Grocery shopping is a giant business, accounting for nearly $800 billion in annual spending in the United States alone. But it’s also a notoriously tricky business, with price-sensitive customers and the dance of inflation further complicating the landscape.

Retail leaders across categories are intent on leveraging the powerful capabilities of emerging technologies to revolutionize their organizations and improve margins. They aim to keep current customers happy while successfully expanding to include new ones.

As game-changing technology like generative AI, robotics, drones, and more sweep our culture, food retailers are looking to optimize how they sell groceries online and in person. Baked into this technology is the ability to automate processes, collect, manage, and analyze data, glean deeper insights, connect more authentically with customers, and offer more tailored customer experiences.

It’s the dawn of a new age in how we shop for food, and it’s shaping up to be a fascinating ride for the everyday consumer. Here are some trends and ways technology will revolutionize the in-store and online grocery shopping experience — and how companies may choose to evolve in response.

Online Grocery Shopping Trends and Technology Adoption

Let’s start with what’s happening online. Consumers today still shop for most of their groceries in brick-and-mortar stores, which account for 83% of US grocery sales, but online grocery shopping is fast gaining steam. According to NielsenIQ, online grocery shopping outperformed in-store sales by nearly 300% in 2024 compared to 2023.

Value-First Shopping

Inflation remains high, and customers continue to feel the impact. Some 70% of shoppers cited food prices as a top concern, according to a February 2024 report by FMI, The Food Industry Association. Cost has emerged as a top decision-making criterion for customers deciding whether to try new products when shopping for groceries.

Younger shoppers with tighter budgets are also more cost-conscious. Gen Z shoppers are the likeliest to compare unit prices at the same store (79%) as compared to Gen X shoppers (69%) or baby boomers (72%). Grocery stores have responded by augmenting private-label offerings. Sales of private label goods represented 19% of total grocery revenue in 2019, a 5% jump year over year. Digital native shoppers increasingly use online shopping sites to compare prices, helping consumers maximize value. This “flight-to-value” behavior in grocery shopping has benefited mass merchants like Walmart, expanding its market share by 6.2% since 2021, ending 2023 with a whopping 45% of grocery online sales.

Increase in E-commerce Grocery Shopping

Grocery e-commerce is expected to lift overall grocery sales more than in-store purchasing — and it’s predicted to grow at a compound annual rate of 4.5% over the next five years. That’s more than 3x faster than the 1.3% rate forecast for in-store grocery sales. Total grocery e-commerce sales are forecast to hit nearly $120 billion by the end of 2028, which is about 12.7% of total grocery sales in the US, with pick-up expected to lead the charge as the most popular e-commerce method.

Increase in Online Grocery Shopping Platforms

Grocery delivery sales in the US are expected to surpass $257 billion in 2024 and $422 billion in 2028, according to Statista. While Walmart leads the pack with more than 25% of the grocery delivery market, other grocery e-tailers like Amazon Fresh, Costco, Target, Kroger, Albertsons, and more are in hot pursuit of market dominance. Smaller online brands like Vitacost and Thrive Market, which specialize in natural foods, are also gaining traction — a trend sure to continue as more people lean into digital grocery shopping experiences.

Grocery Shopping Apps on the Rise

25% of consumers today use grocery shopping apps, which store shopping lists, offer digital coupons, display store maps, and integrate with rewards and loyalty programs. These apps provide online and in-store benefits enhanced by technology. For example, at some stores, deli and bakery items can be preordered online to save shoppers from standing in line holding a paper order number. In addition, digital kiosks advertising the latest deals are becoming more popular.

How Tech Innovation Will Shape the In-Store Grocery Experience

Consumers today still buy most of their groceries in physical stores — in fact, 83%. For this reason, some of the most fascinating tech innovations in the grocery retail space are being dreamed up to meteorically uplevel the customer experience and keep people who enjoy more hands-on grocery shopping happy.

Enhancing the In-Store Shopping Experience

As grocery shopping increasingly migrates online, brick-and-mortar stores must innovate the in-store experience by transforming it into a pleasurable lifestyle activity. We’re talking superior fresh food offerings, gastronomic areas, food courts, cooking classes, and possibly even movie nights or lectures. To fund these capital-intensive endeavors, stores will need to double-down on automation technology that can free up staff from more mundane, routine operations so that energies can be focused on upleveling the customer experience. Adopting advanced tech like AI-powered smart carts can handle scanning and payment, further optimizing the experience.

AI-enabled Hyper-relevant Recommendations

While retailers have been gathering data about their shoppers to serve them better, they have often needed help to focus disparate data streams into clear, concise, and coherent insights. The advent of generative AI is helping retailers unlock the ability to make hyper-relevant grocery recommendations in the moment — adding immense value to the in-store grocery shopping experience. Brand-customized AI apps can guide shoppers in-store, proactively recommending products and services based on each person’s unique profile, shopping history, and particular in-the-moment needs. Planning a garden baby shower? Great. Bachelorette party at the beach? AI has got you covered.

Upleveled Customer Engagement

Generative AI excels at answering questions and summarizing complex information in a natural, conversation-like manner, which certainly comes in handy in this case. Improved grocery shopping experiences will feature anything from product recommendations and explanations to details about ingredients to in-depth answers to nutritional questions, offering shoppers specific recommendations tailored to their particular needs or preferences.

Enhanced Day-to-day Retail Operations

Traditional methods of designing optimal shelf layouts for grocery products leave much to be desired. They are time-consuming, errors abound, and creating and following these plans can be labor-intensive to say the least. Leveraging the power of generative AI for optimized planogram creation and demand forecasting means staff can be alerted to shortages and empty shelves instantly, and staff can then monitor planogram compliance for quick remedies as needed. Machine-learning algorithms can suggest highly optimized store layouts and product placements based on individual store data. Forecasting and ordering decisions will eventually be fully automated by machine learning algorithms that can monitor real-time out-of-stock alerts.

Leveraging “Dwell” and “Gaze” Time

AI can measure a shopper’s “dwell” time — how long someone spends standing in front of a product — and “gaze” time — how long a person looks at a particular item. Grocery retailers can better understand what their customers want by tracking “dwell” and “gaze” times, meaning more meaningful CX engagements and better sales conversion rates. Individual stores can even tailor their offerings to their location, offering more personalized products and services more effectively tailored to people’s wants and needs.

The Merging of Online and In-Store Experiences Will Increase

Grocery stores will continue to blend their online and in-store experiences in what is often referred to as “seamless omnichannel experiences.” Stores can personalize offers to shoppers, which can be redeemed at their next in-store visit. On the other end, shoppers can order specialty products online or in-app for pickup in-store, saving time and inviting additional purchases. Brand-customized AI apps can even guide shoppers around the store, actively recommending products and services based on each person’s unique profile and shopping history.

Where the Market’s Heading

The grocery retail space is abuzz with anticipation for how technology will grow and expand the in-person and online food shopping landscape. For retail organizations, it’s a time to try and test what marketing technology can be of most benefit, from efficiency gains to cost savings.

What does this mean for brands? When considering leaning into a digital-first strategy or focusing energy into reinvigorating the in-store customer experience, marketers should remember finding ways to meld the online and in person experience will have the greatest impact. Technology is a fast-evolving force that is reshaping how retailers operate and engage with customers, and keeping up with it means adapting creative strategy to meet consumers soaring expectations. The future of grocery shopping is almost in season — let’s hope it’s a tasty one.

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Bottomline

We are at the beginning of the tech revolution 3.0, primarily driven by the power of generative AI, which will change how grocery retailers, both online and in-store, do business. As tech evolves and improves, the retail landscape will be increasingly infused with optimizations based on geo-specific demographic data sets, transforming what is sold, how things are displayed (in person and online), and where the actual value lies for each store, app, and online platform. Industry leaders are in a discovery phase, testing and learning which technological advances will benefit and impact their businesses most.

Do you know what tech innovations will have the most impact on your bottom line? If you’re looking to tailor marketing technology solutions for your retail brand, Creative Circle can consult on your needs to craft a bespoke plan that meets you where you’re at. We can help you get the right marketing talent in place to implement and optimize the right technology, ensuring your team stays at the forefront of change in the industry.

Private label brands continue to go from room to room, and it looks like they might take over more than half the house. In fact, more than 50 percent of grocery shoppers have bought more private brands over the past year, and almost half of surveyed shoppers plan to buy more private brands this year and beyond.

“Private label” refers to products produced by a third-party manufacturer and sold under a retailer’s brand, where the retailer manages the product’s specifications, advertising, marketing, packaging, pricing, and store placement. These brands are also a significant contributor to e-commerce, driving online sales for big box retailers like Costco, Target, Trader Joe’s, Walmart, and Whole Foods.

But how does private labelling work? Macy’s, for example, sells hundreds of well-known and much-loved brands, both in-store and online. If you’re a Macy’s shopper and you’re wearing something from Club Room or I.N.C., you are attired in one of the store’s more than 25 private labels.

Increasing Competition for Popular Brands

Macy’s and other retailers’ private labels provide customers with high-quality branded goods at lower price points. Macy’s Club Room, for example, competes with well-known brands such as Lacoste, Ralph Lauren Polo, and Tommy Bahama, while their I.N.C. line’s all-around prêt-à-porter clothing is sold alongside popular labels like Aldo, DKNY, and Lucky (among many, many others). About 16 percent of Macy’s fiscal 2022 sales of $25.4B came from private brands, and Macy’s continues to examine its private brand portfolio to identify underserved aesthetic and customer profile gaps.

The benefit for Macy’s and other retailers is obvious: by offering well-made, less-expensive alternatives to established brands, the store retains customers whose budgets might not permit them to purchase more expensive brands, such as Brooks Brothers and Dolce & Gabbana, providing them with similar, well-made yet more affordable items. Shoppers are inclined to trust these private labels, since they’re sold by a renowned retailer. Plus, every private label product Macy’s sells means the store doesn’t have to split sales with a national or international brand.

At supermarkets and big box retailers with in-store groceries, too, private label is the new key to the kingdom. Driven by increased food prices and growing sustainability concerns, more shoppers than ever are finding their way to private label brands on supermarket shelves. Private label products actually accounted for 20.7% of U.S. grocery industry unit sales in 2023, a record level, gaining significant ground on established national brands in terms of units sold.

Trader Joe’s has long been the dominant business model for sales of private label products, with Target and Walmart looking to compete with the grocery chain’s iconic brands like “Trader Giotto” beloved by consumers for their internationally inspired dishes with private labels of their own. Target’s private label food brands include Good & Gather and Market Pantry, while Walmart recently announced the launch of bettergoods, their private label brand that aims to make “quality, trend-forward, and chef-inspired food approachable and affordable.” bettergoods is Walmart’s biggest private label brand launch in two decades, which means investment in this area is only growing.

Top-shelf Attraction

Beyond lower prices, how do private labels compete with national brands that already have an established customer base? These brands have to get creative to capture consumer attention, both in-store and online, in order to draw shoppers away from the legacy brands they’ve likely known and purchased for years. Essentially, private label brands face the complex challenge of remaining adjacent to their parent retailer’s overall brand identity while establishing a niche of their own to compete with the vast array of products in their particular category. It’s a battle for digital and physical shelf space that requires careful consideration.

Marketing and creative strategy is what truly determines the success of leading private label brands at the end of the day, especially when it comes to customer acquisition. Advertising, branding, campaigns, consumer insights, coupon design, e-commerce activation, and packaging design are all make-or-break opportunities in this arena, but packaging can often be the foot-in-the-door any private label needs.

Eyes on the Prize

Up and down the supermarket aisle, packaging is everything, and retailers need to create packaging that literally stands out — both in-person and on-screen. Private-label packages historically mimicked the look and feel of their competitors, but retailers today are looking to brand these products in a new way that captures the attention of customers while simultaneously communicating the benefits and quality of the brand. This is an especially important driver of brand reputation in clothing and grocery where customers are looking beyond price alone to the quality of ingredients and materials and their sustainability, encompassing everything from fair trade sourcing and ethical manufacturing to the use of recycled materials.

This means packaging designers are now tasked with label copy that dovetails with package visuals — a creative problem-solver’s dream. It’s true shoppers are still drawn to singular packaging, especially when it comes to color and design, but once the package is in their hands today’s consumer is looking for facts and figures that convince them to bring the product to checkout. Designing the perfect package for a private label product, then putting it all together and getting the product into stores, requires precise planning. The same of course also applies to e-commerce initiatives to market and sell private labels via digital channels, meaning the competition is fierce both in-store and online.

Launching in Style

Once a private label product is ready to roll, how do industry leaders effectively roll it out? Best-in-class private label brands need to tell a product story that concisely conveys their products’ unique value to the everyday consumer. Digital go-to-market strategies can leverage channels like product landing pages, press releases, blog articles, paid and organic social media campaigns, and so much more. Leading companies in the space even work with production teams to create content for more traditional commercial ads to drive awareness.

The old adage, you never get a second chance to make a first impression, is certainly a truism when it comes to new launches. Beyond native content, retailers looking to promote private labels, particularly when it comes to clothing and food, often work with influencers. Getting a pair of private label boots on the feet of a celebrity attending Coachella or an array of products on the kitchen island of a cooking show goes a long way to building a brand – and selling it. It’s an entirely customer-centric process, and it has to be done right.

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Bottomline

Private labels continue to fill the room, and the door is wide open. One might even say it’s getting mighty crowded, as customers come to expect the exact same things from private label brands they expect from legacy brands. These brands have to take customers on the same journey their legacy competitors do, both in brick-and-mortar and virtual settings, which means launching and managing a private label brand and its products requires heavy creative support.

That’s where Creative Circle comes in. We are a talent-driven organization that provides our clients with the right creative and marketing solutions to support your branding, packaging, and marketing projects. Whether you need project management, content creation, copywriting and editing, design, or art direction (including 3D, animation, and videography), we have the right talent to help you achieve your goals and take your brand to new heights. We are more than just a staffing agency; we are a transformative partner who can drive meaningful results for your private label brand. Let us help you get your products out the door — and onto the top shelves.

Given the privacy and regulatory issues endemic to the financial services industry (FinServ), it’s taken the industry a bit of time to figure out exactly how to leverage marketing technology (Martech) to reach, retain, and inform its audiences. In line with other sectors like education and retail, FinServ is investing in Martech, and it’s paying off.

What is Martech?

Martech refers to a number of digital tools companies and entrepreneurs deploy to market their products and services to consumers and other stakeholders, from bespoke project management and design software platforms to full-fledged campaign automation and customer relationship management (CRM) platforms. This category includes some of the more well-known digital advertising platforms like Google Ads/Analytics, Microsoft Advertising, Twitter Ads, and YouTube Ads, as well as CRMs such as Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics. All of these tools serve to streamline digital campaigns, collect and analyze data, enable automated scheduling, reporting and statistics, and produce website heat maps, schedule social media content, and more. Grouped together, these platforms are known as a Martech stack.

How pervasive has Martech become? According to online software marketplace G2, the Martech solutions marketplace has grown 27.8 percent year-over-year, increasing from just over 11,000 solutions in 2023 to more than 14,000 in 2024: this reflects both the evolving complexity of marketing requirements as well as the constant innovation in the space.

If we focus in on FinServ, recent investment activity by major industry players — like Citi, Chase, JPMorgan, and their competitors — underlines the growing importance of Martech stacks in the industry.

  • In March 2024, StarTree, a cloud-based real-time analytics services company powered by Apache Pinot, announced Citi had made a strategic investment in the company. Citi uses the open-source Apache Pinot and StarTree to access trade and risk monitoring for its Markets business.
  • In April 2024, JPMorgan Chase launched Chase Media Solutions, a new digital media business. This bank-led media platform, the first of its kind, enables advertisers to send relevant promotions to around 80 million of the bank’s customers.

Implementing Martech that’s Right on the Money

FinServ’s second-most important currency is, of course, data. Thanks to strategically built and implemented Martech stacks, FinServ companies can work with vast amounts of data to gain insight into the behaviors and preferences of their customers. By adopting a data-driven strategy, these organizations can design individualized marketing campaigns for their specific audiences and deliver them via the most effective channels at the best time. And, yes, AI is a huge contributor to the data-driven results and effectiveness of FinServ Martech stacks, given its ability to analyze and process massive amounts of customer data — effectively democratizing the use of marketing technology.

Implementing Martech that’s right on the money can transform your marketing efforts to produce tangible results, but it’s important to follow the right steps. Similar to the healthcare industry, FinServ is under strict regulations and requirements when it comes to marketing, largely for the protection of investors. There are several laws governing FinServ outreach to consumers, including the Truth in Advertising Act, the Truth in Savings Act and Fair Lending Laws, among others. In December of 2020, the SEC finalized reforms under the Investment Advisers Act to modernize rules governing advertising and marketing by investment firms. Although these rules remain in place today, FinServ organizations are expected to keep up with any changes in the regulatory landscape.

FinServ companies need to invest in the right Martech strategy to be able to follow these laws while still executing marketing campaigns that perform, simultaneously maintaining a seamless ecosystem of interconnected digital marketing tools via strategic integrations to help increase adoption and effective usage. To truly optimize a Martech stack and maximize ROI, these companies need the right roadmap, and the right talent, to get them there. But what is a Martech roadmap, particularly in the FinServ space?

The Martech Roadmap: Your Path to Success

According to Gartner, a Martech roadmap helps CMOs, Marketing Operations Directors, VPs of Strategy and Innovation – and other marketing executives – communicate current and future Martech capabilities to their teams and/or throughout an enterprise. These executives can leverage their roadmaps to plan, compile business and user needs for use-case development, review and acquire new technologies, build fresh capabilities, and predict and adapt to evolving technology, potential risks, and other marketplace disruptions.

What’s the best way to start building a roadmap and begin leveraging everything a Martech stack can do for your FinServ company? You need the right people to help you put the right stack together, experts with real depth in marketing and technology who can provide your organization with the solutions it needs, such as:

  • Platform assessment and implementation
  • Business setups for Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) builds
  • Workfront-to-Workfront project management configuration
  • Integration of Workfront with Adobe Creative Cloud
  • Impeccable, on-brand, user-friendly dashboards
  • Salesforce operations, program, and project management, and administration
  • And so much more…

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Bottomline

Martech strategy is, simply put, one of the most important investments a FinServ company — or any organization for that matter — can make. Thinking about putting together a Martech stack that drives measurable ROI and turns your FinServ organization into a formidable competitor? Need a team to activate, maintain, and/or evolve it? One that understands the myriad compliance issues innate to the financial services industry from investment banking and trading services to wealth management and beyond?

At Creative Circle, we have the talent and expertise you need to effectively leverage Martech and stay at its ever-evolving vanguard. We develop tailor-made, talent-driven solutions that meet your organization where it’s at today, and we can build out teams to prepare your brand for tomorrow. In other words, we’ve got Martech expertise and consulting-level support that you can bank on.

We are living in an era of unprecedented tech innovation — one where artificial intelligence, once an elusive sci-fi dream, is increasingly becoming an integral part of our daily existence. Tech companies are touting their latest AI innovations, and soon, AI will likely be woven into the fabric of every platform.

Financial sector companies are always seeking to fast-track insights, improve predictive analytics and forecasting, optimize engagement, and uplevel their overall customer experience. So, naturally, AI’s data-crunching capabilities and lightning-fast analytics sound like the industry’s dream come true.

It’s true there are many compelling use cases for AI by financial services companies in particular, as they strive to differentiate their offerings with technology and deliver increased value by leveraging data-driven insights. We’re talking about everything from improving fraud detection and exploring AI-based assistants as productivity enhancers to optimizing lending parameters and fine-tuning risk assessment.

The question remains: How do they handle this immense potential while operating in such a tightly regulated space?

Real Life Financial Sector AI Use Cases

The financial industry is made up of many subsectors, from banking to fintech, insurance, investments, and more. It’s a highly competitive sector, with companies constantly looking for an edge over one another. Today, leaders in this sector are innovating to bring AI to the forefront of their business.

AI-based lending platforms like Upstart and C3.ai seek to approve more borrowers, lower default rates, and reduce fraud risk. According to the Motley Fool, Upstart uses AI models to screen potential borrowers and establish forecasts on creditworthiness that the company considers to be more accurate than using credit scores.

Where some are focused on creditworthiness, other finance companies are intent on improving fraud detection, which is a severe problem for financial institutions, and companies are looking to AI for new solutions. Machine learning algorithms can sort through vast volumes of transaction data, flagging suspicious and potentially fraudulent activity and recommending risk parameters to help block identity theft attempts, suspicious logins, and fraudulent transactions. IBM’s AI-driven Watson Studio does just that, improving fraud detection, prediction, and prevention for its customers.

Investment platforms, too, are turning to AI to help recommend stock picks and content for users. Robinhood may be the best example of a platform seeking to differentiate itself from competitors by recommending investment opportunities based on things like investing style, history, and risk tolerance, personalizing the user experience, and ramping up engagement.

AI in the World of Finance

AI has historically gained relatively broad adoption in financial services through chatbots and machine learning algorithms, but today’s leaders are setting their sights on deeper applications to supercharge their external offerings as well as enhancing internal operations. Still, finance and other heavily regulated industries like healthcare will always require human judgment. Humans are the most important element of an AI strategy, whether it’s for creative and marketing or financial applications, meaning organizations cannot solely rely on technology to make decisions that significantly impact people’s lives.

The cost-saving potential of AI, however, is not lost on the financial industry, only ramping up the appeal of AI to financial institutions. While companies have made some in-roads to AI adoption in various ways, unique challenges in implementing AI because of compliance concerns and opaque algorithmic processes persist. Here’s how some industry leaders are paving the way, and there are ways to help surmount these hurdles through defined guardrails, transparency, and more.

Top AI Challenges — and Solutions — for Highly Regulated Industries

As highly regulated industries grapple with how to tap into AI’s full potential, it’s important to examine the obstacles that arise. Here are some top challenges — and ways to mitigate them — to implementing this technology that are all too common in highly regulated industries.

1. Challenge: Lack of transparency

Many AI algorithms lack sufficient guardrails and controllability. Their opaque decision-making processes and inner workings make it challenging to detail how a system arrived at a particular output. When it comes to people’s money and health, a lack of transparency simply poses too many risks.

Solution: Provide openness and transparency

AI tools that provide clarity around their conclusions are essential for regulated industries. Consider the training data the model receives, how the system uses the data, how the data is secured, and ensure that a large enough data set is used. This level of openness will allow companies to do audits and ensure the system operates as intended, per regulatory guidelines.

2. Challenge: Risk aversion

Highly regulated industries typically have high-stakes operations, where people’s livelihoods, health, and safety are on the line, which means mistakes come at enormous costs.

Solution: Set expectations

Establish AI’s specific purpose and scope to help align stakeholders and provide a quantifiable framework for measuring success. Ensure there’s ample time to lean into new AI-aided workflows slowly to ensure that they are meeting their mark and pivot if needed.

3. Challenge: Implicit bias and unfairness

AI algorithms actually inherit and even amplify biases in the data sets on which they were trained. While fairness in AI is commonly defined as providing fair or impartial treatment, fair can mean different things in different contexts to different people.

Most AI that is built by outside companies does not give users the ability to detect bias or inherent flaws, which means conclusions can’t be examined or audited. If a doctor uses AI to recommend a course of treatment for one patient, but another patient with a similar diagnosis is given another diagnostic approach, what does this mean? Are they both correct? Wrong? What are the factors that led to divergent recommendations?

Solution: Set guardrails

Whenever possible, control the inputs into your company’s AI platform. By using predefined rules and processes, AI systems are far less likely to deviate from the established norm or violate regulatory policies, improving transparency, enhancing auditability, and trust. Some AI tools have certain guardrails built into their framework to help users avoid non-compliance.

4. Challenge: Hesitancy to change

Finance and healthcare industries often rely on legacy systems, and overhauling them to integrate AI can seem daunting, requiring significant money, time, and resources. Adding to the pressure, any changes must also comply with an ever-changing regulatory landscape that necessitates extensive testing, validation, and documentation.

Solution: Crawl, walk, run

Start small and ramp up slowly. Large-scale adoption before your company is ready could lead to regulatory violations and non-compliance that can set your organization back. Consider the crawl, walk, and run approach as an on-ramp to AI success.

Crawl: Investigate the potential business applications to find low-risk, high-impact functions that can act as test use cases.

Walk: Start with specific cases or departments or apply the tech at just one office or branch. Pressure test how initial forays into using AI are going and learn what is working and what is not.

Run: Once you’ve successfully tested, refined, improved, and verified your company’s selected AI tools, begin to explore integrating it and other AI tools into more complex use cases and larger ecosystems.

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Bottomline

AI is sweeping the world — and highly regulated industries like finance and healthcare are still looking for new ways to leverage the power of this technology while remaining compliant with stringent industry regulations. While hurdles exist for more full-throttle implementation, humans remain the most critical element in building and maintaining an AI strategy. Experts must interpret, assess, and verify AI outputs, using critical thinking and judgment to determine the best course of action.

Creative Circle can help your team crawl, walk, and run their way to adopting AI workflows, helping to create seamless and effective interdependencies between your human talent and AI. We have experts ready to get your organization up to speed in carefully calibrated steps so that you, too, can thrive in the fast-evolving world of AI.

Creative Circle is thrilled to announce the release of our 2024 Client Pulse Report, offering a comprehensive analysis of artificial intelligence’s impact on creative and marketing teams. This year’s report illuminates how AI has rapidly become embedded in daily workflows, but leaders still seek support in deploying the groundbreaking technology to its full potential.

To develop the report, Creative Circle collected survey responses from 463 creative and marketing leaders. The survey was conducted in March 2024 and received a near-record response rate, demonstrating business leaders’ continued investment in the subject more than a year after AI entered the mainstream.

The Results Are In

Resounding consensuses emerged around several of the topics addressed in the survey:

  • AI is now a staple in creative and marketing teams, with 82% using it to some extent and 45% using it daily or weekly.
  • Leaders would like to further implement AI into their work, but 89% face barriers to increased adoption.
  • The necessity of AI today is undisputed, as 83% of leaders say they need to develop new AI skills and competencies in order to achieve their goals.
  • Businesses are eager to close their AI gaps, with 66% of respondents seeking AI-specific training, hires, or consultants to upskill their teams.

“This study makes clear that marketing and creative leaders recognize AI’s extraordinary potential. But for the most part, they’re only scratching the surface,” says Creative Circle President Matt Riley. “Teams need direction, training, and subject matter expertise in order to fully integrate AI technology and realize its many benefits.”

Creative Circle’s insights and solutions offer an ideal set of skills and knowledge that marketing and creative teams need to realize the benefit of today’s AI technologies.

Katherine Forbes, Creative Circle’s Senior Vice President of Marketing, states, “We are actively partnering with our clients to bring out the full potential of AI within their marketing and creative teams. Our people have the right solutions at their fingertips and the necessary insights to implement AI effectively and securely.”

Read the full report for all the detailed findings on topics including the top AI use cases, barriers to adoption, and upskilling strategies. And, if you’re ready to harness the power of AI for your team, contact Creative Circle to tap into a wealth of resources and expertise.

About Creative Circle

Creative Circle provides marketing and creative services for companies looking to solve business challenges of all sizes. Our strength comes from our talent community, and our power lies in leveraging this network to provide flexible custom solutions for our clients.

Creative Circle is part of the Commercial Segment of ASGN Incorporated (NYSE: ASGN). To learn more, visit creativecircle.com.

Safe Harbor

Certain statements made in this news release are “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Exchange Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, and involve a high degree of risk and uncertainty. Forward looking statements include statements regarding our current and future support of client AI needs, claims pertaining to internal and client efficiencies created using AI tools, and statements about how marketing and creative professionals may leverage AI tools within their own organizations. All statements in this news release, other than those setting forth strictly historical information, are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and actual results might differ materially. For a full list of risks and discussion of forward looking statements, please see ASGN’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2023, as filed with the SEC on February 23, 2024. We specifically disclaim any intention or duty to update any forward-looking statements contained in this news release.

Today’s AI capabilities are yesterday’s science fiction — AI technologies can now generate text, images, music, and video with simple prompts. As they evolve, the world of what is possible keeps changing at breakneck speed.

In education, AI technology has already started to influence how students learn, teachers teach, and, ultimately, what our educational system will come to look like in the years to come — revolutionizing teaching and learning as we know it. AI-powered tools and strategies will personalize learning and may even improve student outcomes by better preparing students for success in the digital age.

Sal Khan, founder of the Khan Academy, a nonprofit that provides free, world-class educational tools for use by all, boldly declared in his 2023 TED talk that AI has the potential to catalyze “the biggest positive transformation that education has ever seen.” He sees a new era in education, where every teacher has an AI teaching assistant, and every student has access to an AI-powered personal tutor.

While there are ethical concerns around bias, plagiarism, appropriate use, and fears that AI will enable the spread of misinformation and cheating — issues that AI developers will certainly need to address — a growing group of educators are enthusiastically looking to a future of education that includes AI.

The challenge? Harnessing the immense positive potential while mitigating or avoiding harm.

Universities Build Their Own AI Tools

Taking these concerns to heart, colleges and universities have begun developing their own Chat-GPT-like tools for faculty and students to overcome concerns about intellectual property rights, equity, and privacy. The University of Michigan, Harvard University, University of California San Diego, UC Irvine, and Washington University have all created their own version of Chat GPT for use by students and faculty in the past year.

WashU GPT was launched last year, spearheaded by Albert Lai, deputy faculty lead for digital transformation at Washington University. They, along with the University of Michigan and UC Irvine, built their AI tools using Microsoft’s Azure platform, which is based on open-source software available for free to mitigate equity concerns. Proprietary platforms, like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, on the other hand, impose upfront fees. What’s more, having a closed system can provide faculty with peace of mind that their intellectual property remains protected. “Any faculty member — including myself — would be very uncomfortable in putting a lecture and exams in an OpenAI model (such as ChatGPT) because then it’s out there for the world,” shared Ravi Pendse, University of Michigan’s Chief Information Officer.

Art Schools Get Creative About AI

AI is no longer just for computer scientists analyzing massive data sets and conducting predictive analytics — artists, designers, animators, musicians, video artists, and other creatives are now using it to enhance their creative processes and sometimes even generate new work. While there is a push/pull relationship between the technology and artists, leaders at top art institutions are starting to see AI as the next logical step in the digital revolution with the meteoric rise of visual AI platforms like DALL-E and Midjourney.

“This is as organic and logical as it gets, that an art institution is exactly primed to integrate this,” shared Griffin Smith, who teaches at the Rhode Island School of Design. “RISD is the most punk art school, and I see this as one of the greatest punk opportunities we’ve had.”

When generative AI burst onto the scene, Jane South, Chair of Fine Arts at the Pratt Institute, looked past the ethical and copyright concerns and hoped that this technology might be the next big thing for artists and creative industries. “I thought, ‘Goody, goody.’” South sees the dawning of AI as “one of those moments — [like] when the printing press was invented, when photography came along — that art thrives on. Because it makes us think about what it is we do.”

Some liken attitudes around AI to those that surrounded Photoshop when those powerhouse programs burst onto the creative scene. “I think as soon as Photoshop became ubiquitous, faculty have been having conversations with students about Photoshop, and using it as a tool, and the difference between making all of your work on Photoshop and printing it out onto a piece of paper or projecting it onto the wall,” said Smith. “All of those conversations, I think, are very easily transferable to AI.” However, some creatives caution that there’s a big difference between what skilled creators can make using Adobe Creative Suite tools versus those without artistic skills or training.

South emphasized this point in a recent New York Times article, saying previous technological inventions that critics feared might upend creative professions only ended up strengthening them. “Photography was supposed to be the end of art, and then the Xerox machine came along, and that was supposed to be the end of art, too.”

AI as a Tool — Not a Replacement — for Creatives

Increasingly, schools are looking at AI as a multi-use tool — much like Photoshop or the camera before it — and many now see that it qualifies as its own medium for making art. For some, a consensus is forming that the act of limiting the tools available to create art is a bad practice for artists and for creativity.

To Nate Harrison, the Dean of Academic Affairs at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts (SMFA), “concern” about AI is no longer relevant because it has already arrived. In other words, AI is here. “We cannot fight AI, students are already using it, many very organically and intuitively and naturally.” For him, the question should be: How can we equip students with smart approaches to using AI?

Some art schools, like Ringling College of Art and Design, are incorporating AI into their teachings instead of cleaving it off as a separate course. In one of their costume design classes, for instance, students use AI to find inspiration before crafting actual costumes.

RISD is now offering courses that prepare their students to code with machine learning and employ programs like Stable Diffusion, Midjourney, and DALL-E, encouraging their use as foundational tools for creative projects that may ultimately involve traditional mediums like painting and illustration.

Creatives in marketing and advertising know that their work rests on the meaning of the ideas underpinning their concepts, and they’re worrying increasingly less about how the images that correspond were created and more about what they communicate to clients and others. As inventor Buckminster Fuller, best known as the creator of the geodesic dome, once said: “We are called to be the architects of the future, not its victims.”

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Bottomline

While many have described the rise of AI as “unprecedented,” that’s not exactly true. Disruptive technologies have often been seen as potential destroyers of industry before they settled into being seen as tools, just like the camera. As AI continues to become more fact than fiction, many in the creative fields are coming to the same conclusion: Yes, things will change, but new doors will also open, much like the advent of the internet.

If your team wants to infuse AI tools into your own creative work, we can help guide the way. Creative Circle has a strong bench of creative consultants who can help you craft the most adaptive and strategic way forward for your brand.

Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, online degree programs, such as those at the University of Phoenix, was a steadily growing trend in education. Once the pandemic took hold, however, with almost all grade school, middle school, high school, and university students taking at least some classes online, forcing education to make a major pivot to fully embrace digital disruption and its associated tools – tools which continue to bring immense changes to how students are provided instruction today. University websites have been upgraded and their functionality expanded, with portals for faculty and students.

This sea change isn’t particular to any one grade or institution, with schools of all education levels and sizes evolving to leverage the benefits of digital disruption — and to keep up with its incredible pace. More than 70 percent of higher education leaders believe digital transformation, as spurred by digital disruption, is a top priority for their schools, and global expenditure on digital transformation at higher education institutions is expected to reach approximately $3.4 trillion by 2026.

Digital disruption is bringing education into the 21st century, and institutions worldwide are undertaking this complex and crucial journey to personalize learning and improve student experiences. The key benefit of digital disruption in education is making more of a school’s instruction and services available to more students, and the first step in this direction is often rebuilding websites.

A Virtual Welcome Mat

University websites can span thousands of pages, everything from course catalogs to student resources and recruitment. Still, many universities lack the time and expertise to make their websites powerful digital tools, and sometimes people without creative, web development, or marketing experience are the ones maintaining these websites. According to Ernst & Young, digital reaches across the university community to include students, parents, alumni, employers, faculty, and staff. This of course includes websites, which are typically digital disruption’s first stop: An incomplete or ineffective website is often an Achilles’ heel for universities, as their websites serve as their virtual welcome mats — and their front doors.

Many university website reboots require dedicated content creation and web development teams with the expertise to complete CMS migrations, comprehensive site refreshes in line with university branding, development support, maintenance, web audits, web crawls, and more. Those institutions without in-house web development experience need professionals who can take full ownership of larger projects, everything from migrations to complete builds. And, once these websites have been built, refreshed, or updated, seasoned marketers are needed to make sure these websites are effectively conveying the right messages to the right audiences.

There have been some early adopters and participants who have found success when it comes to digital disruption. Early in the pandemic, NYU needed to overhaul its website to accommodate the rapid changes required to implement remote learning and enable its students to continue their studies. The university rehauled its portal and the portal’s associated digital tools, and it continues to refine them in response to evolving faculty and student needs. NYU was able to accomplish all of this with external support from content creation, marketing, and web design experts.

Digital Disruption Provides Better Outcomes for Learners with Disabilities

Core to the digital disruption of education is video and web accessibility, and this includes students with disabilities. The U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Educational Technology is dedicated to the development of policies that ensure learners with disabilities have the necessary platforms and technology they need to access and engage with educational materials alongside their peers who don’t have disabilities. The Department’s ultimate objective is to make sure students with disabilities have the same educational outcomes as students without disabilities.

On April 24, 2024, the U.S Attorney General signed a final rule with specific requirements based on WCAG 2.1 Level AA standards . The ruling revised the regulation implementing title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”) “to establish specific requirements , including the adoption of specific technical standards, for making accessible to people with disabilities the services, programs, and activities offered by State and local government entities to the public through the web and mobile applications.” The rule takes effect on June 24, 2024, and applies to public schools, community colleges, and public universities nationwide.

The Department of Justice is now establishing technical requirements to provide concrete standards for state and local entities, including public educational institutions, on how to fulfill their recently updated obligations under Title II. This secondary wave of digital disruption will bring enormous changes to public education throughout the U.S., as public schools and universities look to build and deploy the tools disabled students need too.

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Bottomline

The changes digital disruption continues to bring to education are oceanic in size. The creative, marketing, and web development teams at public universities will need best practices and upskilling support, as well as auditing materials, to make sure they make all the necessary updates to their websites and apps to fulfill these federal requirements. As universities look to provide the best possible digital experience to all of their stakeholders, they need the right creative and marketing support to make it all happen.

Creative Circle’s customized service models and scalable solutions are designed to help you reach your targets and build brand awareness as you update your digital presence and meet all of the new ADA requirements for these resources. Our studio & flex bench, agency services, talent acquisition, and consulting capabilities are the perfect solve for universities looking to add heft to their digital teams and leverage the power of digital disruption to stay ahead. We’ve got incomparable talent who can help your institution embrace the sea change digital disruption has brought to education. Let’s sail through the present — and into the future — together.