As another busy working year draws to a close, it’s great to have the chance to rest and reflect before taking on the as-yet-unknown challenges of 2025.
Whether we like it or not, 2024 will be remembered as the year AI went mainstream. As the technology evolves and becomes ever more entwined with our everyday lives, it will be fascinating to look back at its infancy at the end of the first quarter of the 21st century. However, on the cusp of 2025, the one thing we can be sure of is that AI is here to stay, and its current incarnation will seem antiquated to us in just a few short years.
Learning to love change
There’s no denying that change can be scary and often our instinct is to resist it, particularly when it comes to potentially intimidating new technologies like AI, which seemed to appear out of the blue accompanied by sensational headlines about an existential threat to our jobs.
As humans, we find comfort in traditions as they offer a reassuring anchor to the familiar in an unpredictable and ever-changing world. This is particularly true at Christmas. Whether it’s decorating the tree, a visit to a pantomime, or simply watching a favourite festive film, every family has at least one tradition they look forward to indulging in at Christmas.
However, as with everything in life, the best traditions and habits evolve over time into something that makes sense for where we are right now, as well as rooting us in our past. At Christmas that can mean the next generation taking on hosting duties. At work it almost always involves embracing the good in new technology to make our lives easier and more efficient.
As for so many companies in 2024, here at Ideal Marketing, that has meant establishing how we can use AI as a tool to be more productive and efficient for our clients, rather than fearing it as something beyond our control that will end up replacing us. After all, like any tool, AI makes life easier if harnessed for our needs, but without a skilled expert at the helm, it’s as useless as a blunt knife.
Tradition with a twist
Thanks to our origins, here at Ideal Marketing, we have an affinity to anything orange, which is why one of our favourite festive traditions is the practice of including an orange in a Christmas stocking or making Christmas decorations out of clove-studded oranges to hang from the Christmas tree or to scent a drawer.
You might recognise the image on the right, but did you know that these decorative oranges are called pomanders? Originating in the Middle Ages, pomanders were once seen as an innovative means to ward off illness, a fashion accessory and a symbol of wealth and status. At a time when the concept of bacteria and viruses was not understood, masking unpleasant odours with perfume was believed to have protective powers against disease. From today’s perspective, it can be hard to believe that people once thought like this, but it’s only with the leaps in innovation that hindsight brings, that we are able to see the mistakes of the past clearly and appreciate the developments in knowledge and understanding we benefit from today.
Over the centuries, the use of pomanders evolved, with well-to-do Victorians introducing the clove-studded pomander many of us still enjoy making in 2024. But just as the wealthy of yesteryear could not conceive that their pomanders’ only benefit was to mask bad odours, few of us can imagine how AI will be integrated into our lives in ten years from now, never mind 100.
All we know is that it will continue to evolve in ways that we never thought possible and that this Christmas, many of us are lucky to be able to indulge in our own personal, long-treasured festive traditions, as well as add the latest AI-empowered gadget to our Christmas wishlists!
The human touch
When all is said and done, the best traditions never die, they adapt and evolve with the times, without losing the essence that makes them meaningful to us. So, just as an orange and clove pomander with no scent would fail to evoke the delights of Christmases past, an AI-generated piece of writing with no human input will always fail to get the spirit of the intended message across.
On that note, we would like to wish you a restful and restorative festive season and all the best for a fruitful 2025. If you would like to chat to us in the new year about how we can help you combine technology and the human touch for a successful marketing strategy, please get in touch.
