Be the Easiest Company to Buy From
William Tyree, CMO at IntelligenceBank and Co-Host of the Brand Intelligence Podcast, shares about becoming the easiest company to buy from.
[MUSIC]
Welcome to Pipeline Visionaries.
I'm Ian Faison, CEO of Caspian Studios.
And today, I am joined by a recurring, very special guest,
William, how are you?
>> I'm great.
How are you, Lee?
>> It's great to have you back on the show.
And what an absence it has been.
I mean, I feel like we've done 100 episodes since you last came on the show.
I don't know if that's true, but it feels that way.
>> You've been prolific.
You're everywhere.
And I will say too that I'm thrilled because you are one of five marketing
podcasts that I listen to on the regular.
So, and I mean that.
I especially love the compilations of uncuttable budget items.
So I never miss those for sure.
So I really thrilled to be back.
Thank you.
>> Me too.
Well, it throws that to you back, but I also love the compilations of the uncut
table
budget items, which are listeners, if you haven't listened to one of those.
I love, I do it, you know, it's budget season right now.
It's always budget season, but it's especially budget season right now.
And I love just going back and checking out what other CMOs are doing with
their
dollars.
It's like why we made this show?
And I find it super helpful.
So I'm glad to hear that.
Today's show is brought to you, as always, by our friends at Qualified, you can
go to
Qualified.com to learn more.
Qualified is the number one conversational sales marketing platform for
companies, revenues, teams that use Salesforce, head over to Qualified.com to
learn more.
William, you know all about Qualified.
I don't need to tell you.
>> I do.
I do.
Not only am I two time guests on your show, two time qualified customer.
So I'm sure we'll get into that as we go.
>> Well, you know, there you go.
What an organic plug.
So we've already had you on the show, William, so we know all about your
background.
But what we don't know is the company that you are CMO of now, Intelligence
Bank,
tell us a little bit about it.
>> Yeah, sure.
We are a company that helps marketing teams get content out the door faster,
brand and legal approved, and what does that mean?
You know, we're in an era right now where marketing teams are for,
especially a lot of B2B marketing teams.
They're not growing super fast.
You know, we're all under pressure to either be profitable,
revenue neutral, or to be as productive as possible.
So it's really hard for your team to put out the content that they need to.
When they're working across five or six different solutions.
And essentially, Intelligence Bank has one scaled solution for
great workflow approvals, things like
transcript, automated transcripting, closed captions for media, all that stuff.
So it's a bunch of workflow approval all in one place that makes it
easy to share with your team and your partners.
>> And you stepped into this role as CMO.
What was it like coming into the job, you know, and hitting the ground running?
>> Really great.
I mean, for one thing, I've been in the world of selling mostly to sellers for
a long time, selling to sales teams, rev up teams, and occasionally cross over
people.
But it's really awesome actually, you know, selling to marketing teams.
Because I think part of B2B marketing is really leaning into, you know,
the buyer pain and their struggles.
And I felt all the pain.
So for me, it was a thrill just to be able to say, okay,
like I understand our target audience.
I understand what they're going through, especially at this moment in time.
And the ability to be kind of authentic and saying, hey, you know,
they actually got some soles for you.
And I think the other thing is we have an incredible CEO who herself is a
former
CMO.
So she completely gets it.
And you know, she's just an incredible founder.
And I love working with somebody who's, who loves marketing and is easily the
most responsive person I know in my entire life.
So that's incredible.
Let's get to our first segment, the Trestree where we go to be honest,
interested in you, share those deepest, darkest pipeline secrets.
Tell us a little bit more about intelligence banks, customers.
We've got about 800,000 customers will live or end users.
And it's everybody from brands that you know, like Hyatt Hurts,
Australian Grand Prix, KFC, Charles Jr., to a lot of brands that you might not
know.
Increasingly, we are in highly regulated industries like banking,
healthcare, insurance.
And the reason for that is because all those industries are under a lot of
pressure right now.
I think most marketers in the world, they're worried about some kind of market
dynamic upsetting their, their budget or their financial model for the year.
But in those industries, you also have to worry about somebody like the SEC or
the Department of Education or somebody like that hitting you with like a
massive,
you know, regulatory fine that's like tens of millions, hundreds of millions of
dollars.
So helping those customers actually stay in regulatory compliance and
brand compliances is something that we're increasingly invested in.
And tell me a little bit more about that buying committee and the types of
personas that you're selling to.
Yeah, sure. So like really interesting people.
So, you know, marketing leaders, brand leaders, as of digital,
those are kind of the obvious ones. But it's interesting depending on where it
is
in the world, we also see people in communications.
So for example, in a lot of government, you know, worldwide,
it's actually the heads of communications that are that are in charge of
maintaining
brand governance, right? So those folks are in on it.
There's actually something, a role that I didn't know about previously called
the
digital asset administrator or digital asset management administrator.
So those are typically there. And then I think one thing that's trending is
especially at the enterprise level in mid-market,
we're seeing more and more involvement by IT. I think for years,
marketers pretty much, you know, manage their own software lines.
And that's still largely true, but increasingly there's more oversight by IT
as they're trying to, you know, make sure that we have a cohesive stack that
all works together.
I want to zoom in on the brand persona really quick because it's something that
we actually
talk about a lot on my other show, "Rarkable," and it's something that we
talked about
on your show, "Brand Intelligence," where I came on your podcast a little bit
ago.
And this like head of brand, VP of brand, SVP of brand content and
comms, SVP of brand community and events. It feels like every single company
has a different flavor
of what is brand, what is under the purview of brand, and what type of person
that, you know,
that is. And then like, you have sort of the non-marketers who are like, "Does
brand matter?
And should they even have a budget?" And all that other stuff. But like,
what are your thoughts about this SVP of brand VP of brand type role?
And what the heck falls under them? Because it seems like definitely content is
an increasing
part of that. But also just kind of everything kind of catch all.
Yeah, it's really interesting. I feel like for a while, it was kind of like
product marketing,
where you interview a hundred product marketers and you get maybe like 90
different job descriptions
in terms of what you hear, what they really do. I felt like that for brand for
a while. But I feel
like that role is increasingly more unified. And here's where I think it's
really important,
is especially for bigger companies who work with a lot of partners. You played
a lot of
different ecosystems around the world. They're in charge of things that affect
not only
the spirit of the brand, the compliance of the brand, in terms of all the
almost tangible things
like colors and look and make sure the most recent assets are being used and
things like that.
Which is really hard. Like we talked about Formula One, Australian Grand Prix.
Imagine if
you're a head of brand for Formula One. Trying to make sure in all those
countries around the world
that they are using the right assets, the right images of the drivers, the
approved videos and
things like that. Because you've got sponsors on all those cars. That, I guess,
gives you like a
hint of just the complexity for it. But I also think then, though, that it's
multiplied, though,
when you have not only people who are working in your organization, but also
outside.
And just it's like if you don't have somebody strong managing it and playing
offense and saying like, "Hey, here's everything who's approved." Things like
talent rights management.
Right? So for example, you contract a certain actor, for example, or a set of
images or videos
that are only good for a certain time. If you don't have somebody in charge of
making sure
that those are pulled back before the contract's over, before it's switched or
something like that,
you can end up with a lot of headaches on your hands. So those are just some of
the reasons why
I feel like it's a super important role. And I think it's getting, as things
like talent rights
get more complex over time, I think we're going to see just a huge growth in
that role, actually.
Yeah. I mean, it's just so interesting that y'all are marketing operations tool
that brand people have to pay attention to. We're not just marketing operations
. But
this idea of a brand, a tool that helps your brand stay the same everywhere,
is now an increasingly, you know, technology software is eating the world. And
like,
of course, you have to think about that stuff. And like these bigger brands
where you're
B2C or Grand Prix or something like that, from the one where you are everywhere
. You're in person,
you're digital, you're like everything in between the complexity is endless.
And it's just,
it's crazy to think that a brand person would be doing that and running your
event series.
And you know, like managing your user conference and managing your portfolio of
serialized content and shows. And it's just a crazy remit.
Yeah, it's a big job. And depending on the complexity of business, a lot of
them will have
considerable staff reporting them. And I think the way that we're going to see
that evolve over time
is, is I believe just kind of more authority going over there, especially as
the regulatory
environment worldwide is only going to get more complex. You know, I mean, just
think about some
of the stuff that's been trotted out just the last year about AI regulations
alone. And that's,
that's not even touching things like false advertising. Right. Now, how do you
think about your marketing
strategy? You know, you've been a CMO a few times at this point. It's not your
first rodeo. What's
your marketing strategy? How do you think about building pipeline? Yeah, you
know, it's like every
ecosystem, every company is different. But for me, I try to simplify it down
for the team,
kind of into three areas. It's demand capture, demand creation, demand
conversion. And no
matter what your role is on the team, whether you're in product marketing or
marketing operations,
it's like it, whenever something comes your way, or you have an idea, you bring
an idea,
everything has to fit somehow toward either capturing demand that exists in the
market,
which is really important right now, which is tapping into people who already
have budget
and are in an act and buying cycle, and just trying to be as helpful as
possible and lead them to,
you know, a sales conversation or purchase, demand creation, which is obviously
, you know,
telling people that there's a solution to their problem that they didn't know
exists,
and helping them understand how they can help. And then I think the big one
really now for
companies is just converting the demand that you have, right? And I say
especially right now,
just because anytime you've got choppy economic waters, which, you know, even
look at the headlines
today, you're going to see 60% of them say that, you know, the economy is in
good shape, and then
40% are saying recession here is again. Anytime there's things like that, you
want to make sure
that you're looking at your existing customer base as well and saying, are
there additional
ways that we can help them that they don't know about? So can we grow with our
existing customers?
So everything is framed through kind of that lens, and then there's myriad, you
know, tactics
that lead up to those things. Yeah, and how do you structure your team to fit
that strategy?
Essentially, I do believe in what we do for sure. There's a strong focus on
product marketing.
And when I say product marketing, I kind of, I use that term because it's one
we're all kind of
familiar with, but it's really about, it's really the opposite of that. It's
leaning into higher
problems and pain, and making sure you lead with that so that you're just kind
of not out there in
the marketplace, just telling people about all the great product you have as a
lead-in, right?
It has to be relevant. It has to be tied to something. So our job is, is in
ways, even though we have
somebody dedicated to the role, I feel like in ways we have to completely, you
know, lean in and
empathize with those buyers, and then map those things to solutions. So I think
for me,
we've got people on the team who are completely devoted to engaging with those
buyers who already
know they have an issue. They're already in market. And then we've got, we've
got other efforts that
are solely devoted to just like trying to explain how we help, essentially. We
get into a lot of
detail about the other tactics, and then I'm sure we will, but I try to make it
as simple as for
folks on the team as possible, so that like all their KPIs, they could look at
them and they're like,
"Oh, I get which one of those three this one goes up to," right? All right, let
's get to those tactics.
In the playbook, our next segment where you open up playbook and talk about the
tactics that help
you win. What are your three channels or tactics that are your most uncutable
bunch of items?
I think that for us, I mean, we could talk a lot about, you know, individual
like programmatic
ad strategies and things like that, but I feel like rising above that one level
is kind of where
where we need to be, at least as a company and where I think a lot of marketers
should be. And
that is that buying committees are getting bigger, right? They have, and if you
're a buyer right now,
it's really hard because even like a small purchase, like a $10,000 purchase is
going to be
under scrutiny from your CFO right now. And so you probably felt that. I bet
like in some of your
sales, right? Oh, for sure. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Both sides we feel it as a buyer
and definitely as a seller.
Yeah, totally. So, so my goal is to make Intelligence Bank the easiest company
in our space to actually
buy from. And because buyers have a hard job, it's really hard to lasso all
those different people
on your buying committee and get them to agree on you as a vendor. So to be the
easiest company to
buy from in our space, we have to assume that buyers are going to conduct at
least three quarters
of their research before they even talk to a seller. And so that for that
reason, I think my three
things are on-demand product tours. Absolutely. We create a ton of them. And
sometimes they're even
pretty detailed. So for example, let's say that your brand that that has a huge
Shopify component,
like you just have a lot of stuff that you sell right there in the consumer
space,
we're going to offer you a product tour where you can get in and really
succinctly take a
self-guided tour through the Shopify integration. So everything from like each
product at a high
level to the actual integrations, we would just want to make it really easy for
buyers to get in
and see that. So for number one, that's my least credible. And I never would
have said that two
or three years ago. Yeah. I think the second thing for me is the product-led
growth component.
So being able to offer a free trial to your buyers where they can get in and
get a taste and
try it and take it for a test drive, just like car buyers have been doing for
like 100 years.
It's kind of crazy that it's taken, I think B2B so long to catch up to that.
But those are my top
two for sure. And then I think the last thing and this kind of alludes to
something we talked
about earlier, which is enabling your business to run in real time. So I feel
really, really
strongly that for most businesses, most businesses need to come to grips, come
to grips with the fact
that buyers don't want an SDR gatekeeper at this point. SDRs can still do so
much great work. But when
it comes to booking meetings, the ability to let buyers just book a 15-minute
discovery call or a
longer demo call at a time that's good for them in real time on the website is
really, really important.
So that combined with the ability to also say, I want to chat with a rep right
now. So it's really
running your business in real time. And we mentioned when your sponsors
qualified for this. And
they're really great at that. So those are my three really. And it's all seen
through the
lens of the buyer. Just make it easy for them and be transparent. I couldn't
agree more. And I just
like, I fundamentally, for me as an executive, buying stuff with no time and
trying to make
decisions that are hard in such a short amount of time. It's like the old adage
of like,
your customer thinks about you five minutes a year. It's like so true, right?
Or at least like
the buyer who's making the sign in the check. Yeah. You know, the end user
probably thinks about
you every day or every minute and then talking to someone who actually can make
decisions. I mean,
what was the last time in your entire life you wanted to talk to anyone who
doesn't have decision
making power on the thing that you are trying to make a decision on? Like,
would you ever get into
like, like, you're with the car analogy? Like, would you ever get into a test
drive
and go through all that stuff with someone? And then when they're like, let me
walk you back to
the office and like, let's let's let's drop the paperwork. And you talk to the
person, they're like,
can you give me a discount on the on the windshield wipers? Like, oh, no, I don
't have power to do
any of this stuff. I'm just I'm just here. You know, like, what would you be
like, what? What
are we doing here? Make let me talk to the person who can actually do that
stuff.
It makes absolutely no sense. I think it's just a huge waste of time, effort,
and energy, like,
yeah, I couldn't agree more. And there's no bigger insult to somebody, right,
than to waste their time.
And and I also think, look, everybody wants to be like a Tesla Cybertruck,
where you in a perfect
world where where the the offer and the promise of the product is so appealing
that that that you
will, you know, you'll you'll just like put money down and you'll deal with all
the gatekeepers and
things like that. But it's rare, right? Look, you know, even wineries learned a
long time ago that
you have to have tasting rooms. If you want to like elevate people from the
stuff in the grocery
store to the good stuff. So I just like for me, it's just it's got to be all
about the buyer right
now. And then as a marketer, then it's about bringing the sales team, you know,
people who
who have already done the research, if possible. And and and then you can live
the dream together,
hopefully. Yeah, I mean, that's the that's the other piece of this, which is
there's so much
information available on the internet that it's like, if you have a really good
SDR,
who can come into that meeting and say like, hey, based off of all the research
we did online on
this, this, this, and this, or even better, you know, if they come to their
website and you start
talking to them right there, that's like, hey, I can get you here's the
calendar for our sales rep,
like I can get you talking to someone either right this second or very soon.
But hey, just based off
of the stuff that I know about y'all, it seems like and like, hey, you've also
watched, you know,
three videos on our website, you've listened to our podcast handful times, like
you've done XYZ,
it seems like you sort of know what you're doing. Do you or do you just want to
talk to someone about
like, what is even possible here? Like, those are the sort of things that I
think like,
there's ways to add value in the process. But at the end of the day, if you're
the person who's
just spamming the zero button, like talk to operator, talk to operator, talk to
operator,
it's like, just let that person talk to someone, you know what I mean? Or tell
them like, hey,
I don't think we're fit for you if you know that they're not qualified. That's
right. That's right.
Yeah, agree. So I'm curious, sort of how do you operationalize some of that
stuff? And then how
does your paid marketing, your content, your other things that you didn't
discuss in those three?
How does it fit into that? Do you market your buying experience? Like, how do
you let your
customers and prospects know that you're trying to make it easier for them? So
for example, when
we're running our ABM and all band ads, we've actually started putting product
tour like on some of
the ads to make them know that they can actually go to the website, do self-
guided as opposed to
having to go through a gatekeeper, things like that. I think part of it's like
little ways, and then
we're about to roll a bunch of changes live in the next few weeks where it's
going to be
much more self-guided actually in general. So I think making it kind of glaring
obvious is
important. Even demand capture, so something like paid search, most of those
people hopefully
that are aware of say your category name. For us, digital asset management is
one of the big
categories we play in. Some people always like brand management software,
things like that.
Letting people know in your ad that's a free trial, there's a free trial, or
there's a product
tour. Just being consistent with that messaging across the board and putting,
you're basically
putting out a light and saying that we're buyer friendly. And then I think a
lot of the other
things are, it's about context. There was a book that came out five years ago
or so called
context marketing. And it really started changing the way that I was thinking
about the way even
like real time works on a website. And so we actually take the time now. We
look at like every
single significant content page that a buyer might arrive at or whatever. And
when they show up
there, we're asking them a relevant question. Like for example, one of the
things we offer is
like for these highly regulated industries is a disclaimer engine. When they
arrive at that page,
we'll have a bot that comes up and says, "Hey, are you struggling with this or
this?" And try to
engage them there. And so it's really about addressing them where they are and
just trying to be helpful,
even if you're using AI, to be helpful as you offer to connect them with a
human being.
What about something that you're not going to be investing in or something that
is
a mostly cutable budget item? Yeah, it's interesting. Well, as you alluded to
before,
it's a budget season. So I think that something that's always on the border for
me, and I say this
with extreme caution, knowing that I've worked with some amazing PR firms out
in the world that
have done, that have been really amazing in the right place at the right time.
But that's always
on the bubble for me. I think for PR, there's a time and place for it. And I
think every company
needs to invest in it at some point. But for me, it's always one of those
bubble items where you
have to really look at what they're reasonably able to attain. And then whether
you need to get
the word out about it, and then if they're the right fit for the right outlets
and market.
What about that 10% experimental budget, crazy investments, type stuff, moon
shots? What are you
thinking about for moon shots? Whether or not it's going to get approved or not
? What are you
thinking of? Yeah, actually. So for us, this is a company intelligence bank
that's always done a
lot of direct sales to be general about it. But we're really actually excited
about
about partner ecosystem at this point. And we've got an amazing head of partner
as well.
And what's really cool is we're starting to see some of our partners kind of
light up and say,
hey, I think this would be a thing where it's better together. Because the
integration that
you've built is so good. And it's actually genuinely helping us, our customers
do things.
So for us, it really is its partner. So we're putting some investment into that
. And
going to really start trying to drive channel. And I think that the reason why
that is,
maybe it doesn't fit the definition of kind of a crazy moon shot. But because
partner typically
takes a while to pay off, sometimes it can kind of feel like it's that
experimental part. So it's
one of those things you don't want to invest until you actually start seeing
the building
walks momentum and then starting. And then what you want to do is really kind
of add fuel to it.
So because to do it right and to really get the channel, it takes significant
time.
Right. Yeah, it's funny. I think I totally see what you're saying where it's
experimental because
and the reason why is because you are relying on someone else. That to me is
why it's experimental
where you know just like Moore's Law, not Moore's Law, Pareto principle. You
know that the 20% of
partners are going to drive 80% of the results. So you know that that one in
five are going to be
really good and for probably like whatever. And it's just like it's like that,
right? And
and I think the reason why I think that's just like a great experimental thing
is
it's a ton of bandwidth potentially. It's a ton of like going on dates together
to see if
you need to do something and to make sure like you're like, hey, we have the
better
together narrative, but like what's our first engagement? And like I think it's
like
I get it and we do this too and everybody does this. I'm like, hey, let's go on
the first date.
Let's do a joint webinar. Let's do a joint event. Let's like co-sponsor
something and like kind of
see how it goes. And you have to go on those first few dates and then you have
to sort of like
invest from there. But it's also like, it's a pretty silly thing that you would
be like,
oh, well, we did one co-branded event with someone and like that's going to
determine whether or not
there's going to be a high ROI like crossover for this sort of thing. It's like
you have to do a
longstanding engagement or do you? What do you think of him? I completely agree
. I think the dating
analogy is actually really perfect. There's in, you know, there's all kinds of
different
partnerships, right? There's technology partnerships, technology alliances,
you know, things where you're co-selling in the best-caped scenarios, your
partners, reps,
are actually, they can retire quota from selling your product, right? I think
that's kind of like
the holy grail you want to get to. And I agree. I mean, sometimes you just know
in those few
encounters that you get that they don't get it or you don't get them, right?
And it's just not
going to be compatible or easy to win together. It's like, might even be harder
to win by doing
things together because, you know, I could give a lot of examples, but it's one
of those ones where
I think you know pretty early on and it's so dependent on the human being in
that the
human beings that are in the seats in the partner company, right? Because you
really
requires that close collaboration and their ability then to get buy-in on their
side.
Good one. We never hear that for experimentation, but I totally, that is such a
good experimentation
one. Any other thoughts on budgets or money or anything or uncuttable stuff or
where you're
making bets for next year? In the avenue of trying to be easier to buy from is
just like
getting increasingly price transparent. I see that you still go out to software
companies and
you see a lot of them that it's literally impossible. And I think it's a
mistake because what happens
then is those conversations go into dark social. They're in their professional
groups and they're
like, hey, anybody know what cast-in costs, right? And they're in there talking
and then you've
completely lost control of the narrative at that point. So for us, getting
increasingly
transparent, giving bigger and better amounts of information that buyers can
have on
like really what things cost and then what functionality you're going to get
as a result of that in the different packages is really important. And so I'm
really happy our
entire org is bought in around that. And at the enterprise level, there's
definitely
something you can price without a conversation because you can't even
anticipate what the
scalability might be sometimes or what flexibility might need to happen. So
that's I think the only
other thing that we're just really mindful of at this time. Love it. Yeah, I
mean, I think that the
whole demand creation, demand capture, the thing that I think is fascinating is
like people are
spending a lot of money on capturing demand, right? And not as much creating it
, which is sort of like
the whole, the whole, I guess, if there was a debate that you should spend more
time upstream
and be shaping those accounts while they're in this like pre buying thing that
they're going to do
on their own anyways and go ask their friends and go ask what they use and all
that stuff. So you can
get in front of them earlier than in theory, it's easier. But like when you're
budgeting, it's a
lot easier to think about like, well, what does our whole year look like? But
then once you get
later on down the road and you're in Q4 and you're like, okay, what are we
going to do to like close
stuffs like right this second? But it's like, but nine months ago, we were
saying, well, we need to
look at the year as like a year and like we're going to push everyone to buy at
the end of the
year when it's this budget cycle, because that's probably what's going to
happen. And I know like,
that's not what salespeople like to hear, but it's like, that's the reality of
right now, like that
is the reality. Everyone is saying, let's see how Q4 goes, and then we'll
figure out what our
budget's going to be. That's what everyone is saying right now. So I don't know
, it's just kind
of like silly to me to think about like the the the wheat was was planted, you
know, 11 months ago
for what closes today. And and I think that like so much of of that stuff is
like, what is your,
what are you doing Q1 and marketing is going to shape, you know, how next year
goes.
I completely agree with a lot of that. And you know, I actually think one of
the biggest
missed opportunities out there is sales and marketing not being aligned on the
conversation,
not just on ROI, but of cost of inaction. It's, you know, because I'd say a lot
of companies,
they lose deals the time to tell me you're not to another competitor, but to no
decision.
Yeah. It's like, you know, for us, it's okay. What does that, you know, what
does that mean for
your team? Does like, you know, without without being able to increase
productivity with the same
headcount, do you have any hope of making your voles next year, right? And
being able to actually
help walk your buyers through, you know, what that looks like. And what you're
doing then is you're
you're preparing them to have a great conversation with the CFO. Do you have
any thoughts on trends,
on stuff that people should be looking out for next year, or anything that you
're, you're sort of
debating or prognosticating or predicting? One of the things that I that brands
are going to be,
have to be careful of is there's a lot of regulations coming really fast. So
what I hope that most
marketing teams are out there doing right now, are they're heavily using AI in
a bunch of different
ways, right? And they're not, they're of course contextualizing it and editing
it and taking ownership
of over the end product, because nothing turns buyers off faster, I think, than
purely a generated
content. So you need the human touch, but I think one of the things that that
teams are gonna really
need to pay attention to is these evolving AI regulations. They kind of like
the tip of it is
recently, our own administration in this country announced that that markers
should get ready to,
you know, add watermarks to to art that is essentially AI generated, right?
Enough detail around that right now. And everybody's gonna be looking for that.
But,
you know, if we see that kind of stuff starting happening here, you can bet it
's gonna be like
tenfold in Europe as well. And it'll affect every marketer that does business
in Europe.
So I really think paying attention to that regulatory environment is gonna be
almost
as important as other things that you do. So I'd say if there was one thing, it
would be,
it would be that AI is changing everything right now. And it's really gonna
change that. And you
just gotta make sure that you're doing the right things and that your team is
using it in the right
ways. I agree. I mean, like, it's so, it's so impossible to talk about AI with
like,
it's just an I could just stop there. That is as important as I go about AI,
because it is moving
so quickly, it's gonna change humanity forever. It already is. Like, there's a
million things
that are gonna do specifically in regards to marketing, specifically with
regards to content
creation. And like actually writing the words and like whether or not it's
gonna be, you know,
the Turing test of like, can you tell AI made this versus like, can you not,
you know, sort of things.
The people I know are like really good with AI are very much like, don't worry
about the tools,
don't worry about all this stuff, like just use it, figure out either utility,
trade it like your
assistant and like go from there, which I think is really fascinating. And the
idea that like,
you can, like, I was talking to someone, shout out to Yadeen from VMware, who
he was like,
we're all trained in search, because like you search something and then that's
what you get.
Whereas AI is like, you have to read frame your thinking of like, instead of
searching for something,
you put it into, you know, whatever tool. And then you say, what about this?
And then they say,
okay, that, but like, make it sound like, you know, Michael C. Hall from Dexter
. And then like,
you have this, then it's completely different, which is like fundamentally
different than what
then what searches. And so anyways, all that to say is like, who has any clue
of how it's going to be.
But my thing is like, when everyone has access to the tool, and you can create
all of this written
content that is, let's just say as good or better than we can write ourselves.
Like you said,
what is the personalized touch? What stands out? Like, I just will continue to
go back to the fact that
Jet GPT or whatever telling me Williams marketing strategy for next year,
versus him actually
telling it to me like, I super care about that. I super care about how William
uses qualified,
because that's what matters. Like, how does your team use it? How are you
getting results? Like,
that investing more in that stuff, and less like, I'm going to search for it
and find the answer on
the inner webs to me is like the sort of like, Hey, everyone should just be
investing in like,
user generated content, co created content. You should invest more in your
community. You should
invest more in building communities. You should invest more in building
watering holes,
creating connections between people. Like, yeah, that's all the stuff that you
should be investing
in, not just like giving people answers to questions, which like, you know, I
think we've passed that
part of marketing. I completely agree with all that. You know, the other thing
too is,
I would say marketing leaders, they really need to take some ownership and
responsibility,
and make sure that they're aware of what their teams are doing. Just as one,
one example is, you know, there was a situation recently where,
where, you know, somebody said, Hey, you know, we don't have to have that
person rerecord that
piece, right? What I can do is I can just take their voice and use this tool,
right, to,
to create this thing, right? And of course, as a marketing leader, you have to
set the boundaries,
and you have to be aware of all that kind of stuff, because that could have
really simple,
like interesting and far reaching implications, because just because there isn
't a law
against something today, it's because nobody could have imagined that it would
be so easy.
So we actually have to anticipate in some ways, like, in some cases, it just
comes down to,
like, do you think it's right or wrong? Because eventually the law is going to
catch up with that.
And I think it's just like what I find fascinating is like, if you had company
A, that's like,
everything on our website is created by a human. And that's the, that's our
company policy. That's
our brand is that we want that. And company B is like, everything on our site
is written by AI,
everything is like, that's their choice to do those two different things, to
build their company
that way. The company that like, I want to build with Caspian is a company that
co creates content
with other smart people to learn how they're doing stuff right now, and how
they're thinking
about the future, like, and how they've used experiences from the past. Like,
that's what I
want to create. So like, we're never going to do all that other stuff. I'm
going to use AI as my
personal assistant, tell me to research, tell me to other stuff. But it's like,
that's the way that
I personally want to do it. And like, I, that's what we stand for. And because
we want human beings to,
you know, create things. But like, other companies don't have to do that. And
they can be like, you
know, and this could all change in six months and I reserve right my right to
do that. I think
it's really interesting that like, as a marketing team, you could make that
decision. And it could
be beneficial in the market to be like, Hey, not only do we use AI for
everything, but it's like,
that's part of our ethos as a company, and we're going to put those savings
back to you
by it with a cheaper product. Like, that's that's pretty fascinating. That's a
compelling argument.
Yeah, yeah, I mean, in in in it has places for that, right? I mean, like
machine, machine learning
based language translation, for example, right? I think for for a lot of people
around the world,
you know, that's an acceptable trade off. But it's complicated, right? And that
's going to keep it
interesting for sure. William, wonderful chatting with you as always for
listeners.
Well, go to qualified.com to check them out because they're an amazing sponsor
and we love them
dearly. Check out intelligence bank, bunch of cool content, cool podcast. I'm a
guest on there.
If you feel the need to listen to both of us talking about brand stuff and a
bunch of other
topics in between. William, any final thoughts, anything to plug?
No, no, you took the words right out of my mouth. I was going to say head over
to brand intelligence
because there is more of this conversation and it goes into a lot of really
interesting places.
So so thanks so much for having me on. Really appreciate it. Always enjoy the
conversation and
the learnings. Likewise, always great chatting with you. Take care. Thank you.
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