You are neither fake nor faking it, I promise.
In this video, Rachel Moore discusses the imposter syndrome that marketers might feel when incorporating AI into their work. She addresses common concerns about whether using AI undermines their skills or if resisting AI puts them behind the curve. Rachel provides a nuanced view of AI as a powerful tool that complements and enhances marketing expertise rather than replacing it. She also offers practical tips for overcoming feelings of fraudulence and confidently integrating AI into marketing workflows. The video aims to help marketing professionals navigate their roles in a rapidly evolving technological landscape.
00:00 Introduction: The AI Dilemma in Marketing
00:28 Understanding Imposter Syndrome
01:59 The Core Tension: Expertise vs. AI Efficiency
03:51 AI as a Tool, Not a Replacement
05:27 Reframing AI: A Colleague, Not a Competitor
09:03 The Conductor Analogy: Mastering AI Collaboration
11:48 Conclusion: Embracing AI in Marketing
Introduction: The AI Dilemma in Marketing
Rachel Moore: But when we have AI do that, and it’s usually able to incorporate all those things, it can feel like cheating. Like our hard-won skills suddenly don’t matter. That’s the imposter syndrome creeping in, where there’s two sides of it, one. Am I a fraud as a marketer if I use it? Fair question to ask. Two, am I falling behind if I don’t use it?
Understanding Imposter Syndrome
Rachel Moore: In this video, we’re going to address the imposter syndrome that arises when marketers especially use AI in order to do marketing. And marketing can be creating content, writing, conceptualizing, executing on ideas. But a lot of that starts with the creativity. And then turning that into actual deliverables, which is why it can feel like you’re a bit of an imposter if you’re turning to something like AI.
Let’s get real. [00:01:00] We are all being encouraged, admonished, and required even to use AI to a greater degree in our jobs. Pretty much if you don’t have some knowledge of AI on your resume or in your portfolio, you’re gonna get passed by, at least for right now. So it’s incredibly crucial that you do have some expertise about AI, so that you can let people know you are familiar, you know how to use it.
But today, we’re philosophically going to address how that can be a problem for marketers because, hey, we are known as the creatives. You’re the creative person on the team, or you’re the creative person in this group, or you’re the one that always comes up with ideas, but then enter AI, and people can immediately start assuming, did you just go to AI for that idea? Did you use AI? How much did you use AI to develop this idea? Did you write it or did you have AI write it for you, et cetera?
Let’s talk about that.
The Core Tension: Expertise vs. AI Efficiency
Rachel Moore: First of all, [00:02:00] let’s address the core tension. We all, and y’all, I have 18 years of marketing experience and 51 years old. I don’t know where you are in your career, but if you are any amount of years in your marketing career, you’ve spent those years building your expertise, knowing your craft, and being really good at it, as good as you can be and knowing you wanna be better, then this tool arrives that can spit out a first draft in seconds, based on what somebody enters into a chat. And it just takes a few seconds, maybe a minute tops, to say, bam, here’s 1200 words, for a blog that you might need to write.
And now that can feel like cheating. Let’s be honest. It can feel like I’ve worked so hard on being able to write and really be impactful. When we’re marketers, and let’s just bring up copywriting, we’re not just writing copy ‘cause we know that’s gonna go out into the universe, and [00:03:00] if it’s on a website, it’s gotta have SEO optimization and now GEO / AEO optimization, it’s got to have certain formatting for headings.
It addresses our story and uses our brand style and our writing style guidelines. And it’s grammatically correct, and it’s in the right tone and voice. That it has our message down. There’s all these things. It’s not just something like, I’m just gonna sit down and pen an epic without any guidance.
But when we have AI do that, and it’s usually able to incorporate all those things, it can feel like cheating. Like our hard-won skills suddenly don’t matter. That’s the imposter syndrome creeping in where there’s two sides of it, one. Am I a fraud as a marketer if I use it? Fair question to ask. Two, am I falling behind if I don’t use it?
AI as a Tool, Not a Replacement
Rachel Moore: I’m gonna give a resounding no to the am I a fraud question. That is with the caveat. If you are [00:04:00] actually only using AI and never beyond the prompt, checking the work and refining the deliverables, sure, you might be a little bit fraudulent there, but most of the time we’re not doing that because we realize someone is going to be reading this, particularly our audience.
But are you falling behind if you don’t use it? I’m gonna be honest. Yes. We have to get used to it. This is the whole reason I’m doing this video series.
So let’s address some points that can help us overcome this, fraud kind of feeling. First, let’s look at it this way. If you are using Microsoft Word or you are using Google Docs, all AI aside, let’s rewind back two years before AI was a thing. Those tools have spellcheck in them. It’s able to highlight words saying, I don’t know if this is, spelled correctly. Also, grammar, punctuation. This might be an error. Can you check?
If you think of AI in that context, I doubt [00:05:00] any of us ever felt like a total fraud for not manually checking every word. Tools evolve and using them is professional because you are relying on something, and again, not to the point where you think it’s infallible.
None of us have ever thought spellcheck was infallible. But if you think of AI in that, respect that this is like a spell-check tool, just really amped up ‘cause it can do more things with that.
Here’s another angle I want you to consider.
Reframing AI: A Colleague, Not a Competitor
Rachel Moore: I look at AI like it’s a staff person, it’s a colleague. But more to the point, if this helps you look at it like it’s your direct report, it’s your employee, and you are the editor in chief. You’re the CMO. You’re the director, whatever you are, that you need to be like, yes, but I’m the superior here.
And what I say goes, so I’m asking you for this deliverable, and then we are going to work on it together. So AI generates, it’s as if you were to Slack. If you think about AI chats or, when you enter the prompt, [00:06:00] it’s like slacking someone, say, Hey, I need you to work on this X, Y, Z and you give it the context it needs, and then it’s going to, okay, great. I’m gonna work on that. Does it work pretty quickly? Yeah. If it’s a more complex prompt, it’ll take a little time, but AI will generate, but then you, as the editor in chief, as the superior officer, as the person who’s overseeing AI.
You curate, refine, and decide what to keep, what to toss back and rework, that judgment. That is not something AI can replace. That is something only you have that is irreplaceable. That’s where your years of marketing experience is crucial and fundamental to being able to successfully use AI and incorporate it into your marketing work.
And then finally think of it this way, because just like it is like a coworker, but think of it like a coworker that has access to [00:07:00] the entire index of the internet and answers and message boards, and platforms, and anything that’s publicly available. It’s an expertise multiplier. If you were to think if you did go Slack two different coworkers today and give them the exact same prompt, you’re probably gonna get two kind of different answers and things like that. That again is where your marketing expertise comes into play.
It’s okay to delegate, and y’all, I personally struggle with this. Delegation is something I constantly have to work on ‘cause I do a great job. I know I do a great job and I’m like, and I know how to do it quickly. But then, delegating it to somebody else, which means I have to provide some initial instructions. I have to take time to do that. I always think of that in the context of I could be working on it instead of telling somebody else how to do it, but i’m creating a multiplier by taking that time because now that person, and in this context that AI chat has more context, is building its own experience in the things that you’re [00:08:00] asking it to do.
It will draw from that. It will learn from that, it will refer back to what you’ve already told it. I left in another AI video that we’ve done, is that give it feedback. Anytime I’m working back and forth with AI, and I ask for suggestions, it gives me maybe three to four options. I always tell it, saying I’m going with this option, and I even changed it a little bit to this, and here’s why.
Just like you would with a human colleague. So if you do that, you again are multiplying that expertise, and now we’re able to get an even better result.
As we start to wrap up this video, and please leave some comments if you have some more questions about imposter syndrome. I, we can keep on addressing it.
I think it’s gonna be an ongoing challenge, particularly for marketers. I recently interviewed a gentleman named Chris Duke, who works for Glean and I interviewed him on the Event Experience podcast for Bizzabo, which is an event tech company and a client of mine. He had a wonderful [00:09:00] metaphor for how we can look at working with AI.
The Conductor Analogy: Mastering AI Collaboration
Rachel Moore: I don’t know if any of you have ever played an instrument. I have never gotten good at that. I’ve never had the discipline for playing instruments. My children do, though. And he says, think of yourself like an orchestra conductor. And I really love that metaphor because there are few aspects to it. And I have gone and seen my daughter play in her orchestra, and so I have a little familiarity there.
Not being an orchestra player myself, but let’s think of this first. Nobody accuses a conductor of being a fraud because they’re not personally playing the oboe or the viola. We’re assuming that conductor knows the music and knows how each instrument in the player of that instrument should show up in that entire piece.
So let’s think of one of our favorite orchestra conductors ever and composers, John Williams. Does anyone think he’s a fraud? No, he’s got decades of experience. He has created some of the biggest legacy pieces of music that so many [00:10:00] of us identify with our childhoods and our growing up and, moments we’ve had.
Nobody’s gonna say, he’s not actually playing some of these instruments. Come on. He is the orchestra conductor. And so if I think of myself, I’m John Williams and I’m telling my Claude Chat to do something for me. I am not a fraud. I know what I’m about. I know what good marketing is. It’s helping me get there faster.
The same sheet music with a different conductor would give you a completely different performance. This gets back to the same prompt thing I was saying earlier. Let’s say that I, a marketer with 18 years of experience, give a prompt to Claude. But let’s say that a marketer with maybe three years of experience gave the same prompt to Claude, and we get similar results, maybe the same exact result, but how that three-year experience person deals and works with and massages the deliverable there is gonna be vastly different than how I do it. That, again, is where the experience comes in. The conductor also brings [00:11:00] interpretation, timing, emotional intelligence, and vision, the meaning of the piece.
Another analogy is that I have a client that for six months I’ve been helping with newsletters and I’ve been to the venues that we’re writing these newsletters about, I have the feel, I know how the food tastes, I know what the people are like. I know the vibe.
AI doesn’t know that. It only knows what I can relay to it. And so when AI is helping me with any copy for those newsletters, I’m able to say, you know what? As somebody who’s been at that venue, eaten that dish, felt the vibe. This isn’t hitting the mark. Let’s try it again. Okay. Once again, your particular experience is going to infuse into that final product.
We are the conductor to AI’s instrumentation.
Conclusion: Embracing AI in Marketing
Rachel Moore: Let me know if this was helpful, like this video, if it was helpful. Subscribe if you wanna be seeing more of these videos that can help you with your approach to AI as a marketer and all the other videos we do on this [00:12:00] substack and this channel. And, please share with friends. Sharing is caring.
‘Cause you probably know some colleagues who are like AI really. And maybe, some colleagues who are leaning a little too hard into AI and are not being the conductor that they should be. This also would be a great video to share with them. Thanks, everyone. Good luck with your AI and ask it what it thinks.
You’re still here. It’s over, but you should hit like on this video before you head out and subscribe if you wanna get “moore” videos that’ll help you realize how much “moore” there is to marketing.
See what I did there?