While other brands were racing to automate every email subject line, blog post, and social media caption during the height of the generative AI boom, Unilever, Vaseline’s parent company, took a different approach.

Instead of using AI to accelerate the launch of new products, Unilever used it to listen to consumers, which led to an unexpected discovery that their base didn’t need a new product. Instead, they needed validation, and sometimes correction, on how they were using old products. 

These insights led to the “Vaseline Verified” campaign, an initiative that deferred a costly R&D rollout in favor of celebrating consumer “hacks.” The campaign went on to win 11 Cannes Lions awards, including the Titanium Grand Prix.

This story, shared by Heather Bollinger, the chief revenue officer at Vurvey Labs, set the tone for a panel discussion focused on AI’s optimal role in marketing at From Day One’s Silicon Valley marketing conference. 

The conversation, moderated by Rosalie Chan, a senior tech editor at Business Insider, made one point clear: the most effective AI strategies focus on reimagining workflows and breaking down silos between data, compliance, and content—not replacing humans.

The Augmentation Mindset

The panelists drew a sharp distinction between using AI to scale processes and using it to improve human capability. James Kessinger, the group VP of marketing at SolarWinds, says his team leverages AI agents for heavy data lifting, scraping funnel metrics from initial click to closed revenue, but remains cautious about removing the human touch in communications aimed at technical buyers.

“You’ve got to humanize that, at least in our world, talking to engineers,” Kessinger said. “You’ve got to be able to give them relevance of somebody who’s actually doing this job. It’s hard sometimes for AI to capture that essence.” 

AI serves as an editor for brand voice and trademark compliance at SolarWinds, freeing content marketers from tasks such as proofreading so they can focus on more important aspects of content, such as fluency and tone.

Henrique Loyola, head of content & discovery for Play Games Go-To-Market, Google, echoed the theme of augmentation, describing AI as an enhancer. “If a task would take you a few hours to do, we think AI can have it done in a few minutes,” Loyola said. He highlights the use of AI to tag game metadata not just by genre, like “action” or “RPG,” but by emotional and behavioral traits like “engaging” or “long play session,” allowing Gemini to organize the Play Store in ways human curators never could, given how time-consuming it would be. 

Redefining Compliance and Generative SEO

The conversation shifted to a growing tension in the marketing industry: the rise of “no AI” disclaimers in consumer advertising versus the wholesale adoption of AI in B2B content creation. 

Kumar Rathnam, the SVP and head of global products, digital, sales & marketing solutions, at Dun & Bradstreet, says his employer has a pragmatic approach to AI adoption. “In B2B marketing, anything that is not human, we are absolutely fine,” Rathnam said, adding that the company draws the line only at synthetic human imagery and video. “The disclaimer doesn’t have to be there, as long as there are no humans involved.”

However, the influx of AI-generated content is forcing a complete overhaul of how marketers approach search engine optimization (SEO). Rathnam described a shift from keyword stuffing practices to a “question and answer” architecture that’s designed specifically for AI crawlers and chatbots. “Agents are looking for people to answer questions fast,” he said. This means prioritizing FAQ structures and comparative content that allows large language models to easily cite and synthesize a brand’s authority.

Kessinger says the way AI algorithms approach source citations is now evolving. While Reddit once dominated AI summaries, platforms like G2 are gaining ground because they offer verified, bounded audiences. “They get a higher citation because it’s a bound audience. We know who they are,” Kessinger added.

Vibe Coding for Marketers

A surprising trend emerged when the panel addressed the democratization of software development. The panelists admitted to embracing “vibe coding,” the practice of using natural language prompts to spin up quick, disposable software tools, to solve marketing bottlenecks.

Loyola described using vibe-coded solutions for short-term curation problems, such as suppressing game titles related to sensitive global events. “It’s easier to get to a product team with a new feature you need if you have something ready,” Loyola said. “You can just bring them a product instead of 15 pages of technical requests.” 

Rathnam notes a similar phenomenon, where marketing operations teams build their own agents to analyze campaign data in real-time, bypassing lengthy customer relationship management change processes to prove a concept before scaling it.

Yet, with this new power comes a warning about AI’s tendency to please its user. “AI has a bias towards completing the task as quickly as possible. It wants you to say, ‘Great, thank you,’” Loyola said. “It may start to hallucinate or lie just to get it across the finish line. You have to trust it, but you have to check.”

The Human at the Core

The panel’s advice for marketing leaders is to prioritize data integrity and human judgment over loyalty to any platform. 

Rathnam urges to avoid locking into monolithic “end-to-end” AI platforms that may be obsolete within a year. Instead, he advises focusing on the underlying data pipeline and feedback loops. “Get your data story right,” he said. “Anything you do around data, the accuracy, the coverage, the completeness, is going to help anything that changes in the future.”

For Bollinger, the Vaseline story serves as a perfect metaphor for the current moment. Artificial intelligence is powerful enough to simulate human behavior, but its greatest ROI comes from understanding actual humans. “Don’t be afraid,” Bollinger said. “Dive in. There are so many opportunities to augment your teams, but the human has to be at the core of that.”

Ade Akin covers artificial intelligence, workplace wellness, HR trends, and digital health solutions.

(Photos by Josh Larson for From Day One)