Artificial Intelligence tools are gradually becoming an asset to support a specialty food business’ sales and marketing strategies. AI excels at automating repetitive tasks, writing ad copy, and quickly visualizing creative ideas.
During the SFA In the Know webinar, “Using AI to Benefit Your Sales, Branding, and Marketing,” Felice Thorpe, a consulting sales director with expertise in the food and beverage industry, and Aaron Feiger, a creative director and industry expert, discussed user-friendly, low-cost, and free ways that AI can enhance a brand’s strategy and creativity.
Feiger explained that AI is a branch of computer science, “that involves creating intelligent machines that can perform tasks that typically require human cognition.” AI is ever-evolving, and it’s important to stay abreast of updates to the technology, they said.
Thorpe and Feiger hope to inspire leaders to test AI practices in their businesses. “AI won’t take your job. People who know how to use AI will take your job," said Thorpe.
Using ChatGPT, a natural language processing tool that can be used to answer questions and assist with tasks, and other AI platforms, the duo showed how brands can use the technology for naming, content creation, copywriting, scheduling marketing campaigns, finding accounts and sales contacts, building sales presentations, tracking in-store merchandising, and promotion modeling.
Feiger asked ChatGPT to provide a list of 10 names for a boba tea brand targeted toward a Gen Z audience in the U.S. After selecting one of the titles from the list, he consulted another resource, Midjourney, which creates images from specific prompts, for guidance. He shared that using a tool like Midjourney can be difficult, offering the following advice:
• Be clear and concise, using simple and easily understood language,
• Be specific, giving clear instructions about what you want and of what style you’d like it to be in,
• Test the prompt, making adjustments gradually and see what the resource creates first before editing.
From there, he was given images that could be used in the branding of the boba product.
“While you might not necessarily use the image as is, partly because your product may not look like that, it’s a great way to visualize an idea or mood. For me, it’s incredibly helpful to go from a blank page to something you can build off of…I might take this to a photographer or a 3D artist to show the direction of what I am trying to create,” said Feiger.
They also discussed tools like Copy.ai, which is for iterative writing tasks like social posts, and Canva Magic, an embedded tool in Canva that can be used to help write copy for a presentation. These tools offer many possibilities for sales and marketing, affirmed Feiger, and many brands are already making use of them. Heinz, for example, launched a campaign showing how the word “ketchup” was synonymous with its brand by using AI prompts that showed the product in myriad contexts using generative AI imaging tools.
Although these tools can be very useful for a business, there are some legal and ethical considerations that must be addressed. Feiger shared that the U.S. Copyright Office has indicated that AI-generated images are not copyrightable, however, human-made images that incorporate AI-generated images can be copyrighted. Thorpe added that people using these tools need to be acutely aware of plagiarism, bias, and privacy concerns. Although the material can seem original, the algorithms are likely trained on human-created content and can incorporate others’ work from across the internet.
To learn more about how to incorporate AI tools into your business, watch the webinar on demand in the SFA Learning Center.
Related: SFA Webinar Preview: Using AI to Benefit Sales; SFA Members Who’ve Made It: Back to the Roots