Marketing by Design – Intentional strategy for creative marketers in the age of AI
AI is redefining the marketing landscape. Stay ahead with this weekly newsletter on trends & how to prepare your career for an AI future.
Share
Working With AI to Compete Against AI
Published about 2 years ago • 4 min read
28 April 2024 | Issue #45
In this issue:
How to compete with AI for your first job
Synthesia launches expressive avatars
Regenerative AI: The future of digital advertising?
Where is your organization on the AI Acceleration journey?
New podcast you have to listen to
Set up your own Discord server for Midjourney
Prompt: a group of students are talking to a 40-year-old woman --ar 16:9
If you're somebody who is getting ready to enter the marketing field, I have a couple of scary numbers for you:
53,000 college graduates are about to enter the workforce looking for their first job. Jobs are scarce, and decreasing by the day. Current marketers assume that 40% of their jobs will be negatively impacted by AI, according to MarketerHire.
So, you just spent an unGodly amount of money for that marketing degree. Now what?
This helpful guide gives you plenty of options to stand out from the competition and get noticed by potential employers.
One of the recommendations is to join online groups to get access to marketing experts. Aaron and I are both members of Mark Schaefer's RISE community. Last week we had a book club roundtable discussing Ann Handley's "Everybody Writes" book ... with Ann Handley herself! You can't get access to thought leaders like this on social media.
There are similar groups across any discipline, but I tend to hang out in marketing-related groups.
NEWS AT THE INTERSECTION OF MARKETING, DESIGN, & AI
👨🏻🏫 Synthesia Launches Expressive Avatars
Synthesia's new "Expressive Avatars" mark a big leap in AI technology, offering digital personas that can mirror human emotions accurately. This is a game changer for creatives who are looking to create more engaging and lifelike interactions in digital media.
Enhanced realism: The avatars can display a wide range of emotions, making digital interactions feel more genuine.
Broad applications: Ideal for scenarios from corporate training to customer service, enhancing user experience dramatically.
🌎 Regenerative AI: The Next Quantum Leap in Digital Advertising
Nova's article introduces the concept of "(Re)Generative AI," a transformative approach to creative production in digital advertising. For designers, this innovation means a shift towards more dynamic, efficient, and adaptable content creation that resonates across various platforms.
🏃🏽♀️➡️ Where is Your Organization on the AI Acceleration Journey?
David Armano's recent newsletter explores the stages of AI integration within organizations, emphasizing the strategic value for designers. Understanding where your organization stands in this journey is crucial for aligning your creative strategies with broader technological advancements.
AI Aware: You're watching and informally learning
AI Learning: Formalizing learning, some top-down initiatives start
AI Experimenting: Experimenting from the organization level, not just the individual level
AI Accelerating: Scaling, operationalizing, and hiring to fill new responsibilities
Design leader Emily Campbell recently joined my favorite new podcast, Imagine This. Imagine That. to discuss the future of design. She discusses how designers will become more technical. Design systems will become less dominant because of how design and engineering work side by side. It's no longer a true waterfall process where design does their part and then hands it off. The lines are blurring between different teams and different stages of the creation process.
When it comes to A.I., we're interacting with technology in a new, almost more human way. We go back and forth with this technology like a conversation. In the past, we just asked a question and got an answer. Or we clicked a button and an action happened. Now, because of the true interactivity with tech, we have to design experiences made for that.
Something else to think about for current and future product design: We're getting more sophisticated. We're getting better at interacting with A.I. We're learning the patterns. This means that the user experience will need to change over time. At some point, this will be second nature within our products, but for now, we need to account for everyone who is currently at different stages of the learning journey.
The team behind the Imagine This. Imagine That. podcast never ceases to make me smarter. I recently discovered Chris McKay and Maginative and I learn so much from him (see above). I first started following his co-host, Richard Banfield, more than a decade ago when his former agency designed a website for my former employer. Technically, they designed it twice since our company was acquired a few days before we were set to go live. That was ... fun?
Work with Midjourney, stop just playing with it
One of the biggest hurdles to generating your own AI images is the technology. Dall-E is pretty easy to use if you have ChatGPT, but it doesn't give you options.
If you're looking to use Midjourney, but don't know how to navigate the convoluted world Discord, I recommend this guide to walk you through the steps.
The Content Entrepreneur at CEX
This time next week I, and many of the authors from the new book, The Content Entrepreneur, will be attending the third Content Entrepreneur Expo (CEX).
I attended the first two CEXs and I not only learned a lot, but I got to make some great contacts and friends.
If you're looking to spend a few days in lovely Cleveland, OH in early May, or you just want to watch the videos after the fact, use my code DESIGN100 to get $100 of the cost.
After Design is a media partner for the event! In fact, the entire idea for After Design was born at last year's CEX.
There is so much creativity in the air, it would be impossible to walk away without some sort of inspiration.
01 June 2026 | Issue #127 In this issue: Step-by-step process for creating an animated social image using (mostly) AI Aeto: get paid for the hours you work Recent Podcast Appearance Design Quote of the Week Happy Pride Month! This past week, I was working on a social graphic for my company, Intellect, to celebrate Pride Month. So, I thought you might like to hear the process I went through to take a still image and animate it exactly the way I wanted. I'll go through the process and explain...
26 May 2026 | Issue #126 In this issue: What Is a Visual Value Proposition (And Why Most Brands Don't Have One) Aeto: project management and timers for freelancers Recent Podcast Appearance Design Quote of the Week What Is a Visual Value Proposition (And Why Most Brands Don't Have One) Most marketers can write a value proposition. You fill in the blanks: we help [audience] achieve [outcome] by [method]. That part is well-trodden territory. The harder question is whether you can show it. A...
10 May 2026 | Issue #125 In this issue: The Rise of [job]+ Aeto: The End of the Unbilled Hour Recent Podcast Appearance Design Quote of the Week The Rise of [job]+ Your job title is just the beginning. Everywhere I look, I see people lamenting this awful job market. People are losing their jobs and it's taking a lot longer to find a new one. As someone who looked for a job after the dot com bust, and the housing crisis, and the “efficiency” era we’re now in, I know how hard it is. One of the...