Utilizing technology built around your best work can become an inspiration tool for marketing teams.

One of life’s great injustices is that time is finite. When our days are controlled by never-ending to-do lists, it can leave little time for moments of curiosity and discovery that make our work really stand out in a crowded field.

As the marketing team for a design firm, much of our time is spent laboring over content creation and organization, compiling information for a variety of different packages, depending upon the need and audience. Thus, we were intrigued when a partner told us about a new AI platform specifically designed for the AEC industry. The platform – Joist AI – was created by an individual with more than a decade of experience in the general contracting and construction industry, making him keenly aware of our own internal pain points and needs.

Joist AI is a “content enablement platform” that stores marketing content in a private hub, enabling teams to quickly curate and customize content for a variety of different outputs.

While this sounds great, before we snapped into adoption mode, we had to understand what the use of this tool would mean for our firm. AI has been something of a question mark within our industry, and we knew we needed to tread carefully by first deciding how we would navigate the pros and cons of the technology. This meant setting security parameters, expectations, and more. Yes, AI could alleviate some of our work, but it would take thoughtful effort to get the ball rolling.

Acting with intention is one of the most important aspects of embracing new technology, and AI is no exception. After all, AI is only as good as the information it receives. You can think of it as any living creature – if you feed it well, expect it to bloom. Being the strategic and thoughtful designers we are, this process started with building a solid foundation. We only fed the AI platform with our best content. Building that database meant reviewing and editing our existing material, versus dumping everything in. We removed sensitive and outdated information, for example, staying cognizant of what would be nourishing for our collective marketing brain.

To maintain a nutrient-rich input, we also placed guardrails around who can add, edit, and access the information on the platform. Only certain team leaders can upload content or tweak and tailor our systems and preferences.

The platform has become an excellent way to store and search for specific knowledge, greatly improving efficiency and alleviating many sticking points in the proposal process. Unlike a more traditional search function that only points you to a document where a key word or phrase occurs, Joist AI can locate and extract the specific – and relevant! – reference. (It’s like having a very fast, dedicated archivist on the team.) We’re able to find applicable past campaigns, projects, proposals, and resumes that help us build better content.

Not only does AI speed the research process but it also presents opportunities for rediscovering what we did for past projects that worked so well, which we can use to enhance future pursuits. And the faster and more efficient we can make the proposal process, the more time we have to be creative when it comes to developing compelling marketing campaigns, thought leadership, project stories, and other more intricate marketing efforts that can boost our company’s visibility.

So much of what we do as marketers is meant to appeal to human nature. When we can use technology to handle more repetitive and programmed tasks, it leaves more time for us to do the fun stuff. We think of AI as an inspiration tool as it makes the technical side more efficient and allows us to explore the emotional side of our job. We work on meaningful projects that have a real impact on our communities and, when it comes to telling the world about them, they deserve as much of our human touch as we can offer.

Kate Gray is the marketing team lead at Cushing Terrell. Connect with her on LinkedIn.

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