After 20 years in advertising and marketing, I’ve watched numerous “revolutionary” applied sciences come and go. Most promised to alter the whole lot. All delivered incremental enhancements at greatest. 

However AI feels totally different—not due to the hype, however due to what I’m seeing at Lyft as we have interaction with numerous platforms. The true transformation isn’t occurring the best way most individuals anticipated it to.

Whereas everybody’s speaking about AI changing jobs or automating advert shopping for, probably the most profound modifications we’re seeing to date aren’t about effectivity—they’re about basically altering how we perceive and join with shoppers.

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 develop into 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 an alternative 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 choice.

This isn’t about higher focusing on—it’s about deeper empathy. AI is turning into our emotional intelligence amplifier, serving to us join with shoppers as complicated people somewhat than knowledge factors. The manufacturers profitable 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 switch entrepreneurs. It’s going to unleash what entrepreneurs can accomplish after 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 facility to scale quicker, greater, and higher given current sources. 

There’s solely a lot time one marketer can spend pouring by means of knowledge and insights, marrying marketing campaign efficiency with traits, or creating customized messages for hundreds of shoppers. Earlier than AI, good entrepreneurs have been trapped by the boundaries of their very own bandwidth.

However AI unleashes the facility 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 alternative for human creativity and strategic considering. We’re it as a option to scale the variety of entrepreneurs we have now on our crew.