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Where marketers meet the machine 🦾
...and easy animated logos with Sora
Hello marketers. Welcome to AI Marketing School, where we dish out the latest and greatest in AI-powered marketing.
In this week’s mega issue (that might admittedly require more than one coffee to digest):
AI Marketing Update: Google I/O brings AI search up a level
The Stack: Animate logos in seconds
Consultant’s Corner: AI paradoxes and how to stay on-side
AI Events: Our recommended AI marketing events for networking and connections
Onwards!
AI MARKETING UPDATE
Google I/O - the AI/marketing need-to-know
Google I/O 2025 just happened, and it signals a continuation of what we’ve been discussing for a while.
This isn't just another algorithm update or a cute new feature. Google is taking us deeper into AI-ville. The numbers alone are terrifying (or thrilling, depending on where you're standing):
480 TRILLION tokens processed monthly (that's 50x more than last year!)
400 MILLION Gemini app users (that's more than Twitter!)
1.5 BILLION monthly AI Overview users (aka half the internet)
Let's break down what just happened:
1. AI Mode just ate Google Search for breakfast
As of yesterday, AI Mode rolled out to EVERY user in the US. When someone searches now, Google's AI is doing dozens of invisible searches on their behalf, synthesizing answers, and often delivering solutions without ever showing your website.
The brutal truth? If your content isn't specifically optimized for AI-generated answers, you’ll be missing out on traffic from ChatGPT AND Google. Optimizing for AI is 100% a thing now in my view.
2. Visual search rockets
Visual search exploded 65% year-over-year, and Google is doubling down with "Search Live.”
Point your camera at anything and get instant answers, comparisons, buying options – without ever visiting a website.
If your products aren't discoverable through visual search, you're basically hiding from a massive audience. That means maxing out your visuals across sites.
3. AI is about to do your customers' shopping for them
Following ChatGPT, Google's new "Agent Mode" means that when your customer thinks "I need a new coffee maker," Google will:
Research options
Compare prices and features
Read reviews
Add to cart
Check out
All while your carefully crafted marketing funnel sits on the sidelines, untouched. The only way to win? Be the brand the agent chooses. We’ve discussed these loads, so feel free to flick back through the editions.
While I/O was AI-dense, these three points are the core for search and marketing.
In short: Google is now entrenching AI search features and replicating stuff OpenAI developed (e.g. shopping agents), which means much broader adoption.
THE STACK
Animate your logo in seconds with Sora
Sora is great because many people already have access to it with their existing Pro ChatGPT sub. However, most tutorials I’ve seen are overly convoluted or don’t focus on practical uses.
Here’s a short tutorial for animating logos fully in the box with ChatGPT.
First, you need your logo. I generated mine, super-simple, obviously not a huge amount of thought has gone into it — but it’s fine for this tutorial.
Then create some variations in that style. You’ll need to experiment, but it should be straightforward enough.
With these simple assets in hand, upload your assets into a Sora storyboard. You can animate them simply by tweaking the generated prompts. Ask for things like:
“Logo fades in, spins, then blurs out”
“Glitch transition from version A to B”
The prompts auto-generate, but you can (and should) edit the text section to refine how each frame behaves. You’re not animating frame-by-frame. You’re describing transformation and letting Sora interpret it.
Click the result below for the final piece — an animated logo that uses your assets.
It’s quite smart and effective. Note, the text doesn’t always work well — but you get two versions as default, and one is always better than the other.
That’s it — not complex, but an effective way to create branded video assets. You can drop your logos in, create extra assets in the style (or another style), and drop them into the Sora storyboard.
You could also drop products in, or whatever, really — not everything will work, and it’s unpredictable.
The main tip here is that you can create a common design thread by turning a logo into other materials, in my case, leaves, foliage, etc.
Some usage ideas:
TikTok/IG Reels openers: Start your videos with a punchy animated logo to boost brand recall.
YouTube Shorts outros: Wrap up videos with motion branding. Even a 1-second glitch or pop-in makes it feel pro.
Podcast video bumpers: Turn static podcast artwork into looping animations for visual platforms.
Talking head overlays: Float your animated logo subtly in the corner of your content (adds polish without noise).
Email marketing headers: Use them as looping GIFs or short embedded clips to give your emails motion and identity.
Backgrounds for product shots: Animate your logo behind a product, like a rotating hologram or dynamic watermark.
Again, this isn’t complex, but it works as you’re establishing continuity by developing the assets first and then asking Sora to mould them together.
CONSULTANT’S CORNER
5 AI marketing paradoxes (and how to solve them)
The marketing world is in a strange place right now. Everyone's talking about AI, but beneath the hype and excitement, there are some fascinating contradictions emerging.
These paradoxes aren't just interesting observations – they're critical tensions that will determine which brands thrive and which ones get left behind in the AI revolution.
Let's dive into the five key paradoxes that are defining AI marketing in 2025.
Paradox 1: Everyone wants AI skills, but no one's hiring for them
Econsultancy's Future of Marketing survey reveals AI skills topped the list of areas marketers feel they need to develop over the next two years, tied with data and analytics at 40%.
Yet the same survey showed that hiring and retaining talent was at the bottom of marketing spending priorities. Companies want AI skills, but they're not particularly keen on investing in the people who have them.
This disconnect speaks volumes about where we are in the AI hype cycle – everyone knows they need these skills, but few are actually willing to pay a premium for them.
Paradox 2: More AI content, less consumer satisfaction
Optimizely's "Optimize Everything" report shows 78% of marketers plan to increase their AI spend, while simultaneously admitting they're not doing a great job with the AI they already have.
About a third of marketers admit their organization struggles to balance AI with human creativity. Another quarter confess that AI-generated decisions often lack human oversight.
The result? Three-fifths of consumers say AI-generated content feels repetitive and fails to deliver personalized experiences. We're cranking out more content than ever, but it's connecting with audiences less effectively.
We’ve covered this a lot – the trouble is, some brands will cannibalize themselves in the name of AI-driven efficiency, producing more AI-generated ‘stuff’ with diminishing returns.
The solutions are familiar. Focus on quality over quantity. Be mindful of the tradeoff between volume and value. Use AI to enhance human creativity, not replace it.
Paradox 3: ChatGPT skills don't equal marketing skills
Companies are rushing to hire marketers with "AI skills," but what does that actually mean in practice?
If you hire marketers with "AI skills" but they're just good at ChatGPT and not the fundamentals of brand building, messaging strategy, and customer psychology, will this really help your brand?
SurveyMonkey's research found that 79% of consumers say a human understands them better than AI, and 46% would have a negative perception of a brand using AI-generated content.
The solution? Don't hire for AI skills in isolation. Hire for marketing fundamentals, strategic thinking, and creativity – then add AI literacy on top.
Paradox 4: Humans visit websites, but AI will soon do it for them
Andrew Holland points out in Marketing Week that AI agents will soon handle the "messy middle" of consumer research.
According to Datos (cited by Holland), Google currently handles more than 14 billion searches daily, while ChatGPT maxes out at around 37.5 million searches. But once AI gets integrated into everyday interfaces, that ratio will flip dramatically.
For its mainstream user-base, ChatGPT is now positioning as more of what I call a ‘short tasks’ app – searching short queries, quick product research, quick drafting of emails, messages – asking it to work out what bird you saw on your walk the other day.
Nothing too serious most of the time – similar to Google. ChatGPT has truly seized that territory too. When did you last see someone whip out Claude on the bus?! If they did, they’re probably doing something more serious.
I digress, but, the point is, when you research products, the AI won't send you to eight different sites – it'll synthesize that information itself.
Think this makes branding as we know it irrelevant? Think again.
You need to ensure your brand and its products are pushed to every corner of the internet an LLM might look – Reddit, niche forums, your website, social media, etc, etc. Essentially, brands may benefit from a really broad profile across the web. In many ways, this is old-school SEO.
Paradox 5: AI creates efficiency but demands more strategy
Former Unilever exec Mark Walker told Econsultancy: "We are seeing a reset of many organizations, reducing headcounts or restructuring their teams to be fit for the rest of the decade. This means businesses are needing to do the same, or more, but with fewer resources, and those who remain need to be more capable and competent in the digital space to fill the gaps."
The irony is that while AI creates efficiency in execution, it demands more strategic thinking than ever before. This ties in with the above – hire for AI, you might overlook everything else you need to make AI work!
With execution becoming commoditized through AI, the real differentiator is strategic insight – precisely the thing AI is worst at providing.
The bottom line
These paradoxes show that AI isn't a simple "plug and play" solution for marketing.
Companies and their leaders must confront the competing tensions, as within them lie the true benefits. Few will succeed by lurching to extremes.
AI MARKETING EVENTS
🗓️ Recommended AI marketing events
Whether you’re building with AI, leading a marketing team, or just trying to stay sharp in a fast-moving space, events are still one of the best ways to plug in.
Great events do more than just deliver content — they give you context. You get to see what other teams are testing, what’s actually working, and where the market is headed.
They’re also one of the few places where you can meet like-minded people, talk shop with folks solving the same problems, and build a network that isn’t purely algorithmic!
Some top events to check out:
AI Agents Summit (Virtual) — September 18–19, 2025: Laser-focused on AI agents, copilots, and autonomous systems. If you're experimenting with automating parts of your marketing workflow or interested in agent-based design, this one’s worth attending.
AI for Marketers Summit (Virtual) — November 13–14, 2025: Created specifically for marketing professionals. From prompt engineering to campaign automation, it’s a practical look at how AI is being used right now in real teams.
Data + AI Summit (San Francisco) — June 9–12, 2025: Hosted by Databricks, there’s plenty of marketing relevance here — especially around LLM workflows, AI tooling, and future-proofing your stack.
Ai4 2025 (Las Vegas) — August 11–13, 2025: A big-picture AI conference covering finance, healthcare, retail, marketing, and more.
Hope you enjoyed this week’s issue. If you missed the last newsletter, you can read it here.
If you found it useful, please recommend it to a friend or colleague.
Until next time. Happy marketing.
—The AI Marketer
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