Don't Mug Yourself

Welcome to The Beat by Rockstar CMO. I’m Ian Truscott, a CMO, trusted advisor, strategy consultant and Chief Bottle Washer at Rockstar CMO. In this newsletter, I’d like to share a mix of what’s caught my eye from our community, our podcast and our street knowledge blog.

Hello there!

If you are a regular reader, thank you and apologies for skipping last week, work and other commitments got the better of me. And, thank you for opening this email; I do appreciate it.

In UK slang, “to be mugged off” means that you are being made a fool of by someone taking advantage of you, and this week the title “Don’t Mug Yourself” comes from a song by The Streets released in the UK in 2002, which was about not making a fool of themselves over a girl.

In this email, I’m thinking about AI in the same way.

You’ve probably heard or seen his statement:

Which was made by an economist, Richard Baldwin during the World Economic Forum in 2023 and has become quite the trope in our industry.

I’m thinking about how this pertains to marketing - and I am not so sure - and have been discussing this with Robert Rose between our podcast recordings.

The first bit - “AI won’t take your job” - I think we all agree with, but the rest I don’t think is so simple.

I am seeing marketers outsourcing their marketing brains to AI. Today you can pretty much ask ChatGPT to create not just your content, but also your content strategy and even the marketing strategy that your content strategy is part of.

On the one hand, splendid, what a lot of time saved, maybe weeks of work distilled into an afternoon of prompts and refining prompts.

However, the first obvious point is that your new AI marketing assistant is operating in the rearview mirror, of what it learned yesterday, there just won’t be anything innovative in the work. It is based on the average of what it has indexed.

But aside from the human creative spark, more importantly, I’m thinking that when it comes to developing something creative or a strategy, the journey is as important as the destination.

The work is better because of what you learn on that journey, the time that is we are so keen to save, is quality time, the deep work, the discovery, finding your voice, your brand, who your company is or figuring out the best approach for your team, business and resources.

All the things that will make this piece of creative or entire strategy not the sum of the average, but uniquely yours.

Of course, AI tools are splendid for helping that journey along - it’s not binary, use AI or don’t, but you need to decide how much of that journey you want to be involved with.

To revisit this trope of “It's somebody using AI that will take your job”

I don’t think we should feel at risk from someone outsourcing their marketing brain for the sum of the average.

And, maybe, if your ChatGPT habit is getting out of hand:

Don’t mug yourself.

Thanks as ever for reading this far, hope you like the links below and if you’d like to get in touch, just reply to this email or ping me at [email protected].

Have a great week!

Cheers!

Ian

Ian Truscott | Chief Bottle Washer Rockstar CMO

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On the Podcast

Street Knowledge

From around the Rockstar CMO community and stuff I like :-)

Get your Monday Marketing Mojo Working

A little parental advisory required on this one, but a classic UK track from early 2000’s.