AI convenience is the replacement of a sustainable marketing strategy with disposable thinking | Farmer

Red solo cups are weird.

I went to a barbecue on Independence Day. And while I was sitting there with a Red Solo Cup, I realized how strange the cups are. They break easily, are sensitive to barrel, terrible to the environment and made from a carcinogenic chemical cocktail. And yet they have succeeded in replacing more sustainable options such as glass or metal because they are cheap and Handy.

We have switched from sustainable and reusable to disposable and thin, and I am afraid that our thinking will follow the same path because of AI, especially in the sales and marketing strategy.

Does Chatgpt critical thinking?

Earlier this year, MIT published an investigation to explore LLMS ‘impact on our brains. Participants were split into three groups and asked to write an essay while they are connected to an Elektro -Falography (EEG) machine, which measures the cognitive load. The first group used LLMS; The second, search engines; The third group was limited to their knowledge. The results were scary.

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Researchers discovered that participants with the strongest, most distributed neural networks (that is, they did not use technology. The more technological participants used, the less they used their brains. According to the author of the study, Nataliya Kos’Myna, “Although LLMS offers immediate convenience, our findings emphasize potential cognitive costs. For four months, LLM users have consistently subsued against neural, linguistic and behavioral levels.” AI literally makes us more stupid and damages our ability to think critically.

That’s a problem. Because, like the Red Solo Cup, we trade sustainability for a deadly cocktail of disposable thinking that cannot be resisted.

AI cannot make smart bets for you

I hear income leaders describe their work as bets. They bet on which campaigns should be supported and which to kill with limited data from a variety of reliability. It’s all a gamble.

However, more precise and more accurate data, with well -interpreted interpretations, enable leaders to make stronger bets with a greater chance of a solid return. And it is no surprise that, like most people, they turn to generative AI to fill in the data differences so that they can make better bets – what exactly is the wrong thing to do. Because they are not looking for clarity of data, they want insight – what generative AI cannot give them.

AI is a statistical model that has analyzed billions of words. The answers are based on likely – what will be most likely as a following connection with your subject. But only because it will probably come Does not mean it is correct. Even worse, AI is programmed to increase your adoption flattery” manipulation and deception. This behavior is Get worse as AI models become more advanced.

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The answers from AI can be a hallucination that results from programmed to first prioritize helpfulness, second and Waart’s harmlessness as third. It is not malignant, but it is deceptive. AI models lie with a rate, scope and confidence that George Costanza could only dream of. AI will fake statistics, links, even whole websites to tell you what you want to hear. And we still use it. Consider how crazy that sounds.

You would dismiss an employee who caught manufacturing data used to make campaign decisions. And you would be right to do it. They endanger your company and personal reputation. But when Chatgpt does it, we ignore it. That is incredibly dangerous. How can you ever make smart bets if you don’t know if you get real, valuable insights or fake, made up?

People want a solution, not a product

Harvard Business Professor Theodore Leavitt said: “People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch exercise. They want a quarter inch gap.” I have discovered that that is true. People do not buy products or services. They buy results.

That is why the MIT study is so spooky – because people surrender their thinking to AI.

AI can do a lot, such as analyzing data, summarizing information, predicting patterns in order and synthesizing concepts. However, it cannot separate the quarter-inch drill bit (offer) from the quarter-inch hole (result). It can’t generate either insight In what your customers buy because it cannot generate insight at all.

AI offers insights into marketing strategy such as red solo cups: they have no resilience or depth. We exclude our skepticism and listen to the AI. And that is just as risky as believing that your wife is really ‘fine’ when you look at the game with friends on your wedding anniversary.

But success in marketing requires solid insights, not wishful ‘thinking’.

Insights for sale

We want to believe that customers buy a product or service, but they are not. As Clayton Christensen expressed it, “hire” your product or service to help them make progress in their lives ” – to remove friction, to solve a problem, achieve a goal, etc.

And it is the task of marketing and sales strategy to make that progress clear. I came up with the three questions below such as a guide for what you copy, but they apply to all marketing.

1. What is the problem that your customers try to solve?
2. What are their options to solve the problem?
3. Which option is the best and why?

That is not about functions or benefits. It is about giving your customers insight into their problems and solutions with sufficient clarity to make a confident decision. That goes much further than just data analysis or interpretation. It requires insight at the human level-the species that grock cannot generate.

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Create solid insights

Good marketing does not only explain what you are doing. It influences the behavior of buyers. That requires thinking depth – especially in B2B.

Chatgpt can’t do that for you. Thinking like that comes from discipline, experience, context and finding similarities in apparently non -related facts. It is the kind of deep work that is difficult to prioritize when Go-to-Market teams are put under pressure to move quickly.

Here are a few ways to start building insight muscle.

Make it a habit to ask “what is missing?” Most teams analyze what they see for them. They do not consider what they should see for them that is not there. The Surviving bias ((right) proves that insight is not the sum of known patterns. It is the tension between what is visible and what is missing. That is something that cannot replicate LLM. In search of missing documents, asking the questions that no one else is, and in the process, exposing patterns that many people miss.

Study people, no dashboards: People buy from you. Your dashboard can give you a lot of great information about trends, but it cannot explain why people buy from you, or what is missing in your offer that you have real competitors.

Remember what AI is and is not: AI is not a tool at a strategic level and may never be used as such. You can use it to test ideas from multiple angles, but in the end nothing replaces the knowledge of observation, interpretation and judgment. That is human work and will probably be for the near future.

Keep the red solo cups for the barbecue, but bring the glassware when it comes to thinking, strategy and customer insight. It is durable, reusable and built to go under pressure. In a world full of disposable content, your ability to generate insight is your last unfair benefit.