How to Balance Creativity and AI in Marketing
What I Learned From AI Ready CMO's Founder About Using AI Right
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There’s a difference between using AI and using it well.
I’ve watched dozens of leaders ask ChatGPT to “brainstorm campaign concepts” or “write something creative.” They spend twenty minutes revising bland output before giving up and writing it themselves. They’re frustrated. They think AI doesn’t work for creative work.
They’re half right.
AI can’t create your campaigns. But it can multiply the work you’ve already done. That’s the difference between leaders who see ROI from AI in weeks versus leaders who spend six months with nothing to show for it.
Peter Benei runs AI Ready CMO, a marketing strategy newsletter on Beehive. He’s been a fractional marketing leader for B2B companies for over a decade. We sat down recently to discuss the pattern we both saw: smart leaders using AI wrong.
The result is this post…
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In this post, you’ll learn:
The simple six-month test that shows if you’re using AI strategically or just creating more work
Where AI actually wins (and where it fails completely)
The one workflow most teams should automate first
The Two-Path AI Framework
Before you read this conversation, you need to understand something: I believe there are only two paths leaders take with AI.
Path 1: The Volume Approach (I call this LAZY AI)
Ask AI to create content from scratch
Get generic output that needs heavy editing
Spend more time revising than if you’d written it yourself
Six months later, you’re less creative than you started
Path 2: The Multiplication Approach (I call this WISE AI)
Your team creates one strategic piece (the human thinking)
AI repurposes it across twelve platforms (the execution)
Three hours saved per piece
Your creativity expands because you’re not drowning in reformatting
Most leaders are on Path 1 without realizing it. This conversation with Peter Benei breaks down exactly how to shift to Path 2, why it matters for mission-driven organizations with limited resources, and where to start Monday morning.
The stakes: leaders who figure this out in the next six months will outpace their competition by years.
Here is our conversation, as seen originally in the AI Ready CMO…
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Stop Trying to Be Creative With AI
Everyone’s using AI wrong.
They’re feeding it prompts for campaign concepts. Asking it to brainstorm taglines. Trying to generate “creative” content that sounds fresh and original.
And they’re wasting time.
Here’s what we’ve learned: AI’s creative sweet spot isn’t creation—it’s repurposing.
The Lazy AI Trap
Joel Salinas Frencia, who leads marketing for a major nonprofit, puts it bluntly: there are two types of AI users.
The first? “Lazy AI users.” Flooding Substack with untouched AI content. Volume over value. Slop.
“As a creative writer, if I start getting all my work done by AI, I’m putting myself out of a job pretty quickly,” Joel says. “That’s a very dumb approach if you’re trying to succeed long term.”
The second group uses AI strategically. They understand their skills, identify their gaps, and use AI to fill those gaps.
Joel has a simple test: Look back six months. Are you more creative now than you were then—or less?
“If the answer is less, then you’re just not using it well.”
What AI Actually Does Well
Don’t use AI for creativity. Use it for repurposing.
Your team writes one substantial piece of content. That’s where human thinking happens. Where your brand voice and strategic perspective live.
Then AI takes over.
“One of the big things we use AI for is repurposing,” Joel explains. “Take one blog, put it into AI. It already has our brand voice and guardrails. Click go. You get three options for emails, video, social. That just saved my content team three hours.”
We do the same at AI Ready CMO. Our daily newsletter and weekly deep dives? Written by humans. Every framework, every analysis, every opinion—that’s us. But the social media distribution across five platforms? Custom bot. Zero social media manager.
I spent years at agencies. Ten people spent countless hours reformatting the same core message for different platforms. Soul-crushing. Expensive.
Today? We only write the newsletter frameworks and long forms. Nothing else. The bot handles formatting, character limits, and tone adjustments. It’s not creating, it’s translating.
AI handles the boring part. The part where you’ve already done the thinking and just need to execute across twelve channels.
Why This Matters
Nonprofits and mid-sized growth companies face huge ambitions with limited resources. Unlike enterprises (mediocre goals, infinite resources), smaller orgs want massive impact but lack the staff or budget.
Joel’s organization gets 80% of traffic from organic search. More donations than ever in 2025. But organic traffic dropped 40%. Could they hire five analysts? No. Could they use AI? Yes.
“I have a project in Claude,” Joel explains. “It reads my RSS, takes the link, creates custom posts for Facebook, Twitter, Bluesky, Mastodon, LinkedIn. It’s working smart. It’s bad time management not to use that.”
Your team writes one blog post. AI gives you three email versions, five social posts, a video script, an internal brief. Three hours saved. Spent on the next strategic piece.
That’s strategic AI.
The Natural Evolution
We’ve been through this before.
Twenty years ago: digitalization panic. You didn’t need to understand servers. Just that business would go digital.
Ten years ago: Web 2.0 panic. Sales happen through online conversations. People wrote blog posts explaining this.
“The thing that is happening is natural evolution,” I tell Joel. “The fundamentals didn’t change. Your campaigns worked. Only the platform changed. So you need to be innovative and adaptable there. But you don’t need to do something very different.”
Joel agrees: “You don’t need to throw everything out. That’s when AI implementation costs hundreds of thousands and has no ROI within six weeks.”
Twenty years ago, a CEO didn’t need to know how to build a website. Just: we need one, it needs to do X, Y, Z. Same with AI today.
“Most things will be automated in two to three years,” I explain. “You don’t need to understand the nitty-gritty. Just be able to work with it.”
Joel sees this constantly: “It’s ‘I want AI in two weeks so I can put a sticker on my brand.’ That’s stupid.”
The smart approach? “We’re not revolutionizing everything. We’re making improvements for more knowledgeable human decisions.”
Leadership evolves from operator to system designer. “As a leader, you don’t need to understand everything,” I explain. “Create systems so everyone works at full potential. Don’t edit the email copy. Create the environment.”
“Everyone talks about BS high-level keywords,” I add. “But that doesn’t help understanding or change.”
Joel nods: “There’s nothing new. It’s just evolution.”
Start with one workflow. Where is your team reformatting the same work over and over? That’s where AI wins.
The Bottom Line
Creativity isn’t going away. Strategic thinking isn’t being automated. Brand voice still requires human judgment.
But reformatting your output for twelve platforms? That’s over.
As Joel puts it: “If you use ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini at 80-90% of their potential, you’re doing something 90% of marketers are not.”
Most marketers use these tools at 15%. They treat them like creative directors when they should treat them like production assistants.
AI isn’t here to replace your creativity. It’s here to multiply it.
Are you still trying to make it write your campaigns, or have you figured out how to scale the work you’ve already done?
Thanks, Peter!!!
If You Only Remember This:
Your team shouldn’t ask AI to be creative. They should use it to multiply the creative work they’ve already done. One blog post becomes three email versions, five social posts, a video script, and an internal brief. That’s three hours saved per piece.
The test is simple: look back six months. Are you more creative now than you were then? If the answer is less, you’re using AI wrong.
Most marketers use these tools at 5-15% of their potential. They treat AI like a creative director when they should treat it like a production assistant.
Here’s my question: where is your team reformatting the same work over and over?
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Partner and Connect
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Great breakdown. I love that you distinguish “AI as multiplier, not creator.” That aligns with what we’ve been saying in CMO Brief: AI should enhance human strategy, not replace insight. Curious where do you see the biggest gap between current practice and this “AI as collaborator” ideal?
Big fan of this six-month check. Calling AI a production assistant rather than a creative director is a helpful distinction.