OnePlus' Head of Digital Marketing on the Best AI tools for Digital Marketing, Insights for Senior Leaders and More

OnePlus' Head of Digital Marketing Chris de Boer shares advice on senior marketing leaders on how to use AI, his favorite AI tools for digital marketing and more in his interview with The Multiverse AI

Name: Chris de Boer

• Location: Shenzhen, China 
• Job: Head of Digital Marketing @ OnePlus 
• Mobile device: OnePlus Open
• Computer: HP Envy 14
• One word that best describes how you work: Brainstorm

Essentials

• What apps, gadgets, or tools can’t you live without? Asana, Obsidian, Feedly, Google things, mechanical keyboard
• What’s your workspace setup like? Organized chaos (but mostly just chaos), big bag of coffee beans, standing desk and posture correcting office chair
• What’s your best shortcut, life hack or productivity hack?
  - Complete a typing speed test right before drafting a document, so my fingers are already in a writing flow.
  - Lofi playlists work
  - Speech to text first drafts (I don't do this enough) 
  - Wim Hof breathing when dealing with stressful situations 
• What AI tools do you use? 
  - Midjourney. My personal favorite remains Midjourney, purely because Midjourney remains able to artistically surprise me with unique and unexpected results based on my prompts. GPT 4 has certainly caught up to Midjourney in terms of accuracy, but the creative madness and genius that comes out of Midjourney at times remains riveting.
  - The Multiverse AI. I've been very impressed with the Multiverse AI's realism and use their AI-generated headshot of me for work.
  - Microsoft Co-Pilot. I'm very early in my journey with Microsoft Co-Pilot, but already it feels like it'll improve work efficiency by leaps and bounds by directly integrating with the software I'm most familiar and comfortable with.
  - Fables. I've also gotten a good chuckle out of and definitely see the potential of https://www.fables.gg/ for people who don't have Dungeon Masters for their own Dungeons and Dragons adventures. 

Fire-side chat: how is OnePlus using AI, advise for senior marketing leaders and why humans are irreplaceable

How do you envision AI shaping your industry's future?
The only way to go is up! All of my tools are becoming AI powered, whether we're talking about my favorite social media management tools like Emplifi or the aforementioned Asana. Even Duolingo's new AI functionalities meaningfully enhance the language learning experience.

I would advise senior marketing leaders against expecting an AI tool to replace their social media managers though, at least for now. No tool has been able to deliver meme-worthy captions quite like a human being steeped in the dankest pits of Reddit.

At OnePlus, AI is already allowing us to dynamically create and adapt banner ads for different markets in different languages and around different offers, while requiring half the manpower it used to, automate post scheduling and publishing in a big way, removing a major headache, and proving a great brainstorming partner for campaign ideas, allowing me to get my creative juices flowing faster. 

What do you wish more people knew about your job or industry? 
Social media did not create your problems, and social media alone can't make them go away. Social Media very much serves the purpose of a window, offering you a uniquely transparent look at how your most passionate and outspoken consumers feel about your products or services.

First things first, people who are generally satisfied with what you're doing don't comment - they'll like a post, if anything at all - the people who comment are either your most vocal adherents or most outraged opponents. So, don't misinterpret hysteria in the comments as a reflection of the general sentiment around your product.

Secondly, it's easy to feel like the responses you're getting on social media were caused by your actions on social media. It's important to look past that, negativity in the comments is much more likely caused by a concern rooted elsewhere (a prevalent software bug, a product leak, a hardware issue). So, this also means social media can't solve the problem, at least not all of it.

You can use social media to acknowledge and even assuage the concerns of some of your consumers. But at the end of the day social media is a window offering you unique insight into how your consumers feel, where you change those feelings happens elsewhere - in my experience, the solutions are most often found in Customer Service and Product Development. 

How do you keep track of what you have to do? 
Asana. I maintain both group projects on Asana to help me stay on top of what larger project teams are working on, as well as private projects assigned exclusively to myself that I use to hold myself accountable. It's all Asana though. 

What are you currently reading or listening to, or what do you recommend? 
It's been a while since I last had time to properly read (huge shame on me), but I've recently rediscovered my Adweek subscription so that's been a nice way to stay closer to the advertising world. 

In terms of podcasts, I always recommend listening to Colin and Samir to anyone even remotely interested in the Creator Economy and MKBHD's Waveform for all things tech.

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