“Insight Over Technology”

 Pallet CEO Jongkeun Lee Discusses Survival Strategies in the Era of AI Marketing

Korea University Startup Institute operates the Entrepreneurship Academy Lecture on Demand to help students develop practical competencies that can be applied in the startup field. The program invites industry professionals to deliver a lecture series centered on the year’s most important business and technology issues. This year, the series is being offered as a continuing program centered on AI.

As the third session of the series, a special lecture on AI-based marketing was held on Tuesday, May 12, in Rooms B307 and B308 of Hyundai Motor Hall. The lecture featured Jongkeun Lee, CEO of Pallet, a global AI advertising agency that won the HankookIlbo Digital Innovation Award in the generative AI advertising video production category. Lee delivered a lecture focused on practical insights from the field under the theme “Marketing Strategies in the Era of AI Marketing.”

A graduate of Korea University’s Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Lee previously led global B2B marketing and new business development at global companies. He is also an entrepreneur and hands-on expert who co-founded Wishary, an India-based O2O and content platform, and led it through a successful M&A deal. Now leading Pallet, an AI advertising company, Lee drew on his unique career spanning global corporations and startups to present the core competencies marketers need in the AI era.

In his lecture, Lee defined communication as the foundation of marketing and emphasized that the essence of marketing lies in the ability to extract the core message to be delivered to customers. This point was vividly demonstrated through advertising cases for brands such as the National Credit Union Federation of Korea, Spyder, and Kyungdong Navien, all produced by Pallet using only AI, drawing admiration from students. In particular, Lee stressed that the key is not simply to produce content faster and at lower cost through AI, but to create differentiated messages and value.
 

Another key focus of the lecture was the collapse of traditional job boundaries caused by the adoption of AI, and the conditions for survival within that shift. Lee noted that the boundaries among copywriters, art directors, and producers are breaking down, giving rise to an era in which individuals can use AI to become all-rounders capable of overseeing entire campaigns. “Even without hands-on technical skills, anyone with an eye for insight can create outstanding work,” he said. He emphasized that marketers must now become “communicators” with insight, rather than mere technicians. He also predicted that the ability to give clear instructions to AI and refine its output with precision will become a core competency in the future.

Toward the end of the lecture, Lee introduced the slogan “AI empowers Human Intelligence,” encouraging students to continuously experiment with AI, as it is not a threat that replaces humans but the most powerful tool for expanding human intelligence.
Taeyoon Kim, a Business Administration student from the Class of 2021 who attended the lecture, expressed strong satisfaction with the session. “Even though new AI technologies continue to emerge, it has been difficult for students to understand how they are actually being used in the field,” he said. “Through this lecture, I was able to see how AI is being used in real marketing practice and think about how I could apply it myself.”
 

The third session of the Entrepreneurship Academy Lecture on Demand provided an opportunity to examine how AI is being used in actual marketing practice and to explore marketing strategies for the AI era. Korea University Startup Institute plans to continue expanding practice-oriented entrepreneurship education programs that utilize AI.
 

KUBS Student Press
Reporting by Yeontae Kim
Photography by Woojin Shin