At CES, marketers are all-in on the promise of AI

Panels at marketing industry events are ripe for buzzword bingo, and CES is no different.

Here’s one from the first day of the conference: “newstalgia,” which is when brands lean on beloved cultural moments of the past with a new twist. Chick-fil-A’s new 80-year-anniversary marketing campaign that kicked off this week and features retro packaging and menu items aims to do exactly that.

Buzzword overuse is perhaps especially true when it comes to AI, which is still the talk of the strip this year as marketers, media execs, and agency execs continue to figure out how it will—and won’t—upend their various industries.

The question of what that transformation (there’s one more marketing buzzword for you) will look like doesn’t have a pat answer.

Based on conversations at the conference so far, some marketers remain obsessed with AI’s promise of shortened production timelines, while others are focused on brand IP protection amid the proliferation of generative tools. Still more are lasered in on the tech’s power to “unlock the value of intellectual property,” Samira Bakhtiar, general manager, media and entertainment, games, and sports, AWS, said during a panel, noting that it could be particularly useful for brands with archival content.

Regardless of marketers’ particular obsessions, the sentiment so far this week seems to be that it’s no longer a question of if marketers will use AI, but rather how they are using it, and what benefit it can have for their brands. Expect that to extend beyond digital AI tools.

“We’re going to see so many robots here this week—and good luck to all of us,” Elav Horwitz, chief innovation officer, WPP, said onstage, adding that the holding company is “testing how robots can help us with the future of production.”

Other notable tidbits from the conference so far:

• Buying something from Samsung? It’ll probably have AI in it.
• Amazon plans to listen more when pitching advertisers this week.
• Reddit’s got a new AI media buying tool of its own.

Gripe: The midnight wake-up call from a literal false alarm at The Linq Sunday night. After 20 minutes of confusion in pajamas in the lobby, the alarm simply ended, and hotel guests were sent back to our rooms with no explanation—and much lower confidence in how an actual emergency might play out. What happens in Vegas…and all that.

Overheard: “Did you say you were ChatGPT-ing that?”