Landing an internship was hard enough back in the days when tasks like conducting research and creating slide decks required a human brain. Now, artificial intelligence can—and sometimes does—handle it.

At least that’s the case at Codeword, a tech marketing agency that announced two AI “interns” as part of its winter 2023 internship class in January. The interns, named Aiko and Aiden, have since worked on all-hands decks, web copy, graphics, branding research, and the agency’s quarterly zine, according to Kyle Monson, a founding partner at Codeword.

A few months into Aiko and Aiden’s time at Codeword, Monson said the AI teammates are exceeding expectations and may even advance at the agency. Not to worry, though: there’s plenty they don’t do yet, including client-facing work.

“The most important thing to me is that we’re using humans to do human work and we’re using robots for what robots are best at,” Monson told Marketing Brew. “We’re not using humans to do what robots are good at or using robots to do what humans are good at, because that doesn’t make sense.”

Continue reading here.—AM

Communication is key in any relationship, and your customer relationships are no different. Real-time customer engagement helps your team get the job done. Salesforce’s guide on Redefining the CDP explores how their customer data platform makes it easy to connect with yours.

This guide is your intro to Salesforce’s Customer Data Platform (CDP), Data Cloud for Marketing—the platform that helps your team create personalized, real-time experiences for customers. Sink your teeth into 8 data-driven use cases to understand the common challenges facing marketing, sales, and service teams.

You’ll also learn how having a CDP sends those problems packing by:

• optimizing ad spend
• creating dynamic website content
• increasing up- and cross-sell
• resolving customer service cases

Get the full guide here.

It’s gonna be May, which means it’s about to be upfronts season. And for three major networks pitching to advertisers, well, the timing could be better.

Fox, CNN, and NBCUniversal all started the week facing major shakeups. At Fox and CNN, the departures of major talent will likely raise questions about ratings and network direction, while NBCUniversal is navigating the aftermath of losing its CEO due to sexual harassment allegations just as it looks to lock in ad commitments.

For Fox sake: Fox, which will hold its upfront on Monday, May 15, will present to advertisers without prime-time host Tucker Carlson, who left the company abruptly Monday. The surprise exit came just a week after Fox settled a high-stakes defamation lawsuit with Dominion Voting System for $787.5 million—a lawsuit in which some of Carlson’s critical comments about Fox leadership became public.

• One question Fox may face is the effect of Carlson’s departure on Fox viewership. Carlson’s show was a ratings juggernaut, although the conservative commentator himself was a magnet for controversy, which sometimes resulted in advertiser pullbacks. (Without Carlson, the network will air Fox News Tonight with different network personalities until a successor is named; it remains to be seen how that replacement series will perform with audiences.)
• When talking to advertisers, Fox has focused on its less controversial programming. In presentations to advertisers in March, the cable network highlighted lifestyle, sports, weather, and entertainment programming available for sponsorship.

Keep reading here.—KS

Darwin has never failed us, proving irrefutably that it’s adapt or die.

And given that the all-encompassing Agency of Record refuses to do the former, well then, death it is.

But out of faith in creativity and for the purposes of this philosophical exercise, let’s subscribe to the idea of reincarnation and to the belief that the agency model might perhaps be reborn as something more beautifully designed and beneficial to the ecosystem it belongs to. Like a ladybug.

Because right now, the always-on, one-stop shop is inefficient at best and at worst, a remarkably slow, painfully hierarchical, exceedingly precious, unnecessarily process-laden, talent burning, marketing budget devouring, antique. Oof.

Not to mention, committing to a single partner, even for a year (lately one and done seems to be the norm), simply ignores the idea of context, and the undeniable fact that it constantly evolves.

Brand leaders change (and with them, direction). The sales numbers come in. Culture re-defining events occur. And as these variables shift, so do a company’s challenges, agendas, and desires.

Read the full piece here.—ES, BB

There are a lot of bad marketing tips out there. These aren’t those.

Social: Ad Age highlighted “five AI-focused influencers for brands to follow.”

Trendz: Why marketers should create a strategy specifically for trends.

Analysis: An advertising analyst explained why Google, Microsoft, and Spotify’s earnings may say more about the companies than economic conditions.

Peace out, PDFs: There’s a better way to format your brand guidelines, and it’s using modern, cloud-based solutions. Frontify has the details on why you should dump your PDF brand guidelines. Get their new report.*

^{*This is sponsored advertising content.}

Stat: “Either way, early season four somewhat implies that the kids’ share fortunes stand in the billions.”—The Financial Times investigated how much Succession’s Roy kids are worth

Quote: “Gen Z hops on trains really fast, but they hop off even faster.”—Night Noroña, a high school student, to the New York Times about BeReal’s decline

Read: “Americans get nostalgic for the cable TV experience” (the Wall Street Journal)

Catch up on a few Marketing Brew stories you might have missed.

• Why are people reading obituaries on YouTube?
• Why Earth Day felt a little quieter this year
• No, you’re not imagining it: Streaming services’ new favorite color is blue