I recently read an article from MarTech that both excited and troubled me.
The piece was titled “The AI era needs strategists grounded in expertise and guided by context”.
At the beginning, the premise is that organizations (specifically agencies) will need more T-shaped people in the future. These individuals have deep expertise in one area and are generalists with a high-level knowledge of many other areas. This part of the article I was aligned with. The topic is something I wrote about a few years ago here.
Where the article caused me to take pause was the suggestion that the account management team + AI would be the new strategic voice. Here’s the headline:
“While account teams have always been the central hub for the client relationship, they have often relied on a chain of specialists to source answers. Now, powerful AI tools are removing those hops, arming them with the ability to provide strategic guidance at unprecedented speed and with unprecedented self-sufficiency.” – Domenic Venuto
My Perspective
The article goes on to describe how the prompt is used to bring the right context into the conversation and becomes a strategic thought partner.
While I believe this to be true, after spending many years in positions across both strategy and account, I think this perspective misses an important element. Not all account management teams are created equal. Individuals have different strengths and gifts they bring to the team.
All provide client services and have the voice of the client in mind, but the depth of knowledge could lean in many directions from creative, to operations, finance, analytics, and more. Each of those areas will influence the prompts that are written and, if not checked by others, the recommendations may be completely off.
The more I work with AI, the more I feel like it is my intern (see post from yesterday). I’m coaching, reviewing work, and nudging direction when the responses feel “off”. Getting back to the first point of the article, this is where continuing to broaden personal knowledge across many areas and combine it with experience comes to the table.
AI can strengthen all disciplines.
What might happen if the account team member partnered with a seasoned strategist to write the prompt?
Could the result be even stronger?
These are the questions I hope teams are exploring.