The 2023 Brew conference focused on using Artificial Intelligence (AI) in digital marketing. Our department heads each presented their vision of the future for our business and the digital sphere.
AI was the most significant digital buzzword in 2023, so there was a clear emphasis on making the most of this fast-moving technology in digital marketing, design, and content. We also delved into the world of project management, SEO and our mission as a business.
The vision for Brew
The Lionshare of our business here at Brew is web design, build and digital marketing for the hospitality industry, and our key aim is to be the best in the UK at what we do. We're proud to deliver excellent client service backed by years of expertise. Some team members have worked within our business for over a decade, and our new faces bring a fresh, youthful perspective that makes for a winning combination.
While the last couple of years have focused on restoring order following COVID and lockdown, In the coming year, our focus is on leveraging new technology so our clients can be their digital best.
AI for digital marketing
Our digital marketing lead, Emmaline McAndrew, spoke primarily about Artificial Intelligence, looking at how globally renowned brands such as Heinz, Martini and MailChimp have embraced and successfully used AI to benefit their business. Heinz and Martini used generative AI to create images for their digital marketing campaigns. Heinz led the way in 2022 with its open use of DALL-E for its ketchup brand. Hospitality brands such as All Bar One have also used generative AI to create social media images, with other brands choosing to use ChatGPT to help with content ideas.
We're not just dipping our toes in the world of AI either; Emm and members of the wider Brew team hold AI certification and looking forward, we'll be incorporating more of this breakthrough technology in all areas of the business, including:
- Ideation & content generation
- Asset creation
- SEO
- Customer service
- Data insight
Of course, there are caveats for AI use. Emm cautions that AI must be accurately channelled and controlled for it to be reliable and secure. The benefits are undeniable, but accuracy must be checked, and content should always be humanised.
Emm is currently developing an 'AI for social media' training programme for our hospitality clients to sit alongside our existing suite of social media training materials, so drop us a line if you're interested!
AI for SEO
Following our recent blog on the enormous changes coming to Google search and SEO as a result of AI advances, our SEO expert, Sophie Page-Britton, spoke of two significant areas of development:
- The way we optimise website content
- The way Google will present that content to users in search
Sophie also focused heavily on AI as a tool but only a partial solution. How well it performs for us relies on learning to provide effective prompts. There's a whole matrix of ranking factors that AI has improved, but human involvement is vital to keep output on-brand, engaging and accurate.
Sophie and her team have also been deep-diving into best-practice reporting for our clients this year and are close to unveiling a new standardised monthly report that gives the stats and results clients need, as well as essential analysis and actions to improve web performance. Look out for that!
AI for digital design
Our lead designer, Scott Barker, has been busy actioning our aspirations from last year's conference, introducing new work processes and finessing our video work, with great success.
In the coming year, Scott and the team intend to showcase and take on more branding work (did you see what we did for vegan food brand Cherub?) and integrate, you guessed it, Artificial Intelligence into our workflow. Many in the design world have seen AI as the enemy, but according to Digistat, 71% of agencies have now embraced AI, and we're certainly one of them.
AI is a wonder to play and experiment with and certainly fuels creativity as well as lightening the load on asset-heavy projects. We already use tools to create visuals for our own website as well as develop ideas for client pitching. Beyond that, there are still some pain points - AI is undoubtedly not a one-click magic button to replace the individuality of human designers and their idiosyncrasies. We see it more as a co-pilot to human creativity and a great team member!
So, there you have it...
We’ll be back with more on AI in upcoming blogs. In the meantime, if you’d like to chat about AI, design, SEO or content creation then please reach out. Our door is always open.
Matt Bowell
Matt has been in marketing for 25 years, clocking up many years for institutions like the NHS, the BBC, Comic Relief, Goodyear Dunlop, and Lonely Planet in the UK and abroad. Matt leads the client service team as one of Brew’s directors.
