After 20 years in advertising and marketing, I’ve watched numerous “revolutionary” applied sciences come and go. Most promised to alter every thing. All delivered incremental enhancements at greatest.
However AI feels completely different—not due to the hype, however due to what I’m seeing at Lyft as we have interaction with numerous platforms. The actual transformation isn’t taking place the best way most individuals anticipated it to.
Whereas everybody’s speaking about AI changing jobs or automating advert shopping for, essentially the most profound modifications we’re seeing to date aren’t about effectivity—they’re about essentially altering how we perceive and join with customers.
AI is making us extra human, not much less
Right here’s the paradox that retains me up at evening: the extra refined our AI instruments grow to be at analyzing client conduct, the extra human our advertising and marketing turns into.
At Lyft, we’re utilizing AI to dive deeper into psychographics, behavioral patterns, and emotional triggers than ever earlier than. However as a substitute of making extra robotic, data-driven campaigns, we’re uncovering insights that assist us craft extra genuine, emotionally resonant work. AI doesn’t simply inform us what folks do—it helps us perceive why they do it.
The magic occurs when AI reveals the human tales hiding within the knowledge. We’re discovering sudden emotional connections between experience patterns and life moments, uncovering the true causes folks select rideshare over driving, and figuring out the delicate behavioral cues that point out when somebody’s able to attempt a brand new transportation possibility.
This isn’t about higher concentrating on—it’s about deeper empathy. AI is turning into our emotional intelligence amplifier, serving to us join with customers as advanced people reasonably than knowledge factors. The manufacturers successful aren’t utilizing AI to be extra mechanical; they’re utilizing it to be extra human.
AI is a expertise amplifier
AI isn’t going to exchange entrepreneurs. It’s going to unleash what entrepreneurs can accomplish once they’re not drowning in operational constraints.
All firms are useful resource constrained. Some are going to attempt to use AI to chop again advertising and marketing headcount. However a growth-minded firm will see the ability to scale sooner, larger, and higher given present assets.
There’s solely a lot time one marketer can spend pouring by way of knowledge and insights, marrying marketing campaign efficiency with tendencies, or creating personalised messages for 1000’s of shoppers. Earlier than AI, sensible entrepreneurs had been trapped by the boundaries of their very own bandwidth.
However AI unleashes the ability of a whole bunch of individuals inside a single marketer. What used to take a crew weeks occurs in hours. We’re not AI as a substitute for human creativity and strategic pondering. We’re it as a solution to scale the variety of entrepreneurs we have now on our crew.
I’ve watched our entrepreneurs go from spending 70% of their time on knowledge gathering and evaluation to spending the identical period of time on technique and artistic problem-solving. That’s not automation—that’s amplification. The strategic pondering, the patron empathy, the artistic leaps that drive breakthrough campaigns? That’s nonetheless solely human. However now these people can function at superhuman scale.
The implications are transformative. We’re transferring from “How a lot can one marketer accomplish in a day?” to “How a lot impression can one marketer drive when free of constraints?” That shift is redefining what’s attainable in advertising and marketing.
Inventive velocity as aggressive benefit
Sure, AI can generate copy and pictures. However the true breakthrough is in fast idea visualization and iterative artistic improvement.
We’re utilizing AI to deliver summary advertising and marketing ideas to life in minutes, not weeks. Want to visualise a brand new product characteristic for an inside artistic overview? AI can mock it up immediately. Wish to take a look at how a marketing campaign may look throughout completely different codecs and audiences? AI makes that attainable at unprecedented velocity.
This isn’t about changing artistic groups—it’s about supercharging them. Our creatives spend much less time on tedious technical execution and extra time on technique, emotion, and large concepts. AI handles the heavy lifting of a number of idea variations, permitting human creativity to concentrate on the breakthrough pondering that truly strikes companies.
The velocity benefit is turning into a aggressive moat. Whereas conventional artistic improvement cycles take months, we’re testing, studying, and optimizing in real-time.
The actual AI revolution
These three shifts—deeper human perception, genuine client reality, and artistic velocity—aren’t separate. They’re interconnected forces reshaping advertising and marketing. The manufacturers that perceive this aren’t simply utilizing AI as a instrument; they’re reimagining their whole strategy to client connection.
The AI revolution in advertising and marketing isn’t about robots taking up. It’s about people getting higher at being human.
Bryan Irving is chief advertising and marketing officer at Lyft.
