Can do attitude

No one aspires to a career in a creative agency because they enjoy monotonous, time-consuming jobs, but that doesn’t mean those tasks don’t exist. If you’ve ever had to format hundreds of references, then you’ll know it takes a good deal of time and patience but is thoroughly unavoidable. Or at least it used to be, until AI came along, merrily automating the mundane and repetitive.

And of course, AI doesn’t just do the jobs no one else wants to. It also does the ones no one else can do, like accurately analysing huge volumes of data at speed – and without the need for coffee.

It’s this ability to help agencies work smarter that makes AI such a valuable tool. But a tool it is, and one that needs to be carefully managed.

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Copy right

When it comes to crafting copy, AI tools have come a long way. With a little help from natural language processing (NLP) and natural language generation (NLG), AI can produce reams of text to a set brief in seconds. It’ll be grammatically sound and without a typo in sight. So why use a copywriter?

Just like a copywriter, AI can’t write without a decent brief. But writing that brief takes a certain amount of experience – or a lot of trial and error – and even with the best brief in the world, AI copy tends to lack heart. And that really matters. Copy that isn’t imbued with emotional intelligence or lived experience won’t resonate. And if it doesn’t resonate then it won’t deliver.

There’s also the small matter of the healthcare sector itself. Highly regulated and necessarily exacting, AI doesn’t know enough about legislation to understand which codes are relevant – and so it can’t adhere to them. Even with multiple prompts it can still fall scarily short. Similarly – and no less alarmingly – AI tools also struggle to successfully substantiate specific medical claims. Sometimes they use studies that just aren’t suitable. In extreme cases, they cite ones that don’t even exist – and that’s enough to keep even the most pragmatic MLR reviewers awake at night.

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Copy that isn’t imbued with emotional intelligence or lived experience won’t resonate. And if it doesn’t resonate then it won’t deliver.

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Drawing the line

When it comes to generating images and videos, AI tools can be equally hit and miss. It’s true they can create highly realistic visuals at remarkable speed. They can also refine existing designs, generate patterns, produce compositions, and much more – and all in a fraction of the time it would take you or me. So far, so good, but again there are issues. As we’ve seen, AI can’t capture subtle nuance or emotional depth when it comes to copy, and the same applies to images. This can be particularly problematic in healthcare, where complex science and sensitive topics often go hand-in-hand. Then there’s the issue of authenticity: Even photo-real AI imagery can feel flat against the actual real deal, or lack the connection of comparative works created by skilled designers or photographers.

Is there a place for AI in healthcare design? Without doubt, but its potential needs to be harnessed by experienced creative teams capable of delegating between man and machine.

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This time, it's personal

AI really comes into its own with personalisation. Where traditional marketing tends to take a one-size-fits-all approach to reaching broad audiences, AI allows us to customise campaigns so that the right messages reach the right people at the right place and time. However, as ever there are a couple of catches: AI is only as good as the data it’s trained on; and the more personalised the content, the more critical it is to respect privacy regulations, and ensure personal data is handled ethically and responsibly. Essentially, if you ask a computer to do your homework for you, you’re going to have to sit down and mark it!

And what does personalisation mean from a healthcare design perspective? From custom email campaigns to tailored website experiences, AI can quickly and easily adapt master assets into multiple variants. Each can be carefully tailored to appeal to individual personas or audiences, helping to increase engagement and maximise ROI. In many ways, it’s a dream come true for marketeers, and certainly not something that could be achieved manually. The process does, however, still warrant significant human input, not least because AI can’t yet deliver consistency. It’s therefore down to us designers to quality check and refine the output so the end results feel cohesive.

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AI can’t yet deliver consistency. It’s therefore down to us designers to quality check and refine the output so the end results feel cohesive.

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Tomorrow's world

Looking ahead, AI’s role is set to expand still further into healthcare comms. Emerging technologies like augmented reality ads and hyper-personalisation hold great promise. But as with investigational drugs, advancement comes with risk as well as benefit – and it’ll be down to human smarts to find the balance.

Stay tuned to find out how we’re using AI’s best side to enhance our efficiency and output, in our ‘Integrating AI at Gosling: A Performance Review’ blog post. Or, if you’d like to explore how you can stay ahead of the curve in an AI-driven market, click the 'Let's talk' button.

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