Purpose-Driven Marketing with Edward Farley

Speaker A: Purpose Driven Marketing with today's amazing special guest, Farley.

Speaker B: Welcome to the Artificial Intelligence Podcast where we make AI simple, practical and accessible for small business owners and leaders. Forget the complicated tech talk or expensive consultants. This is where you'll learn how to implement AI strategies that are easy to understand and can make a big impact for your business. The Artificial Intelligence Podcast is brought to you by Fraction aio, the trusted partner for AI Digital Transformation. At Fraction aio, we help small and medium sized businesses boost revenue by eliminating time wasting non revenue generated tasks that frustrate your team. With our custom AI bots, tools and automations, we make it easy to shift your team's focus to the tasks that matter most, driving growth and results.

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Speaker C: Today's episode is brought to you by my private coaching community Automation School. That's school with a K. If you're an experienced business professional, you know that missing the AI way is not an option. But keeping up with it feels like a full time job. I built Automation School to take that weight off your shoulders. Instead of wasting hours testing every new tool yourself, I do the heavy lifting for you. You get two cutting edge trainings every single week that show you exactly what is working right now. But the real game changer is the axis. You get to jump on a live call with me every week. You can get unstuck, ask your specific questions and get a direct answer from me. Stop trying to navigate this alone and

Speaker A: start moving with confidence.

Speaker C: Go to schoolofautomation.com right now to lock in our special pricing. That's schoolofautomation.com spelled S K double O L now. Uh, Ed, I'm so excited to have

Speaker A: you here before we kick started and ah, I just want people to know what are they going to learn over the next 20 minutes? Why is this going to be one of the best episodes? Because the Artificial Intelligence Podcast ever. What are we going to dive into?

Speaker D: That's a big task. I think that um, and thank you for having me. I'd like to talk a little bit about brand strategy and the role that AI will play in helping businesses connect with consumers and businesses connect with other businesses. Uh, through the lens of transformational brand strategy. Are we thinking about purpose driven brand strategy before we optimize it with AI Marketing. And there's a lot of questions to be answered over the years, but we're just touching the surface of it. But I'd like to spend a little bit of time on the front end. And that's transformational brand strategy with a. With an eye towards purpose.

Speaker A: And that's perfect for those of you listening. If you're thinking about using AI as the face of your business and your branding, I know you all are. Everyone wants to use it on social media. Everyone wants to use it in customer support, which is the face of your brand. You want to make sure you listen to today's episode so you don't make some of the big mistakes other companies are making. You can do things the right way. One of the key things that I've learned about artificial intelligence, I think of artificial intelligence, kind of like nas, you're watching Fast and the Furious. They push that button and the car goes faster. But if you're going in the wrong direction and you push that button, you're in the wrong direction faster. Like, it doesn't fix the direction. And what we've seen is people who have, like, soft branding or cracks in their branding or cracks in their messaging, then you accelerate with AI and you just kind of go off the cliff faster. We've seen it where people have had a company in Canada got sued because the AI made a promise to customer support. They go, well, you have to honor it. It's your customer support. Like, it doesn't matter that the AI said it. Whatever it said it. Ha. You have to stick with. Just like, if an employee said it and they went to court, they lost. And we're seeing where companies in England where the AI is like, oh, our company stinks. And, like, it got around the world. So, like, when you don't tighten up your brand and you don't tighten up the tech, then you can start to have these gaps. And it's very tempting to. And there are some advantages with AI, like, yeah, you can make your logo very quickly. You can modify your designs very quickly, you can test ideas very quickly. And this is where we a lot of, like, drop in image quality. And some of the people I followed have actually damaged their brand with me because I can tell that they're doing bad AI posting. And, like, that's one of the small things. So for people that are listening, let's start right at the beginning. What does it really mean to be purpose driven? What are the things we should think about before we bring AI into the picture? How can you start to design your Marketing strategy, your sense of identity for your brand.

Speaker D: Well, I think that, uh, you know, it. I think you couldn't have given me a better segue because before we talk about marketing and branding, we should talk about brand. And what is brand that really isn't changing. Right. It's the idea that we're in the business for more than profits now that sounds funny, doesn't it? But we want to make profit. But we also want, presumably, you know, a long Runway of times so that you can address different generations and be able to flex and be useful across, you know, as long as you want to be in business. So it's about a test of integrity. It's about what are we solving, what are we compelled to do with our brand, with our business now and into the future. And I don't care what kind of business you create. It's important to understand, um, the roots and authenticity of your brand, what makes your brand special, what makes it unique and different, and how you can infuse a sense of belonging to the community in which you do business. And that becomes the threshold, that proverbial ticket to get into the theater. Whenever you're putting a market, uh, whenever you're putting a product or a service into the marketplace. And it's more important than ever with kind of this bubble, this Gen Z bubble, you know, just around the corner. They value purpose, they value community. How are you positioning yourself in that community? AI can do a great job optimizing for that. And we'll talk about that, I'm sure, a little bit later. But the idea that AI can help help you mine insights and understand and begin to deliver on engagement metrics down the line. But before you start that, you can use AI, but you can also use your own vision for the company to develop a purpose driven brand strategy that guides your company in all of its decisions and not just marketing. Right. Because it's going to have a, uh, it's going to have a role across the board. Ah.

Speaker A: I think that a lot of people, especially when they're starting out early on in their business, they're like, they think brand means logo. Or I see brand awareness campaigns all the time. And it used to be, right, you have to see a brand seven times or 30 times. The number always changes before you like, remember it right to create that. And I'm not sure if people still buy the same way they do. There's a lot of people that see an ad on Instagram and buy right from it. Like, they don't go through that brand cycle as much anymore. And it's your logo is very unimportant, right. Most people don't know your logo. Like very few people go, I was going to buy for them but I didn't like their logo. Like that doesn't happen. But we spent so much time, we're starting a business on it, right. So we sometimes focus on the wrong things. And that's what I kind of want to talk about first is like what's the important part and the not important part that think people think is important to branding but it's actually not. Like what are the distractions?

Speaker D: Yeah, like I said, I do think you make a great point about how people let certainly people who are designing brands or getting into business let tactics lead the way. And I think if we are being true to ourselves, we go back to, there's a couple ways to think about it, right? We all have a value proposition. Every, every business should have a value proposition. And on the left hand of the ledger is sort of the, what you do, right? What is it that you deliver to the marketplace. And sort of on the right side of the ledger is, you know, what kinds of things differentiate yourself in the market. What are your products, what are your services, what are those things? There's an insight in between, right? How are we understanding the culture that we operate in? How are we understanding the consumer or the business, their needs? What's changed, what are the dynamics, what are the business trends? How, how are we taking both from what we do and why it matters in building the sort of intrinsic, purpose driven value proposition that will then inform a brand. When you consider the market like that, you are then defining kind of a long term approach to the brand and you're beginning to think about, like I said, the culture, the community where you do business. And there are a lot, there's lots of ways that you can begin to think about how to then transform your brand over time.

Speaker A: One of the things that I encounter a lot now, there's so many AI startups and so many tools that come out there and they kind of think that branding is like being cool. Then I go, I go, what do you do? And like we do this cool thing and I'm like, what problem do you solve? And we're kind of unfortunately skipping past that. And that's why you see like so many startups fail. It's like, well, if you don't solve a problem then when people have to lower their bills, the first thing they eliminate is the extras, which is what you are. And it's like there's plenty of tools. Like, for example, make AI music really cool. Not really useful, right? I don't need that much music that need to generate a new song every day. Maybe I change the theme song to the podcast every couple of years. It's not a huge expense. So it's like we have to separate those two things. And I think that even during that core level, which is we get the things we think matter, we sometimes forget those core principles, which is why are exactly what's your usp? What makes you unique? Uh, what's the problem you solve? And how do you solve a unique way? And I always look at what is different about me. So if my book is short, I go, why do you want the long book? It's going to take forever to get the same answer. If my book is long, I'm like, hey, do you want the manual or do you want, like, the pamphlet? Do you want some of the, like, it doesn't matter which side I'm on, right? Like, you can advocate whatever it is. If I'm a small company, I'm going, yeah, big companies are impersonal. Big company. I'm like, yeah, small companies don't have time for you. So it's like, whatever it is, you can become that, like, and that becomes your advantage. I think that we're seeing this, um, temptation right now to shortcut some critical steps. And when it comes to the face of your business, it starts to be. It's like your brand is kind of, I think, what people remember or how they identify you. It's what they think of. And it's kind of like sometimes you see, like, if McDonald's started selling shoes, everyone, like, I'm not buying McDonald's shoes. They could be great, right? But you'd be like, it violates what I think the brand does. And it's like whenever people go outside what they should be selling or the advice they should be giving, people go, that doesn't make sense. This is like, you fit in this pigeonhole. So people need to know what box you fit into. Which is why whenever you go outside the box or outside, they're going, we don't understand what you do. That's, like, really challenging when you have to educate and then sell and then market. So there's this temptation right now to, like, really hand over all your social media and all of your, like, basically all of your communication channels. I see people wanting to switch to AI sales calls, AI inbound calls, AI social media, AI customer support. Well, now you never talk to your customers, so now your entire brand is represented by the AI. And if there's a crack in there, it's going to just expand because that's what it does, it accelerates everything. So when it comes to like first principles, do you kind of think that's even a good idea or is it still worth having a person in the middle kind of making those decisions? Because if your AI, let's just say it says something racist on Twitter, no one's going to go, oh, well, it was the AI. It doesn't matter. It's like it does, you're still, you're not, that's not a get in a jail free card. They're still blaming you for it. So it's like there's, it's still treated the same as if you'd said it, no matter what the AI does.

Speaker D: Yeah, I mean, there's no doubt there's a lot to unpack there. But let's all remember that most human decisions are fueled by emotion, right? And when you let a robot or a, an algorithm determine what it is you're trying to accomplish, I think you're taking the human element out. I think you're right. A human needs to be in the middle. Once the strategy's clear, AI can power the execution, right? I mean, it does enable predictive personalization, it does anticipate needs, it does build tools and content that can evolve in real time. But it also, it's important because a human fuels the creativity part of it, right? You can't take the insight and in, you know, and install it into a generative AI model. You can't use, I mean, you can, you can develop things based on human insight. But I think the filter of the human mind and the creativity that comes from human insight, at least now is, you know, it's the time to think of AI as an augment of, you know, an augment, uh, type of a tool. And that's just, I think it fits nicely. I think marketers have to wrestle with that every day. They have to think about, well, am I interested in tomorrow's engagement or am I interested in, um, not thinking about this as short termism, as David Aker puts it in his eloquent view on branding and AI. It's all, it's about making decisions. So like Patagonia is a great example of alignment, right? They have a brand purpose, they have a brand strategy is about saving our home planet. And they only, uh, they use AI to personalize their recommendations, but they also use it to design sustainable products. Right? They create campaigns they generate AI driven insights very quickly and then they engage in a strategy that they've had for decades, which is to save our home planet. That's genuine, that's authentic, that's simple. And that's something that their consumers embrace into. And other, other companies are doing it really, really well, like Warby Parker or Dove. Those are great examples of brand strategies that have a durability over time that were written in the context of how human beings will emotionally react to it and how different generations will react to the, uh, commitment that they have to their community. Right. The community of beauty in the case of Dove, or the community of democratizing access to eyewear in Warby Parker, or the Save Our Home Planet we talked about with Patagonia. REI does it as well. And so those are the examples we should look towards when we're thinking about brand strategy. That informs culture, that informs generational durability over time, that informs value and community commitment. And you can do that in just about any industry. And the other thing I would add to that, to make a long story longer, is that you've got your own authenticity to think about. Right. How did you, I mean, you should be questioning your own, uh, your own founders. If you're a private driven company or even a corporate, uh, company, many, uh, of which I've worked in, you have uh, the opportunity to talk to your founders. You have the opportunity to talk to what compelled them to start the business in the first place. What were the problems that they were solving? How can you show that in your thinking and your sort of your brand positioning long term so that when you do develop commitments, social commitments or community driven commitments or ways to position your brand in the context of human need, you are then creating great marketing that pulls all of that in. And you're not just engaging with them on the product or the service, you're engaging with them at a higher level. And that's when you're really cooking with emotion.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker D: Ah.

Speaker A: So many products are commodities, as in There's a million CRMs, there's a million social media networks, there's a million podcasts, there's a million consultants of every kind. And it's like there's nothing I teach or know that I'm the only one who knows. Right? Like, it's just, that's just not reality. Like I didn't invent anything that I do. And um, I'm the, There's certain things that I'm like first on or first ideas, but there's always other people that do the same thing. And why do people choose me over someone? It's because they like you, whether it's your brand or as a person. That's the thing, too, I think is really important as well, is to think. Well, often it's like the things that we. The challenges we face or the things we think are the least interesting are actually the things people like about us the most or the things that draw people to us, whether it's a challenge you've overcome. And I think that sometimes we have this idea, and I see this a lot, when brands switch from, like, emails to newsletters. Like a corporate. Like, when you get a newsletter at Christmas from, like, the family member who's like, here's our family update. You know, they said no one reads it because you sent everyone the same letter. Right? It doesn't feel personal, loses an element. Whereas it's like, who you more like every email from, like, the CEO of the company or the brand of the company. Like, I don't care what Nike has to say. Like, I'm, um, not. But like. You know what I mean? Like, it's just like, I don't want a brand's newsletter, but when it comes from a person. So there is an element of personalization and becoming like, yeah, what does this brand mean? What do they do? What did they not do? And starting to create that. And whether you're a small brand or a large brand, I think that's a really important step. Because even then, some things I think about a lot, the things that's very important to me is like, how AI is changing electricity, resource usage, earth metals, water. These are really important issues. And it's like, it's very interesting how all these brands that were very much like, hey, we're all about solar power, environmentalism, like, AI, all right, let's go nuclear. It's like, what? Wait a minute, right? It's like, that's, uh. It's so, you know, wherever you stand on the issue, it's like, I've just noticed a lot of people have suddenly switched their position on nuclear power very strongly because it's aligned with their profits, right? And, uh, it's like Microsoft just bought part of Three Mile Island. And talk about bad branding. Nobody, no one even got sick from Three Mile Island. But we think of it like Chernobyl. Nobody actually got hurt, let alone died. But we all think. I still think of it as a disaster, right? But that's why it's called the Three Mile island incident. It's actually a great testimony to a success because they Had a meltdown and nobody got hurt. That's a, that's a win. It's like, not, I remember it though, but we are seeing these shifts where brands kind of, uh, are like doing things that are not in alignment. It's like, you know, they're taking a lot of water away from like farms to put into AI things. Like, I'm not sure I love that. You know, like, you know, it's like, should AI cause food prices to go up, not really cool? Should it cause energy prices to go up? Not really great. But it's like we're kind of seeing this where it's such a fast moving market. We're seeing things that are causing brand inconsistencies. And if I'm noticing it, then other people are probably noticing it too. And it's like, well, I thought you stood for this. And now it's like suddenly, wow, now we have AI. And the thing I worry about a lot is that we're outsourcing certain elements of our, whether it's decision making or customer facingness to brands. Like, I always say that like, social media is like the warning sign before something goes bad. So like, if you are, if you have an AI watching your social media because that's where a customer will state, post their complaint first, wouldn't you rather catch it before it goes viral? When they complain the first time, wouldn't you rather find out, like, sometimes customers will email me, hey, this link is broken, or this page on your website is down. I'm always grateful because for every person who tells you 10 or 20, don't, I'd rather fix it for everyone because I've now fixed it for everyone else in the future. So if you're missing those messages, you might start messaging when your messaging is shifting off because you're not paying attention because the AI is doing it, you have it kind of filling this gap. And those are things that we're at same thing with customer support. It's like every, I ask everyone who wants to have AI customer support, I go, okay, great, let me ask you a question. You've called customer support before or have you ever talked to an AI chatbot and had a positive experience with someone else's AI chatbot? And they're like, no. I'm like, okay, so, but you want to do that to other people. Let's golden rule this one. Let's just do the same. And it's a, it's a challenge because it's so cool, it's so tempting. But then it's like Everyone who calls customer support is already somewhere on the angry spectrum. Nobody calls customer support because they had a great experience, because they're happy, right? They're upset about something. And so all you're doing is kind of making it worse and worse. And so these are some of the things I worry about, which is that we're replacing communication with AI, which is actually the most important part. There's so many other things you can optimize, right? And it's like, no, use that because this is important because. Exactly like you're saying, because what if your message is drifting from your customers or they think you're not sticking to your brand and you don't notice?

Speaker D: You know, I think when we're talking about AI, it's, it's, you know, with respect to brand and marketing in and of itself, right? There's so many different. At the end of the day, the sweet spot is AI plus human AI scales. Humans give it soul, right? You don't want to lose the soul of anything. At the end of the day, we're humans talking to humans. I don't care if it's a B2B type business that you're concerned about or a B2C. And I would argue that the world is now, uh, a C2B because consumers are making deep decisions and influencing, if you will, the future of brands, you know, more than ever, right? Partnerships, influencers, those types of things are becoming more and more important. So your soul, your brand becomes the guiding principle for everything you do. And all of us want to be more efficient. All of us want more time in our lives. All of us want to automate what should be automated. And data is a great example of that. And you talk a lot about data on your show and it's just a wonderful tool for your compass. But if you're not a human synthesizer into insights and creative pathways which are developed through a solid transformational brand strategy within your company, I'm speaking to company owners, founders, then you've got essentially a day to day marketing plan, right? You're just optimizing for who opens what or who does anything. I think performance marketing, if it taught us anything, it's that chatbots and you know, programmatic advertising and social has the potential, potential to be hollow but engaging, right? So there's some awareness, opportunity, but there's not a whole lot of recognition or retention because you're not reaching the heart and mind of your consumer or your business with whom you want to do business and with whom, I presume you would want to do Business with over time. So it's really, really important to go back to this idea that the sweet spot is AI plus human synthesis so that you can allow the tool to help you optimize, save time and scale while you're making the decision and being the soul of the brand, for lack of a better way to say it, right. So that you're behaving and communicating it, delivering value in that type of a consumer led world.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think that's so important because when we start to outsource decision making or we're not paying attention, right? When we're like when the cat's away, the mice will play, that's when you start to get caught up in the day to day and you start to post things that get engagement rather than give value. And you don't, you get a short term gain for a long term thing. And that's why companies, it seemed like to get around forever disappears that we make this mistake. And I think when I think of branding, I think of like I ran into someone one time, I was like, oh, it's nice to meet you for the first time. He was like, we've met before and he was so mad. And I was like, maybe you should be more memorable. Like maybe it's not my fault I've forgotten your brand. Maybe it's your fault that you haven't done something that's unique or interesting. And one of the things we see a lot is everyone like chases trends. So if everybody else is doing it, we should do the same thing, right? If everyone else has a social cause, we'll have a social cause. It's like, well that's not the same, right? It's like that's not the same meaning. It's like, well if everyone else, right, for everyone you sell, we give one away. We see a bunch of companies, right? One I forget, I think it was a shoe company or glasses or whatever and then everyone else copied it. It's like, well, it doesn't mean the same thing because it's like you're doing it because everyone else is doing it, not because you really believe it. And so you have this like hole in your branding, which is trend branding. And it can work in the short term and we're seeing this. A lot of businesses, right, they have a flash in the pan. But it's like if you want to be remembered, I think this is a critical lesson. I think it was an amazing episode because our audiences, all startup founders and angel investors and large brands and large companies that are thinking, how can we stay met, memorable when the rules are changing, when people are searching differently. People are using short form video and they're using AI and now they're talking to their watches. So the way we're behaving is differently and it's like well if you can remember the core C. Right. The rest of that stuff is just like you said, day to day or just strategy but the mechanics. Right.

Speaker D: Yeah, you start it. I think you always, if you're, if you're a leader, you have your mission, your vision and your values and if you don't, you should. Most large corporations do. I would encourage smaller companies to do the same thing. Mission. I think you just talked about one, I just want to respond to one. The um, and I think it's Warby Parker that does the buy a pair, give a pair. Right. I think they launched that as part of their early vision, their early mission to give back to the community. There's some authenticity to that. You actually have credibility to back that up. Nothing wrong with campaigns that fuel authenticity or genuine action. What we're talking about, what I think you were talking about as well, which is exactly right, which is this idea that people are out there kind of coming up with ideas to give back to the community or short term community driven projects or sort of signature style programs that, that, that run hollow because they're not, you know, they don't, they don't last a long time or they get pulled out of the market real quick. And people see through that in a consumer led world and particularly with this big bubble of Gen Z and Gen Alpha behind it coming forward. They are used to this, they grew up in a technology fueled world. Analytics, they understand data, they understand social, they're uh, a technology driven generation but they also can see right through businesses that are throwing things against the wall to develop some sort of CSR positioning. What I would argue is if you can do one thing, do it well. Go back to why you were starting this business in the first place and you'll be able to make messaging and invest in things and create a meaningful brand in the market that, that has more value to this generation than you will by just brainstorming community driven projects that come in and come out and come in and come out. And I think that um, getting back to AI, AI can help you with the correct discipline, bring your mission, vision, values through the lens of who you are and what you do and why it matters to a community that uh, in a much more efficient way because you are going to do all the things that you need to do in order to get out there and generate awareness and recognition. But you're going to do it with discipline. You're going to do it through the prism of you're going to have more time for creativity. So this is my optimistic view, uh, of AI. I do think it will for the right people who are concerned with a disciplined approach to marketing, to branding their products or services. I do think it will create more time. There are more tools, there are more ways in which we can get our products and messages out into the market. But it will also be really, really important not to let it get out of control, at least for now, and be, be uh, human with it and be disciplined.

Speaker B: Amazing.

Speaker A: That's such a great place to end. Thank you so much for being here, Ed. For people who want to learn more about what you do, maybe even kind of see if you can help them tighten up their branding, where's the best place for people to find you? Online?

Speaker D: You can find me. I work for Newport llc, which is a small boutique advisory with all C suite walked in your shoes. People who are concerned with growing and accelerating businesses. We uh, do it bespoke. We don't have any junior staff. So we're very focused on working in the business with you. Not on the business, but in the business. And we are also available with thinking around growth, uh, realization. So when it's time to exit or sell your business, we have people who have done that and can come in and help you with selling your business or exiting over a timeline that's reasonable for you and getting you prepared for that. So on the growth acceleration side we can help you grow. We can spot things in your business that uh, where we've got finance ex CFOs and CMOs and CEOs, people who've walked in your shoes. We've also got people who are investment banker background who can help you sell and exit your business if that's the case in the next two or three years. So we're versatile, we're bespoke and we're small and agile. So call me if uh, you'd like or contact me@newport llc.com. and my name's Edward Farley. You can also find me@edward farleyewportllc.com Amazing.

Speaker A: We'll put all that in the show notes and below the video for everyone watching. Thank you so much for being here today Ed, for an amazing episode of the Artificial Intelligence podcast. Thank you.

Speaker B: Thank you for listening to this week's episode of the Artificial Intelligence podcast. Make sure to subscribe so you never miss another episode. We'll be back next Monday with more tips and strategies on how to leverage AI to grow your business and achieve better results. In the meantime, if you're curious about how AI can boost your business's revenue, head over to artificialintelligencepod uh.com forward/calculator Use our AI revenue calculator to discover the potential impact AI can have have on your bottom line. It's quick, easy, and might just change the way. Think about your business while you're there. Catch up on past episodes, leave a review, and check out our socials.