Fifty Five and Five is taking on a new mission, and it's bold. We are going to do nothing less than reinvent the art of marketing. With our clients, our awesome team, and the very latest technology, we are going to usher in a world where companies can have individual conversations with each and every prospect, where brands can tell their stories in deeply personalized and innovative new ways, and where marketing transcends traditional boundaries to become an art form that engages, excites, and inspires. We're ready to elevate marketing to new heights, creating unique experiences that resonate on a personal level with every audience.
First, let's be clear. This is not about ChatGPT! If you are as fatigued as the rest of us reading about how magical text prompts can solve all you marketing challenges, then this post is for you.
Yes, AI will change everything. It has changed agencies like Fifty Five and Five. How we work, the people we employ, how we go about our jobs. But ChatGPT, and Generative AI tools like it, are only a starting point, and in many ways a distraction. The real future is way more exciting.
And this story isn't just about tech. It is about the intersection of people and technology, and the magic that happens at that intersection.
Why is Fifty Five and Five doing this?
We rebranded last year. That was big. But this shift is so much bigger. We have a whole new mission. Why? Because we believe, I believe, that we can actually transform the world of marketing, by fusing this new breed of technology with our existing human creativity.
It is only now, mid 2024, that this mission has even been possible.
So how are we going to achieve our goal? We are going to take all of the marketing knowledge and experience we have fostered over our last ten years, and combine it with the very cutting edge of Artificial Intelligence to create something new. Something better. An agency that works with clients to deliver a whole new breed of marketing. A new set of services that allows us to deliver transformative experiences to our clients.
Everything we are doing is about achieving more for our clients. Allowing them to tell their stories in new exciting ways.
What it means for clients
So we talked about why we are doing this, our new mission. We talked about how we are doing it, by fusing tech and human creativity. Now lets look at what exactly we are offering. And again, no, this isn't about ChatGPT!
There are three ways our clients benefit from this new Fifty Five and Five.
1. A new breed of marketing
We have reimagined every service we offer, and looked at how we can improve it. Let's take a specific example. SEO. We have been helping our clients rank in search engines for the last ten years. In that time we have regularly improved our processes and tooling, and of course adjusted to algorithm changes. But we have basically been doing the same thing for along time now.
So we are now excited to launch our 'Real-time SEO' platform. It's still about keyword clusters and great content (though we have new ways of doing that also) but our new platform plugs directly into your website to automate:
- All on-page optimisation - no humans involved
- Keyword performance - monitored and measured digitally and autonomously
- Content updates - the platform decides if keyword variants are needed, and modifies existing content automatically in real-time
What does this mean for you? You rank higher, and achieve those rankings quicker. And you get more time with our human SEO experts (to work on strategy, off page optimizations and more) because they are no longer doing the manual on-page work that took up so much time.
This is just one example of how our new approach means significant improvements in the results clients can expect. We have much more to say on how we do content, how we think about social, paid media campaigns, branding and design.
2. New digital experiences
We've long had a development team here at Fifty Five and Five. We'd spec up projects - maybe a website, an online tool or app, or a microsite - design them up, and then hand off to our devs. And it was fine.
But this version of Fifty Five and Five is doing it differently. We now use the latest in AI development tools, to empower non developers to build. We have shortened project timelines (and sometimes costs), but crucially we have put the power to build digital experiences directly in the hands of the creatives. This means we can test concepts quicker, try ideas, experiment, and then go to finished product in days not weeks or months.
Again let's look at an example. A client recently asked us for an ebook, for a leadgen campaign they were planning, We suggested making an digital version instead, and putting it online. One of our creatives asked out loud "What if the site's content was customized to the specific reader? Automatically, with no login. Is that even possible?".
In the old days that idea would have been buried by scoping, and process, dev teams, and timelines. Not any more. That same creative pulled up one of the bleeding edge no code dev platforms we use, described his idea in natural language, and 4hrs later had a live proof of concept.
Being able to take a spark of an idea, and instantly talk to a super powered AI developer to validate and build it out, is enormously empowering.
So armed with this new capability we are finding really creative and innovative solutions to all kinds of client briefs. And we have only just got started.
But we have proved that is someone with an idea can write code, test an idea, try out a dream, then the art of the possible has just expanded exponentially.
3. AI consulting
And then finally (and perhaps most exciting) we are launching a new AI consulting service. We have transformed Fifty Five and Five, our processes, tools and ways of working to work. So we are offering our clients the same service.
We work with mainly enterprise clients, and specific marketing teams within those organizations. We go in and understand what the role and objectives of the team are, and how they are setup for success now. We then develop a bespoke transformation plan, looking at technology, mainly around AI and automation, to be rolled out over 3-6 months.
We have a few trials with a couple of clients right now and the results are already eye popping. We are giving internal marketing teams agency grade super powers, upskilling and augmenting resources, and helping everyone do much more with less.
How are we delivering on this new mission?
Ok this is the tech bit.
Right now AI is a tool. We can generate text, images, video and code. All of these things are useful, and can be utilised in different ways. Our 'Real-time SEO' platform, for example, uses Generative AI to amend the copy our writers have created and automatically optimize it for new keywords.
We do occasionally use some 3rd party AI tools in our work. But actually we prefer to build our own, and interface with this technology directly. This gives us more control, more customization, more functionality.
So for example, no we don't use ChatGPT. We use Compass, which we built ourselves. Unlike ChatGPT, Compass is fine tuned on our sector, our clients, even the Fifty Five and Five team that use it. Yes it is underpinned by OpenAI's GPT-4o model, but it also uses a number of different models (e.g. Claude from Anthropic, Gemini from Google) depending on the use case. Compass also has access to bespoke tools that ChatGPT doesn't. So Compass can send emails, or Teams messages. It can book meetings. It can interact with our CRM or task management system.
A second example. We built another tool that we deploy on client campaign landing pages. It is called 'Magic leadgen forms'. All of the clever tech is invisible. All the user sees on the landing page is a single email field. Nothing else. No overbearing forms demanding all kinds of info. Our proprietary technology can gather a whole range of information on the user from that single email address. For one client we even told them, from an email address, how many meeting rooms the user had at their office.
So AI is currently a tool. But very soon that too will change.
The future is really about AI agents
I said earlier that ChatGPT, indeed Generative AI, is just a starting point. That is because there is a much more exciting technology coming, that will change everything. And it is AI Agents.
Generative AI tools take an input, like a prompt, and produce an output. Then stop. Agents are capable of taking an input, like a task, and then acting autonomously to complete the task. They might decide to break a task down into sub tasks. They might decide to use a tool to help them, like another piece of software, or an internet search, or indeed Generative AI. As well as autonomy they have memory and storage. They can react to situations as they encounter them, and also learn.
For example an AI agent can take a problem or a direction like "Please do some competitor research" and break it down into steps:
- I need to find a list of competitors
- Then I need to find their websites
- I need to read the content of the websites
- Then form an opinion
- Then put it all together in a report
- Finally I can share that report with the team
The Agent might ask for the competitors, or go off and find them on the web. Reading content and forming an opinion is handled by Generative AI. The agent will be able to use a copy of PowerPoint and create slides according to a style guide it has found on the Intranet.
The example above is a simple one, and agents are in the very earliest of stages. But AI agents will take AI from a tool we use, to a new paradigm in how we work.
Consider this: AI agents will be able to replicate the functions of many roles within an agency like Fifty Five and Five. Copywriters, graphic designers, data analysts, developers. Sure agents will start with the lower value work and roles. They are great now at desk research and data analysis, for example. But this won't always be the case. They will get better. And quickly.
And there will be many of them. Agents will spin up agents to work with on specific tasks.
We are already building agents for clients. Need a social media manager, but don't have budget? Let us spin up an agent. Need a couple of grads on the team to help with research, but the talent is not there? We can build you an agent to do the same job.
The technology is nothing without people
We are fusing technology with human creativity. The technology is nothing without people. Here at Fifty Five and Five we know when to use these tools and technologies and when not to. We know how to get the best from them, how to use them to accelerate our work or ideas, how to augment our skills. We know that simplistic prompts typed into ChatGPT has no part to play in our company.
We encourage everyone at Fifty Five and Five to use AI to do the following:
Better communicate ideas
Agencies like ours live and die by creative ideas. Our really good work comes from multiple people sparking off each other, building on thoughts and concepts to develop a sum that is greater than it's parts. AI plays a huge role in helping people communicate these ideas more effectively.
Writers can easily create images. Designers can create (almost, its nearly with us) video. Anyone can build simple (and soon not so simple) web apps without writing a line of code. Non-creatives can use creative formats. Creatives can tap into more technical strategic and disciplines.
Collaboratively we can communicate our ideas better with AI tools. People can communicate ideas or concepts in ways, formats and levels of fidelity that wasn’t possible before. That is really really powerful, even if we then leave the final execution to the designated experts.
Enable new expressions of creativity and innovation
If we can write any line of code, visualise any image, generate video in minutes, and automate research, then the art of the possible explodes with potential. What new formats can we create, new ways of expressing ourselves and our clients?
Being able to generate media, means we can tell stories in ways we couldn't before. Developing apps, without writing code, means anyone can create interactive experiences. Being able to produce all sorts of media, and spin up endless research, means we can personalise messages like never before, down to the individual, at scale. Throw into this potent mix new channels and devices, like AR and VR, and the possibilities are endless.
Join us on our mission
Everything we have done at Fifty Five and Five in this pivot is about our clients, and the work we want to do with them. Together we believe we can forge a future where the quality and innovation of our work skyrockets.
Ultimately we think we can help our clients have really specific individual conversations with each and every one of their customers and prospects. Conversations that mean something, delivered where and when is best for the prospect. In formats and mediums that offer rich and engaging experiences.
We are looking to partner with clients who share our vision for transformed marketing, for better outcomes, for daring to do better, and to go further. We are excited to see how far we can go!
2024 AI marketing report
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