also means offering predictive AI solutions to help guide messaging, targeting and a more intelligent approach to marketing. (Are we talking about our proprietary, predictive neural network, rAI? Of course!)
Forrester is in agreement with this AI revolution for agencies, and in their 2024 predictions, they spoke to the acceleration of the shift from services to solutions. Here are their top five predictions and how Resonate’s cutting-edge AI can help you prepare.
Agencies Will Bet on Brand-Specific AI Models to Scale Marketing Impact
Forrester reports that agencies will invest in enterprise-ready AI solutions that combine AI models with their own audience intelligence, as well as clients’ first-party data.
We will absolutely co-sign that. With Resonate, having the ability to tap into rich, relevant, up-to-the-moment data on consumers and onboard first-party data not only dazzles clients in pitch meetings, but it delivers results. Your understanding of consumers across industries is nearly unlimited and fast, letting you deliver creative, informed campaigns and quickly target segments at scale to activate across digital channels.
Low-Cost AI Content Solutions Will Grow Revenue But Shrink In-House Work
There’s a lot of buzz about AI taking jobs in the marketing and advertising world, so it’s no surprise Forrester predicts that low-cost AI content generation will become one of the biggest stories of 2024. What is surprising, is that, according to our data, people working in marketing, PR, and advertising are 15% less likely than the average consumer to express concern over AI taking jobs.
Perhaps it’s because they realize that all of this low-cost AI will lead to redundancy between brands, and the agencies that learn to differentiate their content will help their clients (and their wins!) pull ahead. This is another area where the 30B daily consumer observations available within the Resonate Platform will separate savvy agencies from the rest.
Fear of AI Mismanagement Will Increase Agency Review by 10%
AI’s impact on privacy and data protection continue to be a concern, and there is worry about generative AI’s compliance with laws like GDPR. With more and more agencies relying on generative AI, there is definitely reason to be concerned — and brands realize that.
Relying on a solution that leverages a proprietary, privacy-safe data source, like rAI, is going to be critical.
Digital Agencies Will Disappear From the Industry Landscape
All marketing is now digital, particularly in a world where generative AI is playing a bigger role. Forrester predicts smaller digital agencies will fold into larger integrated agencies or become integrated services providers themselves. To keep up, they’ll need to offer media, technology consulting, and creative in addition to digital marketing strategy.
Having the right solutions and tools is key to doing it all. Our agency clients successfully use Resonate insights and data for research, targeting, and segmentation, informing creative messaging, revealing new revenue streams and untapped audiences, as well as media activation.
PR Agency Demand Will Soar 5% as Brands Flock to Risk Management in an Election Year
After watching the Bud Light incident crash and burn, brands know they can’t afford a misstep with their existing customers. And, interestingly, Forrester’s B2C predictions said that most brands are muting social justice and ESG comms. Our data aligns with that, saying less than 10% of U.S. consumers indicate social policies are the top driver when making a purchasing decision. Yet risk management is top of mind for those situations where something may not align and the Twitter storms start calling out the brand. It’s something we’re covering in our upcoming State of the Consumer Report as we analyze the data to determine where consumers currently stand on values-based purchasing.
This is going to continue to evolve throughout the election year, so the ability to tap into AI-driven, recent data and understand where consumer sentiment now is going to be key. Standard data with a lag time isn’t going to cut it.
What Does This Mean For You?
For agencies, 2024 is going to be the year you have to determine where you fall in an AI-driven world. How are you going to leverage it? How is it going to help you stand out? Will your clients see your command of AI as something that will help them look smarter? (That’s key!)
This has already been our world for years now — we’re happy to welcome you into it.
