When Paul Avery took the stage at last fall’s Marketing Elements Summit, attendees got an array of examples about how AI is transforming marketing — and a hands-on roadmap for how to get started. Avery, Vice President of Marketing at Supreme Group, has spent years helping life science organizations refine their marketing strategies — and he believes AI is poised to reshape the field faster than many anticipate.

“AI is so many different things to so many different people,” Avery said in a recent follow-up interview, “and it’s a very, very fast-moving technology, but it’s also a general-purpose technology. The best way to get used to using it is to start playing with it.”

Below, we share Avery’s biggest takeaways about the nuances of generative tools, AI “agents,” and more. The upshot? Marketers who embrace the technology (cautiously, ethically and creatively) stand to gain — and those who refuse may risk falling behind.

Why AI Is Making a Splash in Life Science Marketing

Numerous studies have shown that AI technology leads to higher productivity — while improving the quality of the work. For life science marketers who produce a lot of content but struggle with limited resources, implementing AI into their existing processes could be transformational. 

A recent study from C&EN BrandLab found that chemists consume a lot of content, and they gravitate to content that helps them stay up to date — two of the reasons marketers may feel pressure to keep up. As chemists dedicate significant time to reading and watching content related to their work or research, marketers can meet that demand by leveraging AI to take some of the production burden off their teams. 

If this sounds like something you or your team could benefit from, the first thing to do is to try it out, according to Avery. Many of the tools are free and will give you a better sense of what’s possible for your specific needs. 

The Bottlenecks AI Already Solves

Avery pointed to content creation and administrative tasks like transcribing interviews or generating call summaries as common use cases for AI currently. He also sees early promise in image generation for concepting campaigns — though final design typically needs a human touch.

“One of the things we really love to do is come up with initial creative campaign concepts and ideas and share them with clients as AI-generated images from a tool like Midjourney,” Avery said. “But when the time comes for really bringing that campaign to life, you have to get professional designers involved to get a high-quality final asset that really meets the brief.”

Agents and Deep Research: The Next Big Thing

While ChatGPT and image generators often hog the spotlight, Avery believes the near-future belongs to “AI agents” — tools that don’t just generate text but autonomously execute tasks across multiple platforms. For instance, a HubSpot “agent” could write a blog post, upload it into the CMS, format it, add images and email you when ready.

“Anybody who’s tried to create a long-form piece of content with ChatGPT knows you can’t really get 5,000 quality words out of it in one go,” he explained, “so there’s lots of manual back and forth. Agents go way beyond that.”

He also highlighted the recent release of “deep research” features within existing tools like Google Gemini. ChatGPT, or Perplexity, which can scour hundreds of websites, compile data and provide citations — potentially revolutionizing market research, competitor analyses, and more.

Dealing With AI’s Impact on Jobs and Creativity

With AI agents able to complete multiple tasks, we asked Avery: Will marketers lose their roles? He believes the shift is more about freeing humans to focus on being creative — and, well, human. 

“I don’t enjoy building a blog in HubSpot and troubleshooting formatting issues,” he said. “That doesn’t feel like a great use of human ingenuity to me.”

Instead he suggests that human marketers lean into areas like having more customer conversations and telling their stories in their content marketing efforts. AI tools can brainstorm or handle first drafts, but they can’t capture the authentic motivations behind a scientist’s latest discovery. And, of course, marketers should be experimenting with AI tools often to be conversant in their capabilities. 

“While it’s almost a cliche at this point, I don’t believe that AI will replace life science marketers, but I do believe that marketers that use AI will replace those that don’t,” Avery said. 

The Trust Factor: Hallucinations and Authenticity

Will audiences lose trust upon learning AI was involved? The same C&EN BrandLab study suggests chemists don’t use the technology much and have concerns about the ethics and legality of it. But Avery believes if the content itself is accurate and edited by a human then we might not be able to tell the difference anyway. 

“Several studies suggest that humans cannot reliably tell the difference between AI-generated content and human content, when done well” he said. 

On the front-end, he emphasizes using unique data or expert opinions that generic AI tools can’t simply produce on their own to strengthen the authenticity of your content. On the back-end, a rigorous fact-checking and editing process must be implemented. 

AI and Storytelling: “Scientists Are Humans, Too”

Avery is adamant that real storytelling still depends on human empathy. AI can brainstorm but struggles to capture key factors such as emotional motivators behind research — the elements of storytelling that are most memorable and resonant. 

“Scientists are humans, too,” he said. “I worry that AI will stop us investing time and effort where we should because ultimately those stories are about the humans.”

He cautioned that easy access to AI might tempt marketers to churn out shallow content, but those who invest in authentic narratives will stand out in a data-saturated space.

The Bottom Line: Use AI — But Keep Your Humanity

Throughout our discussion, Avery repeated a core insight: Adopt AI to eliminate drudgery and accelerate creativity, but don’t forget the human element — especially in a field like life sciences, in which trust, credibility and empathy matter deeply.

Whether you’re using ChatGPT to create article drafts, prompting for imagery to paint the vision for a campaign or deploying agents for multistep tasks, the best outcomes come from AI augmenting — not replacing — human expertise.

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