Riding the AI Wave

Speaker A: Um,

Speaker B: we think it's very important that creators, and again, creators, means everybody understand their obligation around risk and compliance to the organization. Because once you do that, your value prop skyrockets within your company. Because you are using the technology, you're on the front lines, you have insight into where problems are. Use the technology to get closer to your audience. So you see and you hear them, and all of a sudden you are creating emotionally resonant content.

Speaker C: Welcome to the AI Edge Podcast for Enterprise Marketers, A show dedicated to sharing insights, strategies and experiences from a group of experts who have successfully implemented AI solutions in a large enterprise B2B software company, specifically within the context of global marketing and how that effort can connect to sales, it, product, and the rest of the business. I'm Edine Porto De Leon, and I'm joined by my fellow host, Jessica Ria. Jessica, uh, how are you doing? What are you doing? Are you everywhere in the world? I can't. I don't even know where you. I mean, you're in your office today, but you're not there very often. I always feel lucky that I actually see you, like, when you're in your office. Cause you're all over the planet.

Speaker D: Well, that's why I love recording on Fridays, because I typically don't travel on Fridays. So it's a safe beta that I'll be back home. And it's nice to be back home. Yes, it is interesting. Uh, lots of travel, of course, and getting in front of audiences and clients, which I love because it's always interesting to learn where people actually are in their AI journey. Especially for a lot of us in the Marketing AI Institute audience. I feel like we live in this very, like, everyone's AI forward, and then you get out there with a brand and they're at the very, very beginning stages.

Speaker C: So, um, I, uh, know they're like little babies just crawling. It's like, aw, you did a prompt and you came upsides for a blog. That's so cute.

Speaker D: I am not saying that here.

Speaker C: I get to say that. You know, you're not saying that.

Speaker D: So it's been great. And enjoying it all.

Speaker B: Yeah. Good to be home.

Speaker D: Good to see you.

Speaker C: Yeah. That's fabulous. Yeah, it's great to see you. So we've got a couple special guests on today. It is Katherine Richards and Bob Mitten. Katherine Richards is the co founder and managing partner of Xperia Consulting, where she advises Fortune 500 leaders on AI strategy, implementation and governance. She serves as rigging communications expert gen AI coach for the Fortune 500 leadership, uh, council helping executives navigate, uh, the evolving AI landscape with strategic insight. And Bob Mittin, also co founder and managing partner of Expera Consulting, where he helps global organizations scale AI initiatives. He serves as the AI coach for Coastside Ventures Studios, guiding early stage startups in integrating AI for competitive advantage. Katherine, Bob, welcome to the show.

Speaker B: Hi there.

Speaker A: Thanks, Yidi.

Speaker C: Yeah, also these are our wonderful, wonderful colleagues and we've worked with both of these people. Jessica and I have and have had fantastic experiences working with both of you. So I'm super excited to have you guys on the show.

Speaker B: Thank you for having us.

Speaker D: Yes, we should say members of the former Legacy VMware Marketing AI Council. So, uh, definite leaders.

Speaker C: That's right, the Marcom Gold winning marketing.

Speaker A: Yes, award winning.

Speaker C: Exactly. We can't forget to say that. So let me start out with. There was a stat I wanted to start out with and want to sort of kick off the conversation. So according to McKinsey's report on the economic impact of generative AI, gen AI is estimated to free up 60 to 70% of knowledge workers time. So freeing up time, something that we're all looking to do. So the big question isn't whether AI will change your work. It already is. So for some people, wrap your head around that one. I think for the listeners that we have, I'm sure Genai is already changing your work, but they've had contact with people who may not understand how JNI is already affecting their work. So what will you do with that time that is freed up is the question there. And I'm going to just throw a boomerang here. And Katherine, what does that have to do with surfing?

Speaker B: I'm glad you asked, Judy. Well, first of all, surfing is very personal to both Bob and I. We each have our own reasons why it is. For me, I've had the privilege of watching my son transform from someone interested in surfing to becoming accomplished at surfing. And now he's a surfing instructor. And it occurred to me that becoming accomplished as a surfer and with AI takes really similar things. And those things are resilience and courage and um, strategic thinking and creativity. But the main commenting as if you surfed or if you're trying AI or even intermediate with it today is that to succeed both require success against really powerful forces that will either knock you down or propel you forward. And so Bob and I are of the propel you forward school.

Speaker D: I'm the odd, uh, Midwesterner east coaster out here, but I'm going to Hawaii for spring break and the Plan was always to take surf lessons this year now that my boys are older. So I'm excited to learn what I can today and hopefully it helps me out there.

Speaker C: I like that. That's a fun analogy. I was a surfer growing up in Santa Cruz as well, so I feel like there's a little bit of this that resonates with me.

Speaker D: Yeah, the Pacific is cold.

Speaker C: You gotta do it, get up on the board, especially if it's nice and warm. Oh, my goodness. I had to grow up learning surfing with like a wetsuit with arctic currents in the Monterey Bay. So yeah, Hawaii is a much better place to learn. It is. It's freezing.

Speaker A: That's really interesting because I live right down the street from Mavericks, if you're familiar with that.

Speaker C: Yes. And for those who aren't familiar with Mavericks, one of the biggest breaks here on, you know, the Northern California coast, epic, uh, waves that are formed there. A huge place for competition. Only the brave surf at Mavericks.

Speaker A: And hence the, uh, analogy. We had a recent break of somebody surfed of 108ft.

Speaker C: Yeah, that was like a new record, wasn't it?

Speaker A: Yeah, it was the record for at least a week.

Speaker D: Oh my goodness.

Speaker A: Think of jumping off a 10 story building. So you gotta be willing to get out there, but it is gonna be epic when you get to it. And that's when we talk about the analogy to AI. Right. Don't just dip your toe in the water. Let's go, let's get out there and have this push you forward and it's going to be great.

Speaker B: So, and that's the use of our time, right?

Speaker C: Let's surf Mavericks. That's what we're going to be doing.

Speaker B: Take that time, paddle out.

Speaker C: So we're going to be paddling out in the conversation today, talking about what each of you are doing. Bob, Katherine, just to kick off the conversation, what are you guys doing at Expera and what does that work? How are you helping people paddle out from an AI perspective?

Speaker A: So Catherine and I basically taking what we did and learned in the past and helping companies discover, implement and govern their AI journey. So what are their ambitions? Taking their ambitions and turning those into reality.

Speaker B: And I talk a lot about creativity and augmentation because I see teams kind of hit a wall. They need to push past that wall. And so I advise some of our clients on different strategies on, um, how to use the different tools. One of the things we see as an emerging area for us is larger enterprises that have their own proprietary LLMs actually think they're done they have it. Hey, we already have this. But we take a look at. Okay. How are you training your folks? How are they using it? And also, what are you doing about those creators in your organization that are using the public models? Because they are.

Speaker C: And when you say done, you say like you feel like they're done, meaning, like they've just rolled it out, they've implemented it. We are AI. Yeah. Check the box.

Speaker B: Check.

Speaker C: Jessica Scene is like, well, we already have AI. It's like. Yeah. Just because you have a tool doesn't mean you actually are doing anything with it or leveraging it in any way, shape or form. So is that what you're talking about, Catherine? Is that digits? Got it. And they're done.

Speaker B: Yeah, I am. I am. Yeah. So our clients are at different stages of their journey. Right. So some are just starting, like you guys were talking about, and others feel like they're. They're doing okay, and that's great, but they just need help maturing to the next level, pushing the technology. Like Bob said, whatever their ambitions are, we help them achieve them.

Speaker C: Fabulous. All right, so each episode, for those listeners who are familiar with the show, we have a structure where we go over topics and objectives, strategies and tactics, teams and tools and business impact. So we're going to go ahead and kick off the topic objective, sort of the. What we're, uh, talking about today, too. Setting up for context. I'll kick it off with you, Catherine. What is the focus of the. Sort of the writing, the wave, surfing the wave of AI as it relates to what you're trying to do with Expera.

Speaker B: Sure. So it focuses on creators, and creators is everybody. So it doesn't matter what your traditional functional role is, whether that's marketing, comms, pr, hr, sales, engineering. You are creating content. And so as such, you have an advantage with AI, uh, because the boring stuff is being automated. So you can now focus on more strategic initiatives.

Speaker C: And let me actually challenge you to one of those points, too, uh, with regards to the automation and what some people call sort of the heavy lift or the boring stuff, or. I know Jessica likes to use the word the thunking instead of the thinking. And some people are very much super, super excited about some of the things that are getting automated away and feel like I'm a creator or I'm doing something that's adding value, that this tool is now maybe eroding some of the value creation that I was doing before. And this is nothing new. This is, of course, technology throughout the ages and just wanted to sort of see how you're approaching those kind of conversations with uh, the people who are creatives or creators, they used to really feel like was the value that they provided. But now is what you're telling them, this is what you need to automate.

Speaker A: I like to think of it as freeing up your time. I don't know anybody that gets everything they want to do done. So you look at the amount of things I wish I could do and the amount of things that I actually can do and that's a subset. And so AI is that not to use the word unleash or unlock. It's that tool that's going to give you the ability to do stuff that you couldn't do before. So really what you want to do is look, uh, at what is it that I can't do now that if I had an extra 10 hours a week I could do, I could do that extra demand gen program, I could do that marketing campaign, I could spend time with my kids. Whatever it would be. It's a tool that's going to unlock that time for you and start to think about what is it you would do with that.

Speaker C: Yeah, I do know two people that I feel like, feel like they get everything they want to accomplish every day. And those are my two kids, like probably mid through the day. They're like in the middle of the grass to staring up in the sky like, uh, are you good? They're like, I'm done. I've done everything I wanted to do today, so I'm just gonna hang out in the grass.

Speaker A: They're not teenagers yet, are they?

Speaker C: That is true.

Speaker D: Wow. My kids beg for more time on video games all the time. There's never enough time on their devices. Yeah, I think there's a lot of resistance, especially from creators, journalists, writers especially too, where it's almost just, it is kind of this outright resistance. The AI can't possibly do what I do as well and so I'm not even going to try it. And I'm curious in your workshops how you help people get over that conversation and what are they saying, like how do you have the conversations around and how do they go around that topic of freeing up time and surely there are things you want to do you can't do yet. I'm curious to hear uh, more about how that goes.

Speaker A: Sure.

Speaker B: So one of the ways that we advise them is to use the technology to expand your thinking, not simply confirm it.

Speaker C: That's interesting.

Speaker B: Yeah, there's a lot I would say most people just unfortunately confirm instead of Expanding it. Here's an example, and this is a serious question. What if we treated marketing like stand up comedy?

Speaker C: Hmm. I haven't heard anyone say that before, but I do try and do standup comedy routines in marketing meetings sometimes.

Speaker B: But here's why. Here's the thinking around that. So great comedians don't just tell jokes. They're actually observers of human nature and they see things that others don't see. And so when they tell a joke and we laugh at it, it's because we feel seen and heard. So use the technology to get closer to your audience. So you see and you hear them and all of a sudden you are creating emotionally resonant content that is going to just engage them so much greater. And so that's an example of expanding your thinking. Ask what seems like a silly question. What if our marketing was stand up comedy? What if our product turned into a meme? What would it say about our product? And then have that conversation and it's going to reveal some. It's like a mirror. The technology is going to reveal some things and keep an open mind and look at them. That gets people excited.

Speaker D: It sounds like what you're saying too is we're not trying to replace your work necessarily. We're saying keep doing, keep creating, keep writing. But what are you missing? Are there points of view that we could bring in that you haven't thought of yet or that are additionally emotionally relevant to your audience that you're missing? Right, Yes.

Speaker B: I mean, the definition of creativity to some people is to connect to separate thoughts. So take two things that no one had seen a connection before you and make that connection. And so why wouldn't you want to use a tool or a technology that is going to open up so many more possibilities for you to make connections? It's not replacing you, it's expanding your reach.

Speaker C: Um, and I think people are just used to, from a habit standpoint, Habits are super powerful. And I know you guys run into those all the time. They're used to hacking away at a lot of these problems in the same kind of way. We need to build something new. We need to strategize something. We need to build a deck. We need to do a qbr. They get people in a room or they start throwing up stuff. There's this, a flow that we're used to doing and then that disruption, that flow is extremely difficult to break. And one of the ways is using it to, like you said, Catherine, to have your audience feel seen and heard, to do things in different ways. One of those things that kind of struck me, actually the reason I wanted to pull on that thread, because it struck me last week while I was doing something and normally, let's say if I'm going to do idea generation, strategy, different, uh, things for an audience, I'm using some of those traditional tools, whether it's cloud, whether it's Gemini, whether it's Notebook LM or those things I'll use. But then I have an audience that I'm focused on, which is developers, and I want to like sort of have them be seen and heard and find what's relevant to them. I went on to GitHub's copilot and normally people are use that to like do code and stuff like that. I just started talking to it about developer stuff and just started like using Hub, um, Copilot and said, I'm thinking about doing this thing on this particular thing or whether it's eventing or whether it's event driven architecture or different things. And I don't want code, but I want perspective. And I was, was really surprised at the fabulous perspective that it was giving me that was better than some of the large, broader purpose models that are for like all this stuff. Because I'm there in GitHub, like in the ecosystem of the people who I want to talk to, using the tools that they're using, but using them in different ways. So that was sort of a fun discovery that I thought that was. What resonated with what you said was like, go to where your audience is sometimes, use the tools they're using, use them in ways that will help you get that kind of perspective.

Speaker B: And that's a great use of your time that you got back, right? Yeah, but I wanted to make a point. You said something about being in the room and AI is a great equalizer because it democratizes opportunity across the organization. Traditionally, at least in the enterprise, real strategic conversations happen at the exact level. Well, that's changing. And so if you are a creator, maybe you're at uh, a mid level or lower level, use the technology to solve really big business problems. That's one of the ways we advise our clients and elevate your reputation.

Speaker C: Yeah. And I think a lot of people will use these tools or create strategies around tools. Actually a few episodes back where it's like, AI is not a tool, same way as cloud is not a tool. Just like you're saying, find out what kind of business impact you want to create, then build a strategy around that and then apply whatever tools, tactics, techniques, talent, all those different things to be able to pursue that.

Speaker D: And you have to have a level of risk and openness to risk and stepping outside your comfort zone. Um, because I mean, if you think about a mid level, especially lower level, what, proposing a business strategy or putting context around what they're doing to their boss, you have to be confident and also willing to put yourself out there a bit in a risk scenario to share that. Because normally the traditional hierarchy of things would say that ideation shouldn't happen that way, or at least, you know, strategic conversations.

Speaker A: So I wanted to pick up on something that Yadine said, uh, to talk about that you were talking to GitHub's AI as though it were your audience. And that's in fact something that we advise people on in terms of putting together that strategy to mitigate that risk or put that forward is to use the AI as a sparring partner in a lot, ah, of different ways. Right. Use the AI as a, ah, co CEO or as your boss or as the Persona for your ideal customer and then start interrogating that AI as to what is it that would make this person happy, what is it that would show business? What do I have to prove to my boss or the CEO or to my partner or to my customer? Start to put that together and create the Persona of that you want to interact with and then ideate with that. And there's a lot of different ways you can do that, but it really disrupts the process of ideas coming from the top down is that you can now start to create solutions that make yourself stand out as to be the leader, to be the expert in using AI to move forward. So lots of different interesting ways to use AI, not just to create emails.

Speaker C: Yeah, I think that's a probably a good lead in to another topic we wanted to cover today, which is some of the unseen trends. I know usually we'll have sort of strategies and tactics, but I feel like this unseen trends piece, I'm super fascinated with all of this, like how things. And Jessica and I had that sort of quiet shifts and talked about that. One of the episodes, what are some of those unseen trends that you guys are uncovering in your work with the, uh, companies that you're engaging with and throughout your own AI journeys.

Speaker A: Well, so I want to throw out a stat everybody listening to this is, oh my God, I'm behind. No, not really. So research is showing about 79, 80% of the companies that you would think would be on the leading edge are really just running pilot projects. And it's really they're investing in AI assistant, some of them are just kind of throwing it out there. But it's very small proportion of the companies we talk to are actually in production with AI. And without moving past those pilot, your business is going to risk getting passed up by your competitors. So you really need to kind of get on board and get used to using these. And it's not just like I said, writing emails and summarizing meetings. Start to think about how I can actually leverage these tools out throughout the business and out into the marketplace as well. So you're not behind, but you're going to be. And so the wave's coming, you know it's coming, you want to get out there and get ready for it. So that's, I think one of the unseen trends that we're looking at is that people are dipping their toe in the water. But really it's this year that it's going to start to be strategic and we're going to start to see initiatives and investments in AI.

Speaker B: Uh, this year I'd like to talk about risk as an unseen trend because we think it's very important that creators, and again creators means everybody understand their obligation around risk and compliance to the organization. Because once you do that, your value prop skyrockets within your company. Because you are using the technology, you're on the front lines, you have insight into where problems are. And so a, uh, creative way to do that is to think like a threat hunter. And a threat hunter is a real cybersecurity role in the cybersecurity world. And there are two things, two ways creators can think just like threat hunters, systems thinking and careful analysis. And so, uh, for anyone listening to this, take this on because I think you will find you already think like this and so go ahead and accept this responsibility. Anyway. Let me explain systems thinking in a real world scenario. Let's say that you are AI generating social copy. A systems thinker just takes a step back and understands if there's a problem in one spot, it's going to impact it down the line. So if you see a word in a social post that is out of context or the wrong context, you understand immediately that there's going to be a problem potentially to brand trust down the road. So call it out. A careful analyst is looking at that same word for the details. So they're looking at is this bias and you need both, you need to be able to think in both of those ways. And so I urge creators to accept this responsibility and increase your value. Proposal.

Speaker C: Hmm, no, that's interesting, the risk. I think that a lot of people see the legal risks and the risks of me creating something that's not as good as, you know, I would create on my own if I were doing some of these things. And then a lot of people are getting this advice of like, hey, here's the tool. Go experiment without any guidance, education, training, all those different pieces, too. And so, like, the risk is I'm spending time on this tool when it could yield, like, no value whatsoever. And then now I'm behind on everything else that I'm trying to do. And so instead of adding value, it's detracting value. And so I think that's a lot of the risk that people see when they look at these tools. Or I think, Jessica, you mentioned this too, where, like, I will be perceived differently as an employee or part of the team because I am using these tools. And now there is trepidation or guilt or I'm not really doing my job if I'm using these types of things. So there's like, career risks sometimes in the negative, where people really are taking a look at those and then not maybe wanting to use them, especially in certain contexts, because they're feeling like they're going to take that risk on. I don't know if that's something that you're running into, Bob.

Speaker A: Catherine, you know, there's risk in everything. You know, waking up, I'm. Am I going to trip over my dog? It's all about risk mitigation, right? But just standing up. It's all about risk mitigation, right? And how much risk are you willing to accept and move forward from a company or from a personal point of view? And it goes back to our AI Council, we always had legal on to talk about. Okay, what is the risk and what, uh, are we willing to live with and go forward? We talk about that. In fact, I advise about AI councils at other companies as well. And you have to have legal on board from day one to talk about how are we going to use this and how is this going to move forward? And giving you guidelines and guardrails. If you don't have those, you don't have an ethics plan in front of you. People aren't going to know what to do, and they're going to do it themselves, whether you like it or not. So you really have to think about and how are we going to accept and mitigate the risks that are involved?

Speaker B: And remember, this wave is coming. Stop thinking about just your organization and your role and your team. This is going to happen, it's going to knock you down or propel you forward. And so I guess getting to the risk, someone feels, I don't know if I should do it. I say to them, do it, but do it because this is happening. And so if you're a leader, your best talent is going to leave. I'll just say it like it is. If you do not provide the training and the rules and the guidelines.

Speaker C: Yeah. You're not going to be looking as a forward leading.

Speaker D: I think it's interesting how you guys talked about or, uh, Gideon, you mentioned the risk of being seen a certain way for using it. And I think people who think that are probably the ones who are doing the judging. So that's like a mirror opportunity to say, if I think that other people are this way, if I think of others in a different way because they use AI, then that's how I'm going to think of myself. And so that's an opportunity again for leaders to lead by example and to share experiences where they are using AI in a positive way and how it's helping and how it's not working and creating this environment of trust to say that it's okay, everyone should be experimenting and kind of making it safe and like making it cool in the organization. Because I think that that's, that's a fallacy. So I think it's, uh, an opportunity to take a look at how you're judging others and maybe instead of judging them for moving forward, get on the bored paddle out yourself. Right. Join them.

Speaker C: I think you're touching on something that I don't think we've talked enough about, Jessica. And that's just AI culture. And how is that tooling and that technology accepted within the culture, talked about within the culture and then and enabled within that. Like how do others feel about others who are using it and the ways they're using it? I think there's like even an episode in that, just talking about AI culture within a company and how that affects the way in the efficacy of the tooling.

Speaker D: Absolutely.

Speaker B: But we want the skeptics, we want the critical thinkers, we want people pushing back because it makes our thought process a lot sharper and it helps us get better at it. Just because we have the technology doesn't mean we have to use it for all of it. But to discount it completely is just an untenable position, in my opinion.

Speaker C: Well, yeah, it's not paying attention that the wave is coming and just sitting on your board and just like twiddling your thumbs and you know, not getting ready. So we're at that sort of point in the show where we want to transition to that final section, which is the impact. Do you guys have some like recommendations, um, for the people that you're talking to about? So some of that impact, some of the ways in which you're advising them to operate and what the potential impact could be of, you know, changing the way that they're using or arranging their culture or building or leading.

Speaker A: We've touched on this a little bit all the way through. I think there's four things that we talk about. Learn strategically. Go figure out what it is you're trying to do and what tools you can use and how you can use them to either improve your creativity or efficiency. The second one is use it to stand out. You know, we're talking about just now about leaders and how you can actually take this and do your research and ask the what if questions and use the AI as a sparring partner and create Personas that you can talk to. You use that to flex your credibility, increase your visibility within the company and use that to disrupt the process and create new processes. And uh, third one is create solutions. Don't just think about me and how it's going to make me write emails faster, it's what am I trying to do with AI Strategically either use case model or problem based model and analyze what it is you're trying to do and how AI can help you get there faster or do more. Think about as an example of account based marketing, you now can get truly account based, personalized to the actual person that you're sending the program to. And last was use that to amplify your success. Not only your success, but the company's success both internally, your group success internally to other groups or outside, to partners or to your customers. So taking that real life examples and uh, helping we use the examples of the AI Council, you use that to amplify up. But it also became the gold standard throughout the company and then throughout all of the industry itself. By being very forthright and forthcoming with all of our knowledge and help, you can go out and create a better place. That has helped Catherine and I get in front of Fortune 100 companies like Coca Cola and Leverance Health and Home Depot and we've advised very large companies down to. I've uh, been in front of startups, Mucker Capital's Venture Studio and Cafe, which is another one. So all across the board we talk about doing those four things and figure out how you're going to Amplify AI throughout.

Speaker D: Be the marketer who sets the standard. Be the creator who sets the standard.

Speaker C: The creator. I love that. The creator who set the standard. All right, we're actually at the time of the show where we got to pivot to lightning rounds. We're going to wrap up the show with one thing that is top of mind for each of you. Doesn't have to be in the news. It's just something that's interesting, intriguing, shifts your perception a little bit. Something like that. I'm going to go ahead and just kick it off with the thing that I am just sort of wrapping my head around, and that is the new ByteDance model for video called Omni Human. If you haven't checked it out, take a look at the Omni Human Taylor Swift video where you just take an audio track and a still image and you put them into the model and it creates a full motion of video using the audio track where it maps the person's face, their movements, their lips, their eyes. The blinking looks very human. And it's. The reason why it's noteworthy is because it is incredibly realistic. And I had to show this to my kids and said, look it now. You really, really can't trust what you see when you see a video because this is so good now. It's just gotten so good that we're there. From a video creation standpoint, we are there. So it makes it difficult find trusted sources.

Speaker D: And this is how Yadine derails the rest of my afternoon.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker C: Gonna check out Omni Human now. Oh, well, you did that with me. With Sonos.

Speaker D: Suno, the song. Yes.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: Oh, Suno. That's right. Suno ended up making songs about my kids cleaning the room. So I took that advice and it was fabulously entertaining.

Speaker D: So I try really hard not to talk about Jasper unless it comes up organically. But there's a new study out from Jasper on Wednesday this week, A, uh, state of AI in marketing. So encourage everyone to go take a look. I'm just going to share one stat that I thought was really interesting. There's this disconnect between how far along the CMO thinks the organization is with AI and how far along the rest of the organization sees that. So, for example, CMOs are most likely to view leadership as very committed. And then if you go down the hierarchy, they start to rate the leadership's commitment to AI lower and lower. And the same is true for how advanced the organization is with AI. So I think it's just another one of those stories to show that leadership isn't involved enough yet in the tools in what it can do. But then also we talked about the AI culture of the organization. Um, so really interesting research out there. Anytime we can see marketing AI research, it's always really interesting to look at where people are in their journey and kind of some benchmarks to compare your company to. So we have work to do.

Speaker C: Yes. Yeah, we do. To bridge that gap.

Speaker B: All right, that speaks directly. Jessica, just real quick. We actually get asked to train leadership teams before they bring us in for their larger teams because they don't feel confident in it enough. And so any leaders out there, train your own team first. And I think it'll speak to what the stat that you're just talking about. Yeah.

Speaker D: Don't be afraid to ask for help. Ask somebody on your team to help you. What a great opportunity for somebody within your organization to step up and show you what they're doing in the system, too, and how you can use it.

Speaker C: That's fabulous. All right, Catherine, what's your lightning round?

Speaker B: So my lightning round is about the relationship, the new relationship status between AI search and brand management.

Speaker C: Ooh, search and brand management.

Speaker B: Yeah. So there's. There are new rules of engagement.

Speaker C: Yes, I know. It's disrupting search. It is uncertain future. And what's your take on it?

Speaker B: Well, what I'm excited about is that credibility through experts is how you're going to be discovered, because that is prioritized. The more authoritative your content is seen to be, the higher you'll rank, which is exciting for those of us who come from that world where we help and empower experts to share their POVs.

Speaker D: So people over brands.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker D: Is that what you're saying?

Speaker B: Yep.

Speaker C: That is really interesting.

Speaker B: So AI, they're answer engines now. So they synthesize the information. They don't just tell you something where to find something, they tell you why you may want it. Do you know what I mean? There's a lot more context around it. And so that relationship is just so interesting to us. We just published a blog post this week on it. It's called It's Complicated.

Speaker C: Excellent. Well, fabulous.

Speaker B: Exactly.

Speaker C: Uh, so we'll have to put a link in the blog post in the show notes so people can go check it out.

Speaker A: So my little lightning round is the reasoning models and what has been happening with those. It's enormously interesting to me to watch that. Now you can get the thought process that they're going through, but also they're hooking into deep research. So now you can do Stuff that used to take us weeks and months in mere hours. And so I go back to that. What can I do now that I couldn't do before is like, I couldn't go pay for a research, uh, project, but now I can actually use these reasoning and the research models to get the information that I need fairly quickly, fairly cheaply. So now I can start to make some very interesting decisions. And so watching those progress, we're right at the very beginning right now, but as you said, it's only going to get better from here. That is a tremendous tool.

Speaker C: Yeah, that's kind of great. And with that, we are at the end of our show. Katherine, Bob, thank you so much for joining us. Uh, providing your perspective. We'll, uh, put all the, uh, the links to the stuff that you talked about into expera to the blog post in the show notes and just give you the listeners, just one last sort of, I guess, shout out of where can they find you? Where can they engage with you?

Speaker B: Where can they learn more besides the

Speaker D: surf, the waves in California?

Speaker C: Besides the surf, besides the Mavericks?

Speaker B: Well, if you want a surf lesson, come to Santa Monica and I'll get you all set up. But you can find us on expericonsulting.com and we'll put a link to a Ride the Wave Workshop page, take a look at what we've got. And we also have some, um, cheat sheets for the AI search that I just mentioned and some other things and would love to share those with you.

Speaker D: Amazing.

Speaker C: Fabulous. All right, well, thank you so much for joining the AI Edge podcast.

Speaker B: Thank you, Jessica. Thank you, Yadim.

Speaker A: Thanks guys.

Speaker D: Good to see you guys.

Speaker C: And we're out.