Artificial intelligence took a quantum leap forward in 2023 and many tech news outlets predicted that it would continue to dominate headlines — and business agendas — throughout 2024.
“At OBI Creative, we’re at the forefront of integrating generative AI into both our internal operations and the solutions we provide for our clients,” said Justin Eveloff, vice president of performance marketing.
“AI has significantly improved efficiency, allowing our clients to be in market faster. Our ability to reach wider audiences with highly targeted, relevant messaging has been greatly enhanced. For our clients, this means not just better results but also a competitive edge in their respective categories.”
One-Two Punch
Eveloff said the marketing firm deploys AI in a two-pronged approach, enhancing decision-making through AI-driven data models and analysis and elevating creative output with tools, such as Adobe Firefly, which generates graphic images.
“By leveraging generative AI, we’ve transformed data into actionable insights, enabling us to tailor our marketing strategies with unprecedented precision. This has not only optimized campaign performance but also maximized ROI for our clients,” he said.
“On the creative front, AI has been a game-changer, streamlining the creative process and unlocking new possibilities for innovation and personalization. Overall, generative AI allows us to deliver campaigns that resonate more deeply with target audiences, driving performance and fostering brand loyalty.”
Implementing AI tools wasn’t without its challenges, Eveloff said, although the company anticipated the major hurdles and therefore enlisted a partner to address them accordingly.
“We initiated a strategic partnership with Jasper AI, which was instrumental in providing our team with specialized training,” he said. “This training allowed us to integrate AI seamlessly into our operations, ensuring our team could leverage AI tools to their maximum potential while maintaining a focus on strategy, performance, and creativity.”
Eveloff is also anticipating new AI video production tools to be a game-changer.
“The advent of broadcast-quality video creation through AI is on the horizon, and a handful of enterprise-level companies like Coca-Cola are testing the solutions,” he said.
Legal Applications
Justin Haugen, chief operating officer at law firm Koley Jessen, agreed that implementing AI into daily operations can take some time to get used to.
“While purchasing a tool is easy, ensuring that it is utilized effectively and that people understand the benefits is something that takes time,” he said. “This sort of training and change management takes place whenever a new software tool is rolled out.”
Additionally, having teams set up to mitigate potential risks is important, Haugen said. At Koley Jessen they have a Data Security Committee and a Risk Management Committee.
“Across the legal industry you see a wide range of adoption of AI from firms refusing to allow it to be used at all, to those who embrace it and are building their own tools,” he said.
At present, the applications the firm has already deployed include back-office business operations, such as generative AI.
“We are continuing to pilot new solutions as they develop to enhance workflow, from document automation to analysis,” he said. “One of the major legal research providers has launched a tool to enhance legal research and there are other tools we are piloting that assist with contract review, as well as tools like CoPilot and ChatGPT that are utilized to assist with brainstorming, idea generation, summaries and more.
Brave New World
Perhaps not surprisingly, AI usage is rampant in the IT field where companies such as HubWise Technology have not only adjusted to the technology to achieve operational efficiencies but also to assist clients adopting the technology.
“We’ve got hundreds of clients in and around Omaha, some national, and they’re asking us a ton of questions about AI and where this impacts their business,” said Kyle Swanda, CEO.
Swanda said chatbots, for example, are a great fit for companies that need a customer service component but can’t dedicate a single staff member to the position.
“At the same time, you’ve got to have that chatbot trained on the appropriate data to provide the responses that you’re looking for. You still have to monitor those things,” he said.
Swanda said his company uses AI tools in a variety of applications, from sales to customer satisfaction to helping jump-start projects that require a lot of code. He predicts that as more technology companies refine AI, it will become more common in consumer products.
An example could be Microsoft’s partnership with ChatGPT, which spawned Microsoft Copilot. Essentially, Microsoft Copilot is trained in ChatGPT and will pull data from across your Microsoft products.
“Let’s say you store all of your data in Sharepoint, all of your emails are in Office 365 and all of your conversations, video calls, voice calls, and chats are in Teams. This Copilot will start to train itself on all of the data that it has access to inside of your Office 365 tenant,” Swanda said.
“If you’ve got budgetary Excel spreadsheets or if you’ve got performance metrics, even data that you didn’t know you created years ago, this AI is going to get trained on it. It will build an Excel spreadsheet for you without you having to go find that data that already exists somewhere within your data storage.”
Adopting AI Tools – Where to Start?
There are innumerable artificial intelligence tools available. For professionals and business owners wanting to adopt the tech, you may wonder, where do you even start?
The first step is to assess the needs of the business and where plugging AI in can help boost productivity.
When asked what types of tools business owners can adopt, AI itself suggested these key areas:
- Chatbots
- Content creation
- Customer relations
- Cybersecurity
- Data analytics
- Email marketing
- HR
- Social media management
- Virtual assistants
Local professionals shared their favorite applications:
“Adobe Firefly has been a favorite of ours around the office lately. Firefly allows you to convert text prompts into AI-generated images in seconds. We love to use it for presentation graphics, social media, and just plain entertainment. For example, here’s a business professional elk holding pink and blue cotton candy.” – Kelly Krings, co-owner, Elkhorn Marketing Group
“My favorite AI tool is MidJourney. I am consistently impressed by the updates that are sent out by the devs and it seems best in class with image quality. I have used MidJourney for everything from bringing life to DND campaigns to brainstorming for my next pottery project to creating placeholder images for various development projects.” – Spencer Robinson, Chief Technology Officer, Appsky
