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As the creative director at Outright, a full-service creative agency dedicated to turning heads for modern brands, Kate Gazzillo’s expertise includes using AI creatively, often representing her agency in panels, keynote addresses, and other speaking engagements.
After seeing her speaker’s bio for an online marketing conference prior to the spring semester, Jiyeon Hong, an assistant professor of marketing at the Costello College of Business at George Mason University, reached out to Outright to invite Gazzillo to present to her MKTG 315 Digital Marketing class.
Hong’s course prepares students to be ahead of the curve in the digital marketing sphere, instructing them on the various tools available—many of which are new and emerging like AI. In addition to learning how to leverage AI, she emphasizes its ethical uses, especially regarding generative AI. “Given how rapidly the digital marketing field is evolving, I believe it’s particularly invaluable to create opportunities for students to hear directly from practitioners in class,” said Hong. “As generative AI becomes increasingly integrated into real-world marketing applications, ranging from content creation to design workflows, I knew Kate Gazzillo would be the perfect guest speaker for my course this semester.”
Drawing upon her experience of working hands-on with a wide range of clients who have different visions and approaches, Gazzillo shared her perspective with the Costello students in a presentation that opened their minds and prompted many additional questions. “I wanted to go against the grain of the misconceptions of AI for creatives and do a little bit more of an illuminating lens,” she said. “And our lens as an agency whenever I talk about it is that AI is the paintbrush, not the masterpiece.”
Recognizing that many aspiring marketers feel anxiety about the potential for AI to replace human creatives, she showed them how AI can be used in many ways—big and small. The mocks in her presentation showed how beautiful AI can truly be. One example—before and after of a headshot—showed how AI can respectfully change attire to match the needs of different global audiences without a reshoot needed. “I really ended on generative art specifically because that’s the thing everybody talks about,” she said. She presented several mocks that captured how AI’s algorithm generates completely new patterns, shapes, and designs based on input from the user.
Throughout her presentation, Gazzillo displayed many of the other functions, showing the differences that AI makes in the finished design. She also shared feedback from other marketing experts who regularly work with AI. Her objective was to leave the students ready to embrace the tool as well as provide them with some of the questions they should be asking themselves and others when starting a project utilizing AI. They learned that prompting is an art and that tools like ChatGPT or MidJourney don’t automatically provide perfect results. It takes patience and creativity.
With both the Costello College of Business and George Mason University having undergone rebranding the past few years, Hong found it critical and timely to include rebranding strategy in the course—another area of expertise for Gazzillo, who presented on the topic to the class the week after covering AI. “For that one in particular, I had a deep dive case study of like, I'm going to walk you guys through two years of a real project that was still happening in addition to all these other projects,” she said. The project she showed them was done for a real client and did not utilize AI, juxtaposing different ways to carry out different projects and showing how the vision of the client shapes the approach.
For many in the classroom harboring fears or concerns around AI, Gazzillo put them at ease and inspired possibilities. “Although numerous individuals fear that AI could endanger employment, she presented a more hopeful and measured perspective,” said Hyunsik Yoon, a senior studying marketing. “Rather than taking over jobs, she clarified how AI is truly improving their performance… It truly opened my eyes to what can be achieved when we merge creativity with technology.”
“I’m grateful to Kate for being so open-minded and generous in sharing her expertise and experience with the students,” said Hong. “I look forward to continuing to bring in experts who can offer our students firsthand insights from the field, better preparing them with the real-world lessons that go beyond the classroom.