Facing AI Disruption: Are You Prepared for the New Workforce? | Under the Brand

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Welcome to Under the Brand. I’m your
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host, Valerie Jennings. Today I want to
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talk about a catalyst for destruction
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and I’m talking specifically about your
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workforce. We are not ready or prepared
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to adopt at the speed of AI, nor is our
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workforce ready for that. So, what is
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the answer? that some of you might even
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feel like you’re working more hours or
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AI is actually adding to your work. I
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think it’s fair. I think AI while it is
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a efficiency tool is still driving a lot
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of chaos in our organizations. People
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don’t know which tools to use, how to
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best use it, what is approved within an
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organization, and how to scale with AI.
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I want to spend a little bit of time
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talking about how we’re tackling these
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challenges at my agency, Jennings Social
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Media Martekch. I have always been an
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early adopter of digital marketing all
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the way back to 2005 when I adopted
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social media strategies. through 22
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years in business, I have continued to
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test and adopt with tech and marketing.
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But now I do feel like even with AI
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tools, it is going faster than it’s ever
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gone. This disruption is across all
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industries and even regular day-to-day
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processes and systems are not working or
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scaling the way they used to. So I think
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there is definitely a wave of new jobs
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and job descriptions that are coming
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especially in the marketing space. I’ll
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give you an example. We recently hired
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an AI operations manager. Nobody is an
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100% expert on AI and designing AI
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systems for us because we adopt so
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quickly. I am the one that’s looking at
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where are the trends, where are the
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opportunities, where is the value,
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where’s the competitive edge, where are
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clients going to get value and and also
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how do these tools add efficiency to the
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bottom line? Whether that’s with data
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and analytics, whether it’s with
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creative services, there has definitely
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been a big lift in the product, the
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quality of the product and what we’re
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able to do and the price points that we
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can charge at because of AI, but we are
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all in a learning stage. And even at the
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seauite, whether you’re a brand, whether
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you are just a a business that’s not
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focused on marketing right now, you need
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people that are a futurist. They are
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studying the trends. They can kind of
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anticipate where the opportunities are
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going to go. they are the ones that are
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able to cultivate people to test uh
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these uh products and services and see
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if they’re going to provide the value
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that your organization needs to compete
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in an error in AI. The second job that I
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think is really essential is a project
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manager meshed with operations who can
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take these ideas, these learnings and
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implement a process model within the
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organization,
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write the new playbooks around the AI
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systems and tools so that your
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organization is using it across the
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board, not some people are using it, not
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others. are using it. And the third
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thing that I think is really critical
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right now is that there is an open
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culture of compassion. We are all
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absorbing a lot of data, information,
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and key learnings all at once. And some
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of us are just faster adopters than
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others. But we have to make sure that we
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create a platform where the workforce
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can come together within your
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organizations
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in two trainings and share knowledge um
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and start providing more feedback of
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okay I’m using this tool it’s working
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for me this is how I’m getting value of
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it and make sure that there is
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continuity across your team or across
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those various various departments. There
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are roadblocks of course to doing all of
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this because a lot of the systems and
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processes we have to throw out the
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window. They’re not scaling. They’re not
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working. There’s not continuity or
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there’s too many restrictions and people
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that work at certain organizations feel
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like they can’t grow or evolve. There’s
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also been a lot of across agencies a lot
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of consolidation decentralized
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approaches especially within creative
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services because of AI. To me I think
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that instead of pushing people out we do
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have to find a way to get their skills
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to translate into the bigger ecosystem
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of AI. So while there’s many aspects of
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this conversation, those were the three
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areas that I wanted to highlight that
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we’re currently focused on at our
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agency. It’s a very exciting time, but
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it’s also uh a time uh an era of chaos
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and disruption. And so how you set that
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tone in your organization is very
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critical right now is going to lay the
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road map to your future success as a
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business. Again, you’ve been watching
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Under the Brand. I’m your host, Valerie
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Jennings.
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