'Something Big Is Happening' - THAT Article and This Generation's iPhone Moment w/ Chad Stoller, PMG

Speaker A: You know what's funny is that, uh, there's a tremendous stigma that's out there about using generative AI tools. I'm very fortunate that I work in a company where we ask each other, did you use this? And your natural reaction would be like, I didn't use a tool to generate these ideas. I didn't use a tool to generate this copy. Um, and then our response is, why didn't you?

Speaker B: Hi, and welcome to it's not the End of the World Everyday use cases for AI I'm going to open the show slightly differently this week. I would like to start by first giving you, uh, a top tip that's going to be a new feature, a new segment if you like, in the it's not the end of the world universe. Uh, so a top tip and then I want to reflect on some of the news that's been coming out around AI this week, the stuff that's been catching my attention, and then finally introduce you to our, uh, next guest. But first, a word from our sponsor. This show is brought to you by Quite Frankly Productions. Quite Frankly Productions is a video production company that does all tiers of video production, from small scale to full scale commercial productions, animations, and everything in between. We have offices all over the world, England, India and here in the US So we can service your production needs no matter where in the world you are. We plug into comms teams, marketing teams and PR teams. So if that sounds like you and you've got a vision that you want to see created, reach out podcast so they know who sent you and we'll make it happen. Back to the show. Welcome back. My next guest is Chad Stoller. Chad is the global head of media at, uh, pmg. PMG is one of the world's leading advertising and marketing agencies. And Chad's job, essentially, if I'm not butchering this too much, is to make sure that if clients have spent money building commercials and other advertising products, then he's in charge of making sure that as many eyeballs as possible are, uh, on those products. So it's a really interesting conversation to hear really how AI is being thought about in massive companies like pmg. But before we get into that interview, I wanted to share with you, as promised, my top tip. Take a screenshot of whatever you're working on and paste it into the chat box. Learn what the hotkey is to take a screenshot of your screen and what the hotkey is to then paste it into your chatbot of choice. And I promise you that is A superpower that will make everything so much easier. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and you are giving it all of that context. A thousand words worth of context in one picture. So that's my top tip. Um, all right, the next part is I wanted to reflect on some of the news of the week, which I think is relevant, to give some more context to this conversation. News with AI moves in huge waves, I suppose. And this week we've had everything from Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise fighting on a rooftop in the most incredible AI video that I've seen so far. You killed Jeffrey Epstein, you animal. He was a good man.

Speaker A: He knew too much about our Russia operations. He had to die. And now you die, too.

Speaker B: That model I'm talking about is Sea Dance 2.0. In case you haven't seen it, I highly recommend you checking it out. Um, but if the news hype machine is to be believed, it's had Hollywood execs with their knickers in a twist, because all of a sudden this Chinese company, Sea Dance 2.0, which doesn't seem to care about copyright, has its users prompting into existence videos of Marvel superheroes or Hollywood actors having these incredible action scenes that, uh, were just impossible only months ago. Jack, don't leave me. Rose. The second piece is this article called Something Big Is Happening. And me and Chad will, uh, will open the podcast talking about that article. Um, but since we recorded the episode, there's been so many different other, uh, reflections that I felt like I just wanted to contextualize this conversation before we jump into it. So the article is called Something Big Is Happening, and it's a developer, ah, essentially describing how he had the experience of finding AI's somewhat useful. And then all of a sudden, with a click of the fingers, he described the water was around his ankles, metaphorically. And then before he knew it, it was up around his chest, and he realized life had changed, um, and it was never going back. Now, coding can be done with an AI and no human really needs to write lines of code anymore. Now, of course, that was met with all sorts of different reflections. I will say that this article went super viral. And if you haven't seen it, I'll put it in the description of the show. It seems to have moved the conversation forward and people are really sitting up and taking not notice with various degrees of panic, uncertainty, or denial. Um, I just want to speak to the pushback that I have seen from all of the category that I would describe as denial. So I'm not going to Name any names as I read this out. But I think it just sort of describes the general hubbub. What I am noticing is that everybody seems to be converging on one general agreement summarized in this article here. So this writer says, I'm not saying this because I don't believe in AI. I think that AI is going to extremely important. I expect that it will end up being at least as important as the discovery of electricity or the steam engine. And there's a good chance it's the most important thing that humans ever invent. I think that the future is going to be very different from the past. What I seem to be seeing in the pushback is some people are like, okay, it's not going to happen next year that all jobs are gone. It might be more like five years or it might be more like 10 years. And, uh, I just think to myself, well, five years or 10 years in the grand scheme of things is not that long. So rather than splitting airs about how long it's going to take for this impending job apocalypse, perhaps we need to be discussing rather what the future looks like on the other side of this job apocalypse. Because I'm not seeing a whole bunch of conversation or discourse about what the future should hold or how we should structure our societies around this. Rather, I'm just seeing a lot of noise or pushback around what it means to produce human art or how this intangible thing is human, and that we're always going to need human laborers for that particular job. And I just think that that might be true. But what if it's not? What if what these guys who are working with AI are saying is true now? It might not come to pass, and that's fine. If it doesn't come to pass, well, then we're all going to get on with the fact that we're human and we have something undistinguishably great about being human, and there are jobs for everybody, as there always have been, and all the regular problems are going to remain. But it seems like there's a reasonable probability that things are going to change. So if that is the case, then I just feel like we should really be focusing on that part of the conversation. Anyway, that's just my two cents. All right. Chad is much smarter than I am, so let's hear what he has to say about it. You were saying, um, you were saying you read the article that I shared with you, and then you started seeing it going viral and getting passed around. What was it? What was it about?

Speaker A: Well, I Think what the article did is that without a lot of jargon, it's spoken a lot of common sense and it also basically met a lot of people where they were feeling. There's a lot of people who are just like, I'm going to just keep my head underneath this table for just a little bit longer and I'm going to be okay. And I think what the article did is the article was like, you could do that, but then you're going to be behind. And you know, what the article did so eloquently was that kind of spread out a very wide kind of radius or a wide aperture maybe of different types of industries that are out there that are going to be affected. And there's a lot of people who feel that if their knowledge is scaled so high, nothing is ever going to take their job and they're looking at it in a very near way. Uh, I'm going to outrun it and you're not going to outrun it and you're certainly not going to outrun it when the tools are building their own tools. It's only going to get more, it's going to get more exciting, it's going to get more frightening. But lastly, what it should be doing is getting people very excited about any idea that they've had. It's closer to reality than no matter how far they once thought that it once was.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, well said. I think the other thing that struck me about the way that he positioned AI in the article, um, and just in case I haven't done a good job of introducing this in the pre recorded introduction, I'm just going to say we're talking about this article that went viral a couple of days ago. We're recording this on February 13th, so listeners may have well have seen it. If not, I do recommend reading it. It was an article by a developer who works in AI. But as he puts it in the article, I am, um, not on the forefront. I see these models, these foundational models coming out of the labs, but before anyone else because we're building our product on top of those models. But I don't have any influence on how those models are built. And this article, uh, went viral. This developer, this, I guess, uh, entrepreneur working in the AI space as a kind of. I need to warn my friends and family that aren't taking this thing seriously. Now's the time to get serious. And one of the other things it said to add to what you've just already eloquently described, he said that the managers of the companies are, uh, experimenting with this technology not because they think, oh, I need to figure it out in order to be abreast of this tech, but rather, I need to figure it out so I can figure out if there's cost saving measures to be made further down the chain. And it is those more junior people that aren't using these tools that are going to suffer if they don't get their head around it.

Speaker A: What's funny is that, uh, there's a tremendous stigma that's out there about using generative AI tools. It's incredible. Um, I'm very fortunate that I work in a company where we ask each other, did you use this? And your natural reaction would be like, I didn't use a tool to generate these ideas. I didn't use a tool to generate this copy. Um, and then our response is, why didn't you? And there's this stigma and there's skepticism and all this other type of stuff. When the reality is. And one of the things that I think is really wonderful in that article is that you're talking about the managing director of a law firm who is like, I am using this and I'm cranking on it, and I see what it can do and I see how it can help me. But more importantly, this person at this law firm is now going to think differently about how they operate their company. Everyone's first reaction is to rush to replacement. Uh, it's not necessarily to rush to, like, how do I enhance my business? How do I reorganize my business? How do I change what it is that we do? Because now what happens is maybe you're a law firm that specializes in one to two to three primary areas of law, but you have people who have experience in other things, but you haven't been willing to make the investment. Maybe that investment is now sitting in front of you and maybe it's running at a software as a service rate versus as an employee rate. So there's so many different ways, you know, that you can start looking, you can start using these tools and just start exploring which way you want to go.

Speaker B: Yeah, I really want to underline that comment that you just made there. I mean, that's a pool quote that I will be using in my social media promotion, uh, of this episode. But I do think that, did you use AI to do this? Stigma is super real. And I love the reframing it of did you use AI to do this? And if they say no? Well, why didn't you?

Speaker A: Yeah, why didn't you? And it's funny because it's like, you know, there's. There is this. There's this perception out there that if you use generative AI, you're using it as a finished product. And it's like the one thing that we don't do is, like, we don't use it, and it's the end all. Uh, okay, let me ship. Let me ship this effort that I just did. Instead. It gets you started. Like, you know, we're, you know, for years, we've been talking about how generative tools are kryptonite for procrastination, like, doing work and starting something new. Like, okay, let me get my thoughts together versus let me react to something. And I always say that when you ask somebody to start something new, they're leaning back, right? Because they're trying to get their thoughts together and everything. But when you say to them, hey, I got this thing started. Can you react to this? And I can look at something and I could say, let's, let's add in this here, let's do this here, let's do this here. And it's so much easier to write on top of those art. You know, I call it writing on top of something. And most of the work that I use, it's for idea starters, idea generation. Uh, sometimes in the creative areas, if we're just looking to generate creative briefs, I sometimes use it to create a tool that somebody else is probably then going to use the generative tools to unpack and then come up with ideas. But it's quite funny the way that we use it. But I will also tell you that I'm, um, an organization that recognizes that every day, if we're not reinventing what it is that we do or just have that Kaizen effect, just that constant, keep iterating on something, make it to make it better. If you can make something 1% better today, then you're going to get maybe a 10% type of return. And we're an organization here where even our review system for the way that we review employees and do our employee retention programs and employee development programs, they are all set up so we can use generative tools for speed, but not only just for speed. So we remove the burden of, oh, my God, I'm going to spend a day doing this. It's now where you're leaning in and you're saying, I want to add some comments about this. I want to do this, this, I want to do that. Like, think about. Anybody who's going to listen to this podcast has suffered through writing a, uh, performance review. It's taxing and it's exhausting, right? And it's like, and then you're, there's all these things that you're going to forget. But if I told you you can start with like 10 to 12 bullet points and all of a sudden you're now reacting to something. Now you're like, oh, and I forgot what she did here and I forgot what he did here. And this is something that I remember is an area of development. You know, these are tools that are wonderful and like our employees would tell you that they feel heard, you know, because of the way uh, you know, we're using, we're using these tools and that's just like, that's like 1% of what we use those tools for around here. But you know, it's, it's one of these things where I have conversations with people and they're like, we would never do, we would never use that.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's fascinating.

Speaker A: It's not a replacement. It's, it's not a replacement. And that's the part where I think everyone is so mistaken. It's like it is not a replacement for a human being. It's not a replacement for an, for an existing process. It's not, it's not a replacement for some sort of sub routine that you do in repetitive tasks and things like that. It's an enabler and an enhancement.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I couldn't agree more. I mean there's various different routes I want to walk down here, but I'll start with just directly responding to that, not replacement. I will say that I, I sent my boss a bit of a five alarm fire, um, message this morning that was uh, you know, we are progressive as far as AI goes, but I still think there's some like, you know, we're a very small company and disparate users across the firm. You know, find the end of my message was I think we're in the, we are in the phase of the art in which AI is not going to replace people, but ah, people that use AI are going to replace people that don't use AI.

Speaker A: Yeah, a thousand percent. I could not agree with you more on that.

Speaker B: And that really became clear to me this week. And to circle back to the article, um, that we were talking about at the beginning, um, he opens, it's compelling because he opens with like a date stamp, you know, like Terminator 2, like August 1997. The moment before and the moment after Skynet launches, he opens up with a date stamp. As February 3rd is when Claude Opus 4.6 dropped. And, um, I don't know if you've used 4.6. Have you been experimenting with it yet?

Speaker A: So I have only used the latest model that is just available as the web application in Claude. I'm not a power user of Claude. I would. First of all, I don't think. I think anyone who calls themselves a power user of certain tools is probably. This is very ambitious and they're probably going to put themselves on the spot. I mean, I like to kind of distribute, and I'm very fortunate that I have pro accounts or at least access to pro accounts with most platforms. But I will say that I've been more intrigued by Claude lately, especially with everything that's been going on with the claudebot movement that's been dominating Twitter, uh, as well, which is just like, there's some real crazy shit that's out there.

Speaker B: So my cards on the table. I was always resistant to Claude started with ChatGPT, explored Gemini, and I just couldn't be bothered to have another subscription and another AI to kind of get my head around. It's a little bit like, I used to be a Sega Kid instead of a Nintendo Kid. And, uh, you know, you sort of. You were on your one platform, you know. Anyway, this week that all changed, really. You know, obviously been vibe coding just like the rest of them. And I thought, I thought, oh, vibe coding is the next big leap. And I will build apps for the company to handle things like estimates and sending out budgets to clients and, um, call sheets that they can use. And they're all going to look really branded and sexy as hell. And I will be on the forefront of this and it's going to give us an edge over our, uh, competition. I think everyone is sort of thinking about that. I think that's the common sort of expression at the moment, like, vibe coding is the thing. But I must admit, um, I then started working with 4.6 opus in spread, just making some spreadsheets, and I realized, like, I don't even know if you need to vibe code. Just the chatbot is. Everything that I've been doing for the last few months is, like, already obsolete. Because this chatbot is everything that AI has promised to be. And this is what's been giving me this existential moment right for the first time. So to give some more context, I'll just give you an. Illustrate it with the story of, of my week. So, um, we've got a really complex shoot with 11 locations all around the world, international Shoot, Right. And our, um, production manager, who's not particularly AI savvy, has been doing it traditionally in this spreadsheet. And because it's much more complicated than the average shoot that we do, it's been quite a complicated spreadsheet. And, you know, it just isn't. The spreadsheet just looks. It looks complicated and looks a bit sort of not, you know, not what a, uh, spreadsheet expert might produce. Right. And up until now, up until Claude, my experience with Claude, you couldn't rely on an AI to produce a spreadsheet reliably. It could do it, but it would look kind of formatted, weird. It would kind of be a bit crap. It would be anything you present to a client. Like the spreadsheet that I got, uh, I took this PDF that she had produced, put it into Claude, and what it created was as sexy as any spreadsheet I've ever seen. And the depth of formulas that it was able to produce, equally unrivaled, all just like lickety split. I then showed this to we room with another, uh, business owner, showed it to him, he works in, uh, commercial production. Showed it to him and he was like, oh, this is pretty great. Could we like create any interactive tools off the back of the, this spreadsheet? Yeah, maybe. Hey, Claude, can I create like a dashboard, uh, for this job, which has like sliders that shows me what happens if we up our production, uh, our production fee, if we up our, uh, change the exchange rate if we do this, if we do that. And also could you show me the profit and loss margins made on this job if we change certain elements? Claude's like, yeah, sure, no problem. Next thing I know, branded, unbelievable dashboard, you know, and then I'm like, okay, this looks unbelievably sexy. Claude, can I just export this as, ah, something that I can then send to the client as like a PDF export? And Claude's like, yeah, no problem. I mean, I was like, okay, I'm not even, you know, I'm the creative here. I'm not even the production manager. And I've just in, in like half an afternoon, I've just done what they were spending three days doing a minute ago. And it's, you know, also P.S. hey, Claude. Because they still hadn't figured out the travel expenses related to this, and the client wanted a separate travel expense document. Oh, by the way, Claude, can you just research, uh, all of 11 locations. Can you see how much flights would be on average, hotels and all the rest of it? Yeah, no problem. Bobby. And um, here it is, uh, in your spreadsheet currency conversions.

Speaker A: The difference between you and anybody else there is that you are the most optimistic. You know, there's a, there's people out there who would just be dismissive as an idea. Like the fact that you're going in and you're just like, you're like, you're not saying no, you're saying maybe, right? And you're, you're looking at something and you're like responding with like, hey, let's put some sliders on here. Hey, let's make a client facing view. Or like, hey, maybe we could turn this into a shared document. Hey, turn this into a template. Hey, maybe like why didn't you make it into an app? You just haven't gotten there yet. You know, it's uh, only a matter of time before you're just turning it into an app and you're exporting it somewhere and then you're going to throw a wrapper on it and then you could just do private distribution of it. And by the way, by the time we're done with this call, maybe that's already been figured out too and it's, it's ready to go and you're just going to start plugging in like you know, your credentials for a whole bunch of software compilers or SDKs or however that stuff eventually gets out of my league.

Speaker B: I think this is why I've been waking up at 5am m thinking about this since doing that spreadsheet. I mean as I say, I don't tend to feel very existential about this and I am very excited about the potential. But it was the first time, uh, uh, I'm certain that uh, within three months, six months, good ideas do actually spread adoption. You know, everyone got an iPhone within, you know what, like a couple of years. It was just everywhere because it was obviously useful and I think AI wasn't obviously useful. But this one, this particular shift I think is actually going to make the difference. And I think people are going to be, you, uh, know, using it, even the skeptics.

Speaker A: Yeah, I agree with you. And what's really funny is that I look at my, I've been in advertising since 1992 and in 1992 it was all about cable TV and print magazines and out of home sports. Basically that's how you spent your money and all that other stuff. And then when the world started coming online, and I like to kind of talk about commercial adoption of the Internet around 95, 96 when it was on the COVID of magazines and MTV was talking about the Internet and all this other stuff, you know, and people were like using online services, like america online to go trade emails and things like that. It was like, amazing thing. And then it was like ebay and you could buy anything you want and you can get a book delivered, you know, some, you know, within a week, right? It wasn't even. We weren't even at that era. And then, you know, then we got into like the social web area, right? And then that was like a whole other world where people talking to other people. And I was like, holy shit, what the fuck? You know, it's like I'm no longer controlling information anymore, right? But then when we hit kind of like the iPhone moment, like, whoa, I've never seen anything quite like that. One, as an individual, two, as somebody who has always been involved in various forms of innovation and emerging platforms. But three, even like the advertising business, because people were like, wait a second, people aren't gonna, you know, if you think it was bad for publishers who were thinking, people aren't gonna go to my websites anymore, what about the magazines that were out there? And they're like, wait a second, people are gonna buy my magazine now when they're going on a plane or they're going on the toilet or they' doing this.

Speaker B: You know what I mean?

Speaker A: It was like this whole thing. But the fact of the matter is that the iPhone still had one friction point, which was that it cost a lot of money, right? And not everybody could use it at once. And what I'm telling everybody that I work with now, and especially this can be kind of like this younger generation of employees and marketing technology and so forth. Um, and I always tell them, this is your iPhone moment. Don't fuck it up, right? This is your iPhone moment. You have to look at everything. You have to look at everything. Everything is possible. No one is an expert. There are some people who are definitely a lot smarter than you about this, but that comes from experience and it probably also comes from skill. Like, there's a lot of developers out there who are like, it's one thing to use these tools to just like, you know, hey, make me an itinerary to go to London, and then I want to make turkey chili, and then how do I get six pack abs? Anybody can do that. But it's about knowing how to prompt these things. Like, you know, image generation was one. You're, you know, you're in the art of production, right? You know, I'm sure you've prompted Higgs Field and you prompted all these other tools to just like, generate like a whole bunch of stuff. And it's hard, but you know how to prompt it, right? Where you're talking about lenses, you're talking about lighting, you're talking about blocking, you're talking about angles, you know, you know how to do all. So that's where skill is a layer on top of it. But now, when it comes to everything that we're seeing with coding, everything is possible. It's just absolutely everything is possible. And the thing that I always, always think about with this era, when I compare it to the iPhone era, is that in the iPhone era, nobody knew how to make an app. It basically was like when the first year of the iPhone, before the App Store, there were efforts all around the world of people just trying to reverse engineer, like, how they can build an app that would leverage the camera, the compass, the gps, all of this type of stuff. People were just trying to figure out how to do this stuff. It wasn't even documented. It wasn' anything like that. Then the App Store came, xcode came. There was the frameworks for how to build apps, and then there was app distribution and all this type of stuff. But the fact of the matter is that that whole era is kind of gone. You don't need that anymore. Now you need to have an idea. So in a way, sometimes the real winners in AI are going to be who has the best idea and who can express it. And that's why I love what you were saying before. Anything is possible. So it's like, I love it when there's my friends or my peers in the industry or my colleagues here. Nobody ever says anything anymore, can't be done. They're just like, let me try and figure this out. I had this crazy moment this summer. I was with a bunch of peers of mine in the industry, and we were at a baseball game. We're in Wrigley Field in Chicago. We were in Chicago for an industry event and I'm, um, with just a couple of people and we were all talking about there's never really been a good app just to stamp your phone that basically says, this is another ballpark I've been to. Because when you're at Wrigley Field, you're always talking about, have you ever been to Wrigley Field? Where else have you been? And stuff. And we were passing around my phone, which was logged into lovable. And everyone was just adding into the app. And we had this absolutely amazing mobile app that was like, you know, at the Logos of every team. It pulled up the data from the game that you went to. You know what I mean? And it told you who the winning pitcher was. It was funny. We're just passing it around while we're drinking beers and sitting in Wrigley Field. And then we lost interest.

Speaker B: Right. Uh, okay.

Speaker A: But the funny thing is that if that was 2000, Chad Stoller, I'd be out there, you know, trying to talk to Major League Baseball, trying to figure out if there was, uh, somewhere I can take this business and put it somewhere. But it's like the fact that anything is possible is the biggest, like, it's that blow your mind moment, you know?

Speaker B: That's so true. It's hilarious. There's so much you said there that's really interesting. First, I just wanna understand the lovable thing, right? So I haven't actually played around with lovable. I've heard it. Heard it. Wait. I wanna understand how you were passing it around on your phone and getting people to prompt it.

Speaker A: I was just logged into my lovable account on my phone, and people were just adding more prompts into it and that. And that's all. And then I was like, so lovable.

Speaker B: It produces a preview of your app live.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's a lot. It's a vibe coding app. And, um, you get a preview of everything. It is. But it was just like we were doing it in the most clunky way. And it was. All of us were just like, have you ever tried it? And everyone. And like, I think three of us had used it, two people didn't, and it was just. Or hadn't used it yet. And so we were just playing around with it. I love that.

Speaker B: That's so fun. It was just, um. But.

Speaker A: But it was just, like, so fun, right? And it was just like. But the thing about it is, it's just like. And it's like, okay, it's exciting, exciting, exciting. And then you're like, eh, whatever. You know? Because it was like, well, yeah, it was like, I gotta get an Uber now. You know? So it was just like, we gotta go find a cab and get out of here.

Speaker B: It's true. It's this weird. It's this weird dichotomy. So I had the same experience of like, so I'm building this, like, estimate app, uh, for the company, you know, again, uh, blown away that I could do it, you know? Oh, my God. I've got an AI assistant in there. This AI assistant can take the job that you're working on. And it can build out a budget for you and it looks really premium and it's really quick and wow, this used to take us forever. Now I can do it in 10 minutes. And as you say, there's this bit of me because I was kind of ahead of the curve, right? I'm one of. You know, my developer friends were all vibe coding, but I didn't know of any like, regular joes vibe coding. And so I'm like, well, can I market this product? Is this a product or. But I know how easy this is. Like, this was so easy for me to do. It's too easy. It's too easy for. And so this weird feeling of like, well, this is. Cause it's so easy. It doesn't feel like something I can sell because surely everyone else who is, uh, in the same, has the same problem can just solve it as easily as I solved it, you know, and it's hard to know.

Speaker A: Well, there's something, something that I always think about is that, uh, one of my close friends, um, a friend of his, she was this, she's a wonderful photographer. And this goes back to kind of like the era of peak Social and Flickr was still a real place where everyone was getting together, sharing their photos and things like that. And she takes these incredible still lives. And all of a sudden there's this woman who starts messaging her on Flickr and asking her questions about her lighting and asking her some questions about some tabletop, uh, setups and things like that. And they're going back and forth, going back and forth. And then this person asks her, she's like, by the way, uh, what equipment are you using to photograph these? Like, I'm very curious about your lens, your lens and light setup. And she's like, I'm using my iPhone. She never heard from the woman again. And the woman was a, was a professor of an MFA program at like an Ivy League school. It was like this whole thing about like, just because you don't know how to use the equipment or you, you going back to like, what you're saying, it's like you're an expert in something like this, but yet you got away with doing something that had like, low cost of entry, low cost of knowledge, et cetera, et cetera. But it's still, at the end of the day, it's the still same product. And that's what people are going to have to get over because it's like, just because you don't have the mastery of the skill and the tools, you still thought about it you still identified the need. You built it because you know that you needed it. Okay. Which any entrepreneur would tell you, well, if you have a problem, there's a good chance somebody else does. And the fact is, you need somebody else. Your entire company doesn't have to mean that you're building a solution for 5 million people. You could be building a solution for 5 people if it makes your team better.

Speaker B: Yeah, well, absolutely. I mean, that is, I, uh, think that's to some degree the future I see is sort of democratization to such an extent that the next generation of, uh, workers and maybe this generation, I don't know. But the people that are going to succeed are going to be the people that learn how to just solve their own problems by building an app or whatever application to do it. But where the dust settles. I mean, you know, I've heard the kind of vision from some, uh, tech people that, you know, our, uh, whole operating systems are going to change and it will just be an AI that just conjures up an application that you need to solve the problem and then disappears again when you don't need it ever again. Um, you know, and who knows? Until it all settles, it's hard to know exactly where the kind of products that a good idea can build, you know, come from or land or mature.

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, look at what you've already built with your estimator tools and your project management, your spreadsheet type thing. And I know the kinds of spreadsheets that guys like you put together, they're very cumbersome. There's a lot of details and things like that. And you also have a lot of your variable cost indicators, like for overtime and things like that. But if you start thinking about what are the three other things that you're going to build, because I'm sure in your head you're already like, we should build something for this, build something for this, build something for this. But it's like, can your entire business now open up, up just with a voice prompt or a text box? Like that's going to become, in a way, the future of your, your platform for your company. Your company is gonna, is, you know, the interface for your company is gonna be a text box. It's crazy, you know?

Speaker B: Yeah, totally. And it does feel like that's the kind of interface for almost everything is gonna be some sort of text box at some point in some form or another. I want to circle back. I want to circle back. You said that this is going to be the iPhone moment. I wasn't sure. If you were talking about your employees that you, um, that you work with when you say the iPhone moment, or your clients that you're advising.

Speaker A: I think. Yeah.

Speaker B: But before, before you answer that question, let's give our listeners some context about who you are and, uh, you know, really kind of introduce you, give you the introduction that you deserve.

Speaker A: Yeah, sure. So my name is Chad Stoler. I've been in marketing, advertising and technology, and mostly around the development of emerging platforms for over 30 years. I currently work for a marketing and transformation company called pmg, which is an independent company that's based in Fort Worth, Texas and Dallas. We, uh, have offices around the world, and I'm based in New York.

Speaker B: Great. All right. And, um, so just drill down a little bit more on what your role is, what the service is, the product that you provide is.

Speaker A: So my role at PMG is to lead our media teams. And so those are media teams that range from everything from, uh, search and social marketing all the way to television, out of home influencer, affiliate, and so forth. So I oversee all of our channels and what my job is to make sure that all of those teams are operating kind of with a vision as to where things are going, understanding where all their threats are, and just working with our customers in order to just make sure that they're operating in the most effective ways possible. So we tend to use media as a growth driver for our customers. We're also very much, uh, really hyper, hyper focused on the performance of our marketing efforts in terms to truly drive business transformation. And business transformation for us could mean what more can you yield from your marketing? It's one thing to set products, but what are the consumer insights that start driving your next generation of products or your next generation of experiences? And then at the same time, how do you just, you know, deploy overall marketing improvement? So a big part of my job is working with a lot of emerging platforms and emerging consumer trends. I'm somebody who has always believed that media companies that focus especially on media, okay, who have a real specialty like pmg. At pmg, we do everything right. You know, we'll work on everything from your brand, we'll work on all of your creative and your advertising and again, like your influencer programs and things like that. But a real strength of us is are basically our capabilities around media, especially around performance media. And I'm a big believer that every year you have more innovation. Right. I mean, it's just a natural thing because in a world of where there's so much competition for attention, everyone's always innovating, there's always something, there's always something new that you have to worry about and so forth. But the things that I like to really, really spend most of my time on are what are those truly, truly attention robbing platforms. So eyeballs that are, you know, everyone wants to follow the eyeballs, right? So the eyeballs, when they go from here to here, I like to understand the, from the, to all the steps in between, who are the players that are going to be there and what are the opportunities that marketers can leverage. So when we go back to the iPhone moment, the iPhone moment was really

Speaker B: about before, before you hit us with the iPhone moment. I want to, I do want to come back to that, but I want to make sure that, you know, I can break all that down for layman's terms and just really appeal to like the wide and varied audience we've got here. Essentially, you are charge of ensuring that, uh, the marketing dollars that are spent, the marketing products, uh, adverts, commercials, banner ads, you name it, that they are being as effective as possible by being displayed in places where the most people will see them or the right demographic of people will see them.

Speaker A: That's exactly it. That's exactly. And my job is to make sure that based on the objective of a brand. So whether it's brand building for brand health, brand equity and so forth, or long term memory of a brand. So maybe not something you're going to buy today, but six months from now, maybe you're going to buy, take care of that. But then at the same time, if you're somebody who is in market and you have demand, it's up to my teams just to make sure that we're capturing our fair share of that demand.

Speaker B: Okay, let's return to that iPhone moment then. So you gave us that anecdote earlier about like the AI is the iPhone moment of this generation and you expressed that, um, to, to the prospective people that you were, uh, speaking to that they should make sure that they don't miss the iPhone moment because nobody understands this new technology but there's an opportunity there because nobody understands it. You too can figure it out and take advantage of that. Who are you addressing that to? Who do you say that to?

Speaker A: Well, so it's interesting when you're at the central point of a marketing ecosystem and so that could be the actual customers, it could be the media publishers and it could be the people who are consuming ads. You have to look at all three of them and understand what are the advantages of Something like, how does AI benefit them, but how does AI threaten them? So it's obvious the first real victim of this space is publishers. Publishers that have been scraped by all of these platforms. And there's a lot of information that's like, let's just call it, I call it to use this word, but it's like fixed information or dead information. Book reviews, movie reviews, old news, biographies, things like that. Things that are lived in Wikipedia. Like if you play video games for instance, and you're ever stuck somewhere and you search for how do I get through this level? Right, you're no longer jumping to a publisher site anymore. All of that stuff lives in what we call a zero click environment. The place you search, you get your answer, you're gone. There used to be a time where that publisher spent a lot of time writing that content, optimizing that content so that then Google would index them and then send the traffic their way and then they could show ads and they would make money. That business is really, really in a world of hurt right now now. So that's publishers. Customers are now in a situation where they have always been in a place where they've had a say in how people discover their product and how people describe their product. And then hopefully that people are going to go to their websites where they can lure them in through a customer experience and merchandising, where people will understand things. Instead, people are going directly to these sites and they're just typing in like I'm in the market for a new 65 inch television and what can you tell me? Right? And opinions are being formed before the brands have ever had a say. So brands now have to understand what are the new selling dynamics that are going then these platforms themselves are now realizing we certainly a lot of traffic advertising. While, you know, it's not necessarily, you know, a hundred trillion dollar business, you know, it's big, it's big. And you know, and when you have a lot of attention, you can monetize that attention. And any platform that's ever had a lot of attention, they monetize it with ads. So it's only a natural time before you're going to see ads in a variety of different, um, search platforms. They're running now. OpenAI is running ads right now. Perplexity, a year and a half ago ran ads. They're all trying to figure out exactly what should the ad experience be? And not only what that ad experience can be, but more about how will users respond to it. It because we're talking about something that's very, very different when it comes to advertising because something that I think is really, really important for people to understand and you're seeing it now, which is every platform is talking about how they're going to protect the user, they're not going to share their data with advertisers and they're going to limit performance and all this other stuff and limit identity and all of these things and they're saying all the right things. Things. Because it's one thing when you're on a social platform and you start looking at sailboats and the platform's figuring out Bobby likes sailboats, here's some sailboats, here's some ads for sailboats. Maybe sailor apparel, maybe something, um, maybe a trip to go on a cruise, you know, like all this type of stuff, right? That's fine. And you're comfortable with that. And like, you know, we used to say our phones are listening to me and all this other stuff, but it's like they're capturing your interests. But what worries me and what should worry parents is people put into these agentic search platforms some real serious information, right? It starts off with what's the best 65 inch TV can I buy? Or you know, I'm packing for a trip and stuff like that. But as people start breaking their muscle memory and stop going to Google and they start using these platforms, they start like hearing what they're seeing and they start developing a relationship with these platforms, platforms. And I don't think I'm too far off when, you know, we, we talk about the, you know, the horror effect of AI, people start to develop relationships with these people. And they're not always personal relationships. They're trusted relationships between a human and a platform. So when you start seeing those charts that come out about how human beings interact with platforms, you see therapy start climbing and with. And to me, that's a proxy for people putting in some personal information. So what's going to happen is, is that when people start putting in like, hey, how do I know if I'm losing my hair, right? How do I know that, you know, maybe I, maybe, um, how do I know if my wife is cheating on me? How do I know? You know, like, give me what, uh, do I ask a divorce lawyer? Like, like, like putting some serious shit out there. And so some people are going to start reacting to ads and be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait, what's going on here? What does this thing know? Because I remember the last time I tried something, I started seeing all these sailboats, right? It's kind of like, I mean, and when you look at ad targeting now, there's like, you know, there's a lot of stuff that's going on where there are some people who look at something as magic, and then other people think there's something that looks that's going on. Like, I can't tell you how many times I've purchased a gift for my wife from a, ah, D2C brand. And then three hours later, okay, I've seen a retargeting ad on YouTube while we're watching TV, you know, that night. And she's like, oh, my God, I love this. And I'm like, well, that surprise is gone, right? Because, by the way, that platform, it's not because they know that you didn't buy it. They want you to buy more from the brand, but they're not even putting it together that it was a gift and that you don't want the other person to see it. But lastly. But it's also true because the platform can't distinguish which human being was behind that IP address or that browser based on the data that they have or they don't have. I'm just saying there's a lot of reasons why something like that happens, but the fact of the matter is that going back to the point, is my phone listening to me? Consumers are hip to advertise. They understand how it works.

Speaker B: Well, bust that myth for me. Uh, while we've got you on that subject, you know, you're in the space. Is our phone listening to us?

Speaker A: No, it's not. I can assure you that it's not. What I can assure you is, okay, is that ad tech moves much faster than you even think. Right. And at the same time, you know, people think their phone is listening to them, but people don't listen to themselves. The way people talk about products and talk about experiences that they like and talk about their interests, it's out there. These people just don't hear themselves talking about it. They're leaving signals all over the place. But ad tech does move really, really fast to bring a lot of data together.

Speaker B: I appreciate you busting that myth, and I want to just make sure that people understand, uh, understand your credentials you are literally in charge of. If a person Google something, you are adjacent to that world in which if someone Googles something, that your job is to make sure that your client's advert for that thing that was Googled appears on the next platform that that person is on. So. So the case that there was some way to listen to Your potential customers, then you would know about it.

Speaker A: Think. I think the platforms would tell you they don't need to listen to you. I think they really would. I mean, it's amazing. You know, you look at the algorithms of TikTok and Meta, uh, and even YouTube with like, how quickly, like, I can't tell you how many times I've started vanilla YouTube accounts and it's only a matter of time before they just find me, you know, like new IP address, new device, new this. They figure, they figure things out super quickly. There's, uh, there's a lot signaling that comes in from. But they're not listening to your phone, they're not listening to your voice on your phone, but they're listening to your phone. You know, they, they know where you are, your location tells a lot. You have the same interest and you show up in the same place as your previous device. Lots of times they start figuring it out.

Speaker B: Okay, so it's already pretty eerie the amount of information they can get and how they can target us. But it does feel like a step change when you move into this, uh, world of AI personal assistants, slash, slash, you know, almost therapy, uh, kind of, uh, agents that we can chat to. And to your point, yeah, you can imagine a very dystopian vision in which I have confided in my AI that I was bullied when I was on a boat as a kid. And then later on, the AI is leveraging my insecurities about the thing that I was bullied about in order to sell me that holiday to, um, you know, that yachting holiday, uh, to get over my bullying. Get over your bullying experience, Bobby, by, um, going on facing your fears, I mean, and I'm sure it would be much more subtle than that, but, yeah, that instinctively feels unethical somehow.

Speaker A: But at the same time, there's people out there who spend a decent amount of money, sometimes co funded by insurance, sometimes they're not where they're paying for therapy. And the reason why they're paying the premiums for therapy is to have somebody who knows who they are in a historical fashion. So somebody is like, hey, remember you're talking to your therapist who maybe has been working with you for 10 years. And they're always going to bring things back in the context of your memory. So in a way, sometimes these things are super helpful because they're giving you context.

Speaker B: Well, I'm not dispute, I'm not disputing the like, I actually think AI is fantastic possibilities around therapy, but I don't want my Therapist to then start selling me products. You know, I'm always ask, debating with my wife, who's from a family of therapists, you know, like, how do you, like, navigate the kind of conflict of interest of the therapist, then saying, oh, maybe we should see each other twice a week, because, you know, that's obviously they need to get paid. And how do you know whether or not you can trust your therapist when they say, maybe we should upscale to twice a week? Now, if my therapist is also trying to sell me a sailing holiday and also maybe some Nike trainers, sneakers.

Speaker A: Well, there's, uh. Have you seen the Claude commercial that's running right now where they're essentially, uh, showing you that.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I haven't seen the therapist version of it.

Speaker A: Uh, you should see the therapist. One therapist. One is the best of the bunch. How do I communicate better with my mom?

Speaker B: Great question. Improved communication with your mom can bring you closer.

Speaker A: Or if the relationship can't be fixed, find emotional connection with other older women on Golden Encounters, the mature dating site

Speaker B: that connects sensitive cubs with roaring cougars.

Speaker A: What would you like me to create your profile? But, you know, it is going to be interesting. Like, it's only a matter of time. And I'm sure the article's already out there. I just haven't, you know, I've never put it together to go look for it and just understand, like, what are the profound effects of this? Because what's going to happen is there are going to be a lot of people who are going to basically say, you know what? Maybe I'm not going to lean into therapy as hard as I possibly have. There's a lot of happy, stable people that are in therapy, right? And they go because it's consistent. Uh, it's a safe space to express how they feel about significant others, how they feel about their children, how they feel about their job, how they feel about the world. It's a place where people who might not share their views on politics go to somebody who they just know they can have a safe conversation. There might be some people who are just like, you know what? I'm doing this and I'm paying $200 a week, and I go twice a month for 400 bucks. I can get a cloud account or an OpenAI account for 20 bucks.

Speaker B: Sucks.

Speaker A: I'm going to get the same type of thing. I'm not trying to say that's exactly what's going to happen, but things are going to erode, and that's going to be an industry that's going to be Affected the same way, going back to the original article we were talking about with lawyers, lawyers and accountants and things like that.

Speaker B: Couldn't agree more.

Speaker A: Uh, and the part that's also interesting is somewhere right now, someone's just uploading a W2 or 1099 into OpenAI and just being like, tell me what uh, to fill in, in my taxes. And I'm sure it's doing a great job job. Right? That's some pretty good information that they have right now. They have. This is, this is the type. Would you put that into Google? Like, I'll ask you, like, right now, pretend we didn't have this conversation where it's like, I'm giving you, like, my, my skepticisms in some areas. But if I was to say to you, you can go to Google and upload this, you go to a platform that doesn't have advertising yet, which one are you going to upload it to?

Speaker B: Yeah, well, definitely my chatbot. And when you say go to Google, do you mean by use as a Google search?

Speaker A: Yeah, but at the same time. Well, here's another question. It's like Google has Gemini, okay, so now there's Google Gemini with a history of advertising, okay, on one side, and then there's OpenAI or Claude that. Or okay, OpenAI now is advertising or Claude, which one do you want to give it to?

Speaker B: Well, yeah, I mean, I think Claude is absolutely right because it has claimed that it won't take my data and sell my data. Well, you know, but then I think also I'm a paying user. Uh, my last guest made the point, you know, if you're not a paying user, you are the product. And, you know, I can turn off the toggle that says, now, whether or not I trust that toggle, I don't know. But the toggle that says, I, you know, we won't use your data for training purposes. I can turn that on. Uh, yeah, I would. I personally would and do use it to help with kind of certain, uh, financial and tax situations or filling in difficult forms like, hey, you know, and it's bloody amazing. But I could see why there would be misgivings and so express the misgivings that you're trying to articulate here.

Speaker A: I feel like, you know, when it's one thing for you to be profiled for your demographics, it's another thing to be profiled for your psychographics, but it's another thing when somebody knows some real. Like when, when the precision of that information, now, now it, it goes away from it just being advertising. It goes away to being something that's secure for you that you might not want other people to figure out. And. Yeah, so it's just something. I just use it as an example, you know, lots of times where it's like, you know, right now you wouldn't think to do something like that. But after you, after you start building trust with one of these, and you start by just hear some like, hey, help me understand. Help me plan a trip. And then it's like, help me understand this. Help me with this business project I'm working on. And then you're like, you're like, why, you know, why is my. Why does my son hate me? You know what I mean? It's like you should be the conversations start moving into this place where then you're just like, you might just start just giving it a lot of information. This is my mortgage. This is my, you know, these are some of my financial statements. Here's my pay style.

Speaker B: Yeah, totally. And I mean, because you also.

Speaker A: But Bobby, the thing I was going to add is you're in a situation where the more you give it, the better it's going to be.

Speaker B: This is it. It's the m. Multiple layers of leverage if you can't trust them to use it in some sort of disciplined, ethical way. And it's naive really. I mean, it's naive to think that they will use it in an ethical way without regulation catching up with them unless there's a market for it. Now what will be interesting to see is the effect of Claude's campaign at, uh, the super bowl and whether or not not, you know, the market responds to that. And I mean, it seems to be responding to that. I don't think it's responding to that for that reason. I think it's responding. The market's responding because Claude's just kind of the imagination of the world has ignited off the back of their most recent tools. But I am optimistic that that will also be a part of it. And you point out very clearly, I think, and compellingly how important it is that the market does reward companies that, uh, are, ah, ethical with our, uh, data and don't try and use it to sell to us because it is so goddamn useful. The more it knows about you, the more context it has, the better it is as an assistant. And it makes me think about AI27. Did you see the report? The AI27 report?

Speaker A: No. No.

Speaker B: So it's a real. It was like a. Maybe released six months ago by um, you know, again, it was kind of like A doomer kind of vision of where we're going to be in 2027. And I mean so far we're on track. Um, but, um, but one of it, I think by 2027 he sort of thinks that we will have systems that ah, are just so useful that we are all just giving in at this point and that uh, even the people who are the naysayers just can't kind of, they no longer care, can find any real credibility because the uses are so positive. And it just seems completely uh, ludicrous not to just give it all your information and have it give you the massive advantage that you have in using it versus someone who's not using it. And in this report that is then the kind of. It's quite a gloomy outlook. It predicts that uh, beyond that we're on for a collision course with some existential problems. But um, you know, giving over all of your data and information is kind of one of the stepping stones towards this because you just can't, you can't m. Not because you know that I can get a financial advantage because I'll know where to invest my money because I've told it, ah, you know, this is my financial situation. What do you think I should do? Right, Et cetera.

Speaker A: Well, and it's also, you know, don't, don't discount the fact that what's made a lot of these companies super powerful has been all the data that's been, they've been able to harvest in exchange for your participation.

Speaker B: Patient.

Speaker A: Right? So it's kind of like uh, there's this really, really great book. Have you heard of? Um, there's a book, it's called the Sirens Call, which is by Chris Hayes, who's a MSNBC anchor. It's a really great book. It's basically about the history of attention and kind of like the current state of attention. And what he talks about is, he talks about how a lot of the platforms have kind of like manufactured, manufactured tricks to generate attention from you, you know, and so like one of the things they often talk, they talk about in there is how meta, uh, made a decision at some point where you would upload a photo and if you didn't tag somebody it would then suggest, did you mean to tag Bobby? Right? Now it's not your intention to give you that dopamine hit, right? To give you that attention, right? It's the platforms. The platform is saying, hey, can I borrow you you to generate attention from Bobby so I can get Bobby to come here, right? Like all of that, you know, you know what I'm saying? There's like a lot of stuff. So all of these platforms are going to look to create these tools just to keep you stickier and stickier because the more that you're there, the more you're going to give it, the more you're going to give it, the more attention it's going to generate for you. And like there's an article that came out uh, this morning, I don't know where it is, I think it in the Times about how Meta wants to essentially start using facial recognition in their glasses. So when I walk by you on the street, it's like, hey, that's so and so who you know, right? And it's coming across as like, hey, it's going to help you identify people who you know, which sounds great, helpful, a little creepy. Or is it going to just like start capture all the faces that you've seen around here and build this incredible database of more people. So, and if you think about it, then all of that stuff will be mined by its AI tools. Tools, right? It's AI data sources and things like that. And then all of that stuff is going to make things even stickier and stickier and stickier. So it's um, what these companies crave. They want more input from you and they're going to give you, they're going to reward you for that input. And so it's like, that's why, it's like when some platform earns your attention so much, you're not going to think twice about what you give. Always reminds me, it's like, you know, in the early days of the web, you know, when M used to work, this guy used to say, you know, he used to lead ecrm. An ECRM is kind of like, it would be like, we know who are, who your user website users are, right? And this guy was like, yeah, I worked in CRM before. CRM was cool because it used to be like the most boring. Like marketers, you know, they basically send you mailers and postcards and direct mail and stuff like that anyway, but the fact of the matter is we would ask people for their email address and they'd be like, no way. Or you'd ask them for their home address, they'd be like, no way. And then we say, we'll give you a dollar off and they'd be like, here you go. You know, and it's kind of like absolutely amazing how people will be incentivized for things like that. And now we've made the leap where we're like, tell us all about you and we'll give you $5 off like some subscription supplement company. Right. And then people are like, blah, blah, blah. And by the way, here's my credit card information for a company you've never heard of. Right. But they just trust it. Cause they see the credit card logos and things like that and then they like, they cancel, cancel it. But it's like, oh, you're not canceled. We know who you are, we know how to re engage you. You've now tried the product. Right? I know how to get you back in. Uh, it's all this type of stuff. So it's kind of like we're in this evolution where there is this evolutionary kind of like, I don't know what the right word is, but it's like we're just assuming that these companies know a lot about us. We're more than happy to give them information in exchange for a good service. Service and that, and that's, and, and these platforms are going to earn it because right now they are. You know, right now there's some kid out there who's 14 years old, just like wrote a history essay for him.

Speaker B: You are describing the kind of, the perverse incentives that come from our current trajectory of capitalism. Meeting product, meeting consumers that can be leveraged for more, uh, profit.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So with that bleak kind of, uh, description out there on the table, what can we as consumers do about it, or as, you know, societies to inoculate ourselves against what is an uh, obviously massive market force that right now these AI companies are kind of providing a product that to some degree is somewhat innocently just useful. That innocence is starting to fade. Obviously. OpenAI's advertising shift is perhaps one of the key, key obvious markers of that. But what can we do?

Speaker A: Well, I think what consumers have to do is consumers are going to need to do a little bit of work, which is very ambitious.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: And I will say that there's been a really, really kind of like good efforts from a lot of people in the advertising industry of just explaining upfront about what ad policies are, what data policies are and things like that. And I think OpenAI is doing it the complete right way way. First of all, the advertising is only available on free tier. Right. Like, so it's, it's only available in the free tier and the lowest paid tier. So that's the first thing. The second thing is they're basically explained to you within one click that none of your data is shared. All this stuff is Here. And lastly, the way that they're targeting ads, the ads are so much more contextual than personal. Right? They're, they're, the ads are, hey, you're in market for or an uh, off road vehicle and you want to, you know what I'm saying? So it's like it has something to do with Bobby living in New York, working in production, you know what I'm saying? It has nothing to do with that. So that's the first thing, they have to pay a little bit of attention. The second thing, and this is the thing it's like I would never do, but it's something I'm paying a lot more attention to is pay more attention to legislation of uh, what's going on. Figure out what politicians are being, are in the pocket of some uh, of some of these companies. And then the third thing that I would say is that be careful what you put in. Be careful. You know, if it's something that, you know, you don't want to come back, you don't want it to come back to you because you don't want people selling you products or understanding things about you or God forbid, like if we want to be super doomsday, you don't want to go apply for health insurance 10 years from now and then all of a sudden something is in your way from getting that health insurance. Be careful about what you share, you know, with unsecure, with unsecure partners. And so in that particular case it could be if you're going to share some data about yourself with a partner that's going to, data to uh, inform interests about you as a potential, you know, advertising subject. Don't share that data.

Speaker B: M. Very interesting, very interesting. Um, and concerning, uh.

Speaker A: Yeah, but it's, it's, it's evolutionary. It's just like, you know, we, we've been through these patterns before, you know, um, it's, it's, it's just like you got, we just got to start paying attention to it because the part about it I uh, always just go back to it. It's like sure, people share a lot of intimate moments with social media, but that's one to many people, you know what I'm saying? The relationship that you have with these platforms are one to one and when you have a one to one relationship with somebody, you're going to share a lot more faster and it's going to be deeper information.

Speaker B: Yeah. And could be quite vulnerable. And uh, that's the bit that we're, I'm certainly the piece of this conversation that has given me food for thought or the bit that I would like to apply pressure in the right direction to avoid having happening for me personally is around whether one of these platforms can leverage vulnerable and personal information about me to exploit essentially for their own good. So that's something to uh, to think about. But I don't want to end on that gloomy note. Uh, this is now the quick tips part of the podcast. It's a fan favorite. Uh, we've got double digit fans around the world that are m, that watch the podcast and listen to it. So um, what I would love to know is I'm going to give you three uh, three categories I want you to respond to. The first is a general piece of advice for someone using an LLM, uh, or you know, if you'd like to branch out into a different tool that you think would be worth sharing about, please do. The second is a personal uh, superpower or hack like a ah, prompt or a way of prompting or you know, a uh, feature that might be less well known that you have discovered to be a uh, fantastic way to use uh, one of the, one of the platforms. And finally a fun or unexpected use case.

Speaker A: So I think I have uh, two and three, uh, what was the, what was the first one? The first one?

Speaker B: General piece of advice.

Speaker A: General piece of. Okay, so the general piece of advice is like breaking your muscle memory, right? If you want to find out what time it is in London and you're going to go Google, bring that to bring that to a GPT, why not just try it out? You might find that there's a couple of follow up questions that then get asked of you. And then next thing you know you start getting into a conversation. You just start getting comfortable with the tools. You just start asking anything, right?

Speaker B: And next thing you know, next thing, next thing you know you've built an app.

Speaker A: Next thing or next thing you know you're down a conspiracy theory, then you're

Speaker B: still, you're storming the Capitol on January 6th and you're wondering how did I end up here?

Speaker A: But it's more about like that's one of the things I always talk about. It's like break your muscle memory. Just start by having conversations, bring anything to it. It doesn't have to be write me a term paper. It doesn't have to be generate a report or something like that.

Speaker B: Yeah, create the muscle memory. And probably the bit of wisdom you opened with. If you have said to somebody is this AI and they say no, then ask the question, why not why not? And start saying that to your yourself. Do this without AI. Why not?

Speaker A: And one of the things that I tell people too, because I get asked that question a lot socially. People are like, I'm trying to what's your favorite thing? And I always say, build your muscle memory. And the advice that I always give them is use that useless action button that's on your phone. The newer phones, I guess have it down here. And just connect that to an LLM app. Because then what you're doing is next time you're curious and you're standing around and you're trying to look up who led the National League in home runs in 1987, you just hit that button instead, right? And you go in, you type it in. And then that's another great way to do it as well.

Speaker B: Yeah. Well, I'm on a Pixel. I've got a Google Pixel, and it's already Gemini. It's pretty great. And when you press up, you hold it down and it says, you can ask about your screen and it just. Your screen pops up and straight into Gemini. And I could do like a. I'm like, you know, you send me a message, Chad, saying, hey, should we do the podcast at, say, I don't know, 12pm on Friday the 6th, uh, of March? And I'll just say, add this to my diary and off it goes. Or I'm on social media. I'm like, can you just fact check this? Or I'm in a WhatsApp argument with somebody. Can you just tell me what a good reply to this message would be? You know, all of these sorts of things. Uh, it's been incredible.

Speaker A: I think Google is so, so much further ahead with where things are with Android and also with Pixel hardware. Hardware. It's, it's pretty impressive.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's great. It's really great. Um, anyway, but I don't want to go too far down that road. Let's move on to your next tip. So, um, the, uh, Unless Google is going to sponsor the podcast, in which case, uh, Google overlords. Um, so, uh, on to the next, uh, tip, which is your own personal superpower or hack.

Speaker A: Um, my hack. Ah, well, my hack is. It's not gonna be. That's too surprising, but I feel like it. What it's super helpful is that I set all my prompts up with Personas and intentions. Right. So what it does is it really dials in what it is that I'm looking to do. Whether it's everything from having a difficult conversation with somebody, oftentimes I have to give people bad news. I give people probably more bad news than good news. Uh, just, just because the nature of the business, and especially in the business that we're in, good news is always apparent bad news, you know, and sometimes it has to be tracked down. So oftentimes, you know, I can describe my situation, I can tell, describe my situation, I can describe my intent, and I can also describe the headwinds that I'm facing. And so oftentimes I'm using LLMs for good conversation guides. Sometimes I'm using it as a way, as also a systems thinker as well, which is just like, help me, help me through a process in order to bring this project to, to life. Tell me how I should think through this problem. Let me start at, uh, kind of the widest area and then help me build a decision making guide that's going to help me actually have a conversation where I can remove emotion from something and then actually give somebody a practical answer. And that's something that I do with our founder quite a bit, is that sometimes I come to things because I'm more of a, my founder, uh, is a technical founder, right? He's a cto, but he's an incredible marketer. And then I'm here and I'm a brand and advertising marketer. So sometimes I could be super excited about something but not see the outcome that he wants. And so I often use this as a way for me just to kind of like test my argument and then understand what he's going to come at me for. And he always wins. He always wins. However, at least, uh, you know, I come in a good second place and most of the time great.

Speaker B: Well, I hope he's listening to the podcast, but let me just make sure I understand that. So, because the tip was Persona and intention. So can you define Persona?

Speaker A: Uh, um, so in a Persona situation, I can explain my job, what I'm responsible for and why I even, why I'm, you know, why I'm, why I'm about to do the project that I'm about to do. So it's sometimes it's a lot of setup. And what's funny is like, you know, my daughter who's, who was in consulting and now she, she works uh, at a different type of company. She just said the other day that they were, they were training them on a bunch of internal AI tools and they were saying don't use words like please, thank you and set, set because it burns money. And that money, that money destroys water. And all this Type of stuff. And I'm just like, treat the robots the way you want to be treated by Skynet. That's like the way I want Skynet to remember that Chad Stoller was a nice guy. You know, I'm like, I'm nice to Alexa devices, I'm nice to room. I get out of the way of a Roomba. Anyway, so the point that I'm just trying to say is why I just told you that. But the fact is that I like to set things up. I go out of my way. Okay? Some people will think that's a little impractical. However, I feel like the more work that I go into to setting up my prompts, the better the answer is going to be and the more engaged I'm going to be to refine something. Because if you put something in, it's like a lackadaisical open ended search. You're going to just take the result and you'll be like, yeah, it didn't give me anything. Instead I want something to give me a return that has a little bit of an opinion. Okay? So with that I'll basically say this is my role, this is my organization, okay? And I'm doing this project because I feel like we can generate efficiency, we can be better at something thing or I want to communicate something to the outside of the organization. And if I can just do that and nail that, then the output that I get becomes a lot more actionable for me. And so the reason why I say it's a superpower is that I often find that when sometimes I'm working on projects with some of my peers or some of my teams, they come back with everything. And it kind of is like, uh, everyone got to the same answer, you know what I'm saying? Versus where my answers come in with a little bit more edge because they're more dialed into the, the problem.

Speaker B: Yeah, I can see that. And I guess it would also be, um, worthwhile given the AI parameters around how you want it to behave with you. Give it a Persona, uh, to for example, I had one where I wanted some advice about something and I was like, look, just don't sugarcoat this. Imagine you are, ah, my older brother. You have my best interests at heart, but you're also short with me and you know, you're. No, no bullshit. And um, that was with Claude. And he, Claude still does that. I'm kind of quite all right. Maybe just stop being so harsh on me. Claude just like it a little bit.

Speaker A: Well, Claude's like, you were bullied as a kid, if you remember. And so therefore you're going to get that answer. But I, but I do think, you know, like, something that's interesting is that there, there is a, um, you know, there's all of these little, like, cottage industries that are around all of these LLMs for search. And a big industry is, are these companies that are basically the equivalent of SEO companies, search engine optimization companies, which, which analyze searches and help you determine what are your best keywords. And then with those keywords, you can use those keywords for marketing, you can use those keywords for also content generation. So there's a whole industry of companies. Uh, there's a company called Scrunch, Profound, Bluefish, Kensh. Ah, not Kenshu. Uh, Semrush. Like all these, all these different companies that are out there and what they're doing is they're monitoring prompts on all day. So they're just generating prompts against all these LLMs to find out is your brand mentioned in the result, what companies were cited, right. Or what web pages were cited. So you might find that after Wikipedia, Reddit, LinkedIn, et cetera, et cetera, which are all those logos that you see when you see something searching, all of a sudden it pulls up like a random running shoe blog. And that's what's giving you the best answer for the running shoes that you're looking for, right? Or something like that. So, but the trick to those companies is those companies don't just do that as, like, standard vanilla searching. They're setting up Personas for all of those different searches because they're going to get different answers. So, for instance, if you are somebody who is a avid marathoner or ultra runner, you're going to get a different result and you're going to say, I'm interested in running shoes because I'm thinking about running, right? And I know that that's an obvious difference, but that's the difference. But that's how Personas can drive different results.

Speaker B: Results. Yeah. Good tip, Good tip, Good insight. All right, final bit, final bit. Moving on to the, uh, fun or unexpected use case for Chad Stoller.

Speaker A: Yeah, I'll tell you. Um, so you and I met because we were both crammed in, like row 12 of American Airlines or something like that, right? So when I started this job, I was a lifelong United guy. You know, I United forever. And then I switched airports, ports, and I go to Dallas on a very frequent basis. So I use ChatGPT to hack the fuck out of American Airlines just to understand how Quickly, can I get to Executive Platinum? And in a period of about, uh, nine months, I got there and it was all through tips from American Airlines just telling me exactly how to maximize my loyalty points. What are the different ways to earn additional loyalty points and so forth. So I feel like, um, you know, maybe it wasn't the best use of. Of water, energy and so forth, but I could just tell you that I'm in group one and I won.

Speaker B: That's awesome. But you can. You can use it.

Speaker A: You can use it for anything, man. You. You really can.

Speaker B: No, but that's. That's great. I have never. This is the thing, because you can use it for anything, and you. But you have to have the imagination to actually action it. And I am constantly confused about medallion points. M. I'm a Delta Flyer, but I'm constantly confused about it. I don't really get it. Uh, my wife's silver. How come? Why aren't I. And I don't seem to get. We don't seem to get anything from it anyway. So, um, yeah, definitely be looking into how to hack the system.

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, the, you know, the other thing is like, I also find that when you can use tools like this just to, you know, pursue your hobbies in a different way, it's also really great. Like, I, uh, probably I'm a big baseball fan, and baseball is like, so dominated by advanced analytics and so forth. And so one of the things that I find is, like, I love using these tools just to kind of like, better understand, like, how some formulas are calculated and things like that. I love that. I play a lot of video games, and it's like, I don't know if you play games, but if you're ever looking for tips in the video game industry now and you're looking on your phone, because that's usually what's with you. You're navigating your phone with your pinky because you don't want to hit one of the 14 ads that are on the screen. And so it's like just going into GPT and you're just like, how do I, you know, like, what's the best meta to get this done? Or what, you know, what's this? And you could just speak in the terminology that you're looking and, um, get those result results, you know, surface.

Speaker B: It's unbelievable. It's truly unbelievable. I've used it. So, yeah, I've been playing Balatro. Have you played Balatro?

Speaker A: Oh, yeah. Yeah. My God, I broke that habit. I walked away from that habit.

Speaker B: So, interestingly, I broke my habit with AI using it's on my phone, right. And using the tool I mentioned earlier, like, share my screen, a new joker would appear, you know, so Balatro for listeners I haven't played it. It's a car card game, essentially. It's a bit like solitaire, but amplified. And it was like game of the year 2024. So, you know, even though it says solitaire's as nerdy and pretty crap, this apparently beat every other game, uh, out there. So, anyway, I, uh, was, um, playing it. I came across it because of another tech podcast, Hard Fork. And, uh, those guys were talking about Balatro. They said, don't do it. It's a trap.

Speaker A: It's a total trap. You hear it in your sleep, didn't listen to it.

Speaker B: I. Next thing I know, I'm playing, like, hours and hours a week and using the screen share to, like, kind of figure out what various jokers were. And as you say, I couldn't believe that. It's just like, it knew, you know, it knew everything about Balatro.

Speaker A: Absolutely.

Speaker B: But in the. The happy ending is then on ChatGPT, eventually I was like, look, I've. I've won on every. On every card deck. I've done everything, like, to a kind of like a basic level. Is there any point in, like, continuing playing this game? Because it's, you know, it's like, ruining my life. And, uh, J.T. did a really job of therapizing me. You know, it was like, look, yeah, you could carry on playing Bobby. It makes sense that you could keep on playing, like, but also, if you feel like you've seen everything, you've probably seen everything, you're not going to get any more major dopamine hits. It's kind of now just all like, you're playing against yourself. And I was like, okay, that's great. Thank you, jbt. You said exactly what I needed to hear, and I haven't played again since.

Speaker A: Did it move you into another game? Did you go in and just say,

Speaker B: I pay for ChatGPT? So I don't get the. It's not, uh, no, no.

Speaker A: But, uh, hold on, hold on. Sometimes going in and just talking about, like, why you liked something. Like, a friend of mine was telling me that he does this for books all the time, where he's just in there and he's just like, I just read this book. I'm going to tell you why I liked it. Right? And he was telling me he uses the same type of thing for movies as well. Which is like, I really like the fact that this, this, this. And also I like that none of my friends know anything about this book. And then all of a sudden it was like, just make these recommendations of books.

Speaker B: That's great. I mean, that's literally. Actually, it's quite interesting. That's the other side of the coin, isn't it? You're literally in inviting the AI to advertise things to you, but the AI hasn't been paid in order to do that. I suppose that's the missing piece of the puzzle, which is what makes it all so icky. Yeah, but, yeah, it does. I mean, it did. The, the prompt, obviously the, the message ended with, would you like me to recommend some other games, uh, like Balatro, that you could play? And, um, I decided not to because that genre for listeners is called Roguelite. And, um, I am an absolute fiend for Roguelite games. The last one I got addicted to was Hades. And, um, you know, I'm up until, like, way past my bedtime playing these. Playing these games.

Speaker A: Have you, uh, played Sectari yet?

Speaker B: Is that a Roguelite?

Speaker A: Yeah, it's like Geometry wars gone Roguelite. It's something else.

Speaker B: Boy.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's really good.

Speaker B: Unless it's on my phone. Like, the last time I had a PlayStation, I sold it because, um, again, like, my wife was getting pretty upset with this very thing. Again, it was Hades. Hades was the final nail in the coffin of my gaming.

Speaker A: I think hades. I think Hades 2 is out for Android, so you should look into that or Android. I think it. Oh, I could be wrong. I know it's definitely on steam, deck, switch, PlayStation, Xbox, PC.

Speaker B: I'm, like, fully eyeing up Hades too. I'm like, watching it from afar, like a kind of, uh, like a creepy guy at the back of a bar.

Speaker A: Have you ever played Dead Cells?

Speaker B: Yeah, Dead Cells was great. That was when I was. I was like, peak, um, I was in peak addiction at that point and wanted to get every Roguelite. And I'm also really interested in that, like, um, scrolling. Beat him up, um, Avalon or something.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I've seen that. I've seen it. I haven't gotten into it yet.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. I've just had a son, so he's like. He's nine months old. I've kind of mentally said to myself, I'm not going to like, like, like I'm going to wait to gorge on all of these games until he's come of age, and then I'm going to, like, he's going to Be my little roguelite buddy.

Speaker A: Uh, it's, you know, something that's a. It's a great plan, but the thing which you. Which you should think about is maybe picking up a switch to or something like that, because the sw. All of those games come to it and you don't have to worry about setting up all the hardware like you would a Steam deck or anything like that. And you're not getting a limited Android version of it. So, like the. On the Switch 2. Like, what's always on mine is I have Hades on there and I have dead cells. Uh, have you seen Ball Pit?

Speaker B: Uh, no. Not heard of ball pit.

Speaker A: Ball pit. Ball pit's crazy. You should just look up Ball Pit. It's Ball X Pit, and it's absurd, but it's like 14, and the next thing you know, you have 50 hours in it and it's like, it's what I take on planes. I only have time.

Speaker B: That's a phone game.

Speaker A: It's. No, it's, uh, a. It's on the switch. It's a PC. Uh, blah, blah, blah, you know.

Speaker B: Okay, let's check that one out. Look, we. We are digressing intensely, uh, this. But you are stimulating me to create a new podcast called Gamers at the End of the World with Chad stoller and Bobby McClure. Clause it.

Speaker A: We're ready. Let's do it. I'm ready.

Speaker B: That is. That is if it actually is the end of the world. So thanks, Chad, for joining me on the podcast. It has been a real blast. I really, really appreciate it.

Speaker A: This was. This was. This was amazing. And thanks so much for having me. And, uh, hopefully there wasn't too much doom and gloom. I do think there's a lot of optimism in this space. I really do. It's exciting.

Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. Well, look, if, uh, Sam Altman is out there and he wants me to cut out all the doom and gloom, then, you know, I'm also not immune to advertising, uh, dollars. So thanks, Chad. Thanks for joining me on the podcast and to our listeners. We'll see you next time. Unless it really is the end of the world.