How to use AI in Marketing right

Interesting and illustrative points from Stuart Winter-Tear about AI as a value proposition.

Technically true that AI in Osterwalder’s Business Model Canvas is not a value prop but a key resource.

❓But does that really matter? 🤔

As for marketing an offer, AI is an important “reason why”, and sometimes a “reason why” becomes so central that you DO want to focus your marketing on it. You see this all the time.

All “organic” products are marketed that way. The “organic” is in the middle of the communication and the package design. The resulting benefits are a mere side note. Just one example, there are dozens of others.

The customer decides what and where is the value

And if customers’ buying decisions are obviously highly influenced by the AI narrative, then better adapt to it. It doesn’t matter at all if customers confuse value props with “reasons why”, and they don’t care at all about whether someone got Osterwalder’s model right or wrong.

It’s the customer and only the customer, in his subjective perception, who decides what creates value for him, and not marketing or strategic frameworks.

Learning, customer sophistication and shift of value perception

There’s also a dynamic component. As customers get more educated and the whole AI fog and associated irrational exuberance lifts, and the applicable real value can be dissected and differentiated, the perception of customers will probably shift away from “AI (no matter what)” and more towards the real benefits resulting from it - or not.

The (limited) value of frameworks

The lesson learned from this - one more time - is to emancipate yourself from descriptive or prescriptive frameworks, regardless of how useful they otherwise might seem.

Use them as a map where appropriate, but don’t try to press reality into it.