How technology can augment human ingenuity, creativity and innovation in content marketing

Can technology ever trump human creativity? This is an endless debate. Brands, however, today have learnt the great value of a personal approach, a human touch, and real-world experiences. Experts have time again suggested that if brands want to survive in today’s age, they must be human at their core. But how does one best balance the two ingredients?

In yet another session of BuzzInContent Conversations 2020, moderated by Rakesh Hinduja, Moderator, Co-founder, Wondrlab India, industry leaders discussed why marketers need to be more open to technological advancements and as human creativity remains unparalleled, and how the marriage of both could help in creating valuable content.

So what is the starting point of technology when it comes to content marketing?

Sharmin Ali, Founder and CEO, Instoried, started the debate by explaining how content has so far been very manual and the entire process is intuition-driven. However, there are a few stages where technology is extremely relevant.

“Starting from doing your research, building your content strategy basis the TG, managing channels and spends, curating content, distribution and the final stage of measuring the content effectiveness, there is in a way objectives to tech and content in the journey itself. A right balance needs to be struck between the entire manual process of content creation and how technology can enhance, and better the entire content creation process. Technology today can tell how the engagement score looks like. And if it can help you understand and better evaluate what the tone of your content is, what are the emotions that are being excluded from your content, and give you smart recommendations; it is a huge value addition to the lives of content marketers and brands globally,” she said.

For instance, the short video space has shown the world a perfect example of harmony that can exist between human and technology, said Shivank Agarwal, Co-founder and CEO, Mitron TV. There are a couple of problems associated with this space such as getting the right content to be watched by the right users. So, mapping of the right content and removing unwanted content with the help of technology can help it become a better space, Agarwal explained.

But, at this stage, it requires a lot of human supervision to empower.

Rajesh Kumar, VP, Marketing, UiPath India and South Asia, said that technology has a role in augmenting human ingenuity, creativity and innovation. Plus, technology has to democratise the whole content space.

“Tech can help you narrow the target for mass personalisation, and helps in moderating the spillage. Also, it has allowed you to listen and understand the consumer at a much deeper level and a much smaller, much finer segmentation level. But technology is a good servant and is not a good master. The core part of creating the magic is still human,” Kumar added.

Sharing his experience, Gurpreet Singh, Head of Marketing, United Breweries, said, “We need to be seen as modern, contemporary, we need to stay engaged with the consumers. And it's fantastic because technology is an enabler for marketers and content creators alike. I think if marketers can understand and marry both, it will give consumers a fantastic proposition. If brand managers can do that, they have a winning strategy for them.”

So does that mean a robot can actually create the entire content for you?

Singh answered this by saying that the creativity of a human mind is unparalleled, at least so far.

“I love to see the fact that humans are able to marry their creativity with the technology that currently exists or there could exist a model to jointly create something. As marketers, the winning piece is where you use technology as a platform, to reach out to consumers, customise, create, be more creative, but leave some of the creativity to humans,” he said.

According to Kumar, the beauty of great content marketing is to do the minimum to create the maximum impact on the consumer.

And that's where, he feels, marketers need to come together and bring in technology somewhere.

“We (marketers) have always relegated to the experts, or to a specialist agency or somebody else. I think it's time to get our hands on tech,” he said.

Singh added, “Marketers need to stay connected with technology a lot more and if you're not on the ball, as a marketer, you can become extremely obsolete. As long as you have the understanding that you may not have the expertise, you hire the right people in your team and give them a little bit of leeway to do what they need to do, take the call, and you need to as a senior that you will be in the right place.”

Closing the debate with suggestions to brands and agencies, Ali said that when it comes to human touch in creating content marketing, nothing can ever beat human creativity.

She added, “What we need to do is that we need to draw a line between tech and human creativity and try to marry both of them. Tech can only ensure that the outreach is great, the distribution is amazing, but as far as the whole creation aspect is concerned, kudos to all the human minds.”

Even Kumar encouraged marketers to be more open to change, and more importantly, to the speed and rate of change. Echoing the same view, Agarwal mentioned how technology should play a role to amplify the creativity of humans and not to replace that.

Don't fear technology in a fast evolving world but look at tech as an enabler and friend, Singh said.

In a nutshell, the experts agreed that we cannot talk about creativity and technology in isolation.