The AI for Scale, Volume, and Cannes Episode

Speaker A: So if any of the listeners are actually down by Laguna beach when you hear this tomorrow, let's go say hello to Robert and buy him a drink.

Speaker B: No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Speaker C: Hello.

Speaker D: Uh, and welcome to episode 328, the Rockstar CMO effing marketing podcast. A proud member of the Marketing Podcast Network. It's Saturday the 27th of June. I'm your host. I. I'm not a rock star, but I am a full time B2B CMO and I hope you are well and staying as sane as you feel you need to be. The intention of this podcast is to inspire your inner marketing rock star. And for this week's dose of marketing street knowledge, I'm joined by Kathy McKnight, chief problem solver at 7th Bear, to discuss AI helping us scale. Before I join her colleague Robert Rose in our virtual bar for a cocktail to celebrate his birthday properly this week and chat about AI at the Cannes Lions. But first, we need to pay the bar tab. I'll be back in a moment.

Speaker A: We'll be right back after this. We'll be right back after this.

Speaker E: This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50 page restoration block or. Or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it, ready to make anything online make sense. There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required compatibility and availability. Various 18.

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Speaker A: Welcome back, Cathy, to Rockstar CMO fm. How are you doing?

Speaker C: I am very well, Ian. How are you?

Speaker A: I'm doing all right, thank you very much. Uh, the weather here, we always start with the weather, as I do with every conversation I have with anybody, because I'm English. Um, it's brightening up, we've got a heat wave coming and, um, yeah, all jolly good. What about yourself? How's the late spring, early summer treating you In Canadian?

Speaker C: It is. The weather has got a little bit of a personality disorder because it was super hot last week. It got into the 30s. And then this week we're like, 20. So, um, I'm okay with 20. 22. I'm like, sign me up. It's beautiful. No humidity, sun is shining, a little bit of rain. It's all good. But, yeah, I think we're in for a wacky summer.

Speaker A: Yeah, you like a bit of a walk with the dogs and that kind of thing, don't you? So it's always nice when it's a bit more temperate than when it's really hot, right? Yeah. Yeah. How's the garden?

Speaker C: Garden is spectacular this year. I think it's just booming. My, uh, um, peonies were in full display. Uh, gorgeous. Huge flowers and everything else is coming along. So other than. I think my, um, anemones didn't come up this year, which makes me a little bit sad otherwise.

Speaker A: Japanese enemies.

Speaker C: Yes. Way too much information on my garden. Sorry, everyone.

Speaker A: Yeah, sorry. No, no, um, we always do a bit. Uh, we're just easing ourselves into having a gardening show because I was just about to launch into my Peas and Mine enemies, but that's probably right. Thank you for reminding me, Kathy. We're on a marketing show. Um, um, and by the way, our mutual friend, uh, Teresa Wrigley loves a peony, by the way.

Speaker C: Interesting.

Speaker A: Well, yes.

Speaker C: You know what? Another thing she and I have in common.

Speaker A: Yes. Anyway, uh, let's get back to the topic of marketing, and again, I'm going to be dipping into your little, um, treasure trove of content that you're creating at the moment. Um, it's not quite the most recent, but it's a couple of weeks ago, I think, uh, from your weekly Bare Essentials, um, um, series, uh, which is on your Seventh Bear website. Um, and I think it's funny when I kind of promote it and I write Bare Essentials, and I think I'm hoping people aren't going to think I'm being cheeky, but it's a great name.

Speaker C: Kind of meant to be cheeky, right?

Speaker A: I know, but the trouble is, is is in the show notes I want to write, and then we explore Cassie's Bare Essentials.

Speaker C: No, no, no, that would be bad.

Speaker A: But anyway, this latest article is called you're not scaling Content, you're scaling chaos, which is fantastic. Um, which is about, you know, us applying AI to our content. So, um, shall I dive straight into this, or do you want to give us a little premise of what it is that you were talking about there with this particular blog post?

Speaker C: Yeah, so, uh, most of my Bare Essentials come From come. The ideas come after I've had a conversation with a client, um, and either a misconception, uh, or a common challenge. So this one was, um, you know, they had started doing some AI content generation, and look at us and our numbers. And, you know, it was all these, you know, their production was up numbers wise, but they were not, uh, they weren't tracking impact. Right. So, um, I've been doing a lot of research on content ops and AI and impact and whatnot. I've got a research report coming out at the end of the month on it. And so this was very much. It's like, just because you've got green, you know, dashboards typically green, yellow, red, um, and it, like the numbers are 200% and 300. If it's, if you're not, your output dashboard is green, but your outcomes dashboard or impact dashboard is flat or going down or unmeasured. That's a problem, right? Yeah, yeah, it's not. This isn't about volume. This is about impact. If you can, you know, great, you can do a thousand pieces a day, but if it's not changing the impact on the business, are you not better off to do a hundred pieces a day that do have impact? So it was, was that kind of thing. And Jas, there's been a whole bunch of reports, but Jasper State, um, of AI and marketing, their report this year, which I think they surveyed about like 1500 marketers. So it's, it's a good, it's a good concentration of, uh, sample size. Um, you know, 91% of teams use AI, but only 41% can prove ROI. That's actually down from last year, which was closer to 50%.

Speaker A: Wow.

Speaker C: So we're, we're going in the wrong direction here.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think you've answered all my questions, so I think.

Speaker C: Okay, well, it's great speaking.

Speaker A: No, well, the first point you made, which I, which I really liked as well, and you touching on it there, is that, um, there's a difference between scale and volume. Right. And that, um, and that you're finding with this client that AI is creating volume, but it's not scale from that perspective. Right. So. And when we're talking about scale, we mean scale of effectiveness to meet measurables that are actually worth. Yeah. Impact rather than like you say, we're a bloody short order cook. That's just pumping out as much content as we possibly can. But what are the symptoms of what you're, what you're talking about here?

Speaker D: Does it.

Speaker A: If we're giving advice to CMOs. What do they need to look for that indicates this is happening.

Speaker C: So the big one is the production metrics are the only ones anybody's pushing, celebrating, promoting, et cetera.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker C: So asset counts, publishing cadence. You know, we shipped eight times more content last month. Um, but there's nobody reporting on what it actually did. So like I said, great, so you did a thousand pieces versus a hundred. Did the needle move on impact? Did you do more sales? Was there greater awareness, um, higher engagement, those kind of things, Higher volume of first time visits, visitors, that kind of stuff. Um, when you can't trace content to business results. So you and I have had the attribution conversation before and I'm sure it'll come up again and we're not gonna think I'm, we're not digging into that today. Um, but you know, what did it convert? Ah, if you, if it takes you more than, you know, sort of half an hour to, you know, look into your, your dashboard and be able to see that, or it can't be answered at all, that's a big deal.

Speaker A: Right?

Speaker C: Um, if your pipeline for content requests isn't going down M. So you're producing faster content, but is it still getting stuck in review? Um, are people still asking for different things? Is it being tagged or is that backlogged as well? So where are the bottlenecks? Right? What's the messy downstream that's happening? Um, and your teams are still feeling overwhelmed. I think that's a big one. Is, um, AI should actually alleviate when it's being used. Right. So we always advocate for clients to, you know, you absolutely start using AI. We're not saying get all of your ducks in a row before you start using it, start playing around with it, but start using it to fill a gap, to solve a problem, not to accelerate something that's already kind of sort of working. Right. So that's what's happening is AI is, is being used, but teams are feeling busier, not freer.

Speaker A: Yeah, right.

Speaker C: Because there's also a misconception, um, across the rest of the org, that oh, well, you should be able to do this now because we have AI.

Speaker A: Mhm. Well, I think that's, I think there's an interesting thing when you're talking about metrics there, because I've worked in environments where you could, you know, when people self select which metrics they choose to share with you. That's the story in itself. Right?

Speaker C: Yes.

Speaker A: And the other thing with, if, if you do actually genuinely run a market A content marketing team or a content marketing function like I have. And I mean, you've got loads of clients doing this. Right. Is you try and shy away from the volume thing because you don't want to be measured on the number of things you create. You want to be measured on impact. So if that's starting to happen in your organization, something's wrong anyway, whether AI was involved or not. Right. So I think that's a really good point. Um, the other thing that you were talking about there is about the thing that's actually being scaled. So as you generate more volume, what you were saying there as well was that you're actually scaling the problem. You're not actually, you know, that's the bit of scaling. So you've got more content, more problems. Right. And it's like what we've said, always said, remarking technology, we're just doing shit faster. So what are, what's your view on that? What, what should we be scaling? How do we shift that around?

Speaker C: So I think part of it is, you know, organizations have built, and I say process in air quotes. Governance and process and ownership have never been something that organizations have done well. Right. Um, it's the thing that gets dropped off the project plan because you run out of money or run out of time or. Oh, yeah, we'll get to it. And they. Rather than look at the root cause of problems for the last. Well, as long as I've been an analyst, so for 15 years, um, you know, let's throw more technology at it M. Right. And continue to break things. And they called it transformation, but it was technology transformation in air quotes, not organizational transformation.

Speaker A: Right, right.

Speaker C: So your strategy has to be clear before you start doing that. Um, metadata has to get sorted out. Right. So all of these things that aren't set, all of these foundational systems as, as we call them and we talk to our clients about them, um, that's where you have to start. Because if they're not there, then anything that's broken or, um, not present, you're just getting to that problem faster. With AI.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, right.

Speaker C: AI is. It makes things failures more visible and more expensive and much harder to, you know, undo.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because you're doing it because you're building problems at scale and it's really easy to do.

Speaker C: Yeah. One of the things that, um, uh, I said to maybe this was a little. I've been working with this client for a very, very long time, so it's probably not as cheeky as it sounds, but I said to them because, you know, they were blaming A.I. oh, A.I. is, you know, it's completely just kibosh what we're doing and whatnot. And I'm saying, you know what? AI didn't break your content off. It just stopped letting you pretend that it wasn't already broken.

Speaker A: I love that. Well, the net, then the other. The challenge here, Right. I think is that, um, there's two forces at work here, isn't it? From A M. More marketers are being encouraged to do more with less. That seems to tick that box.

Speaker G: Right.

Speaker A: I can crank the handle. More content is going to come out. And the other thing is, is we need to do more with AI because everybody's being told, oh, you know, AI is the answer to a lot of these things. And it's kind of like a, uh, tsunami in most teams.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: That this is what's coming through. Um, so how do we convince our leaders that we need to do, um, less but better and that, you know, that we, you know, cranking the handle on AI may not be the thing.

Speaker C: Well, and that's just it. Right. So one of the things I found really interesting because again, what company, what leader wouldn't want more efficiency, more effectiveness kind of thing? And we have a client where it's like, I don't. Don't use those words with me. Right. Because it doesn't resonate with them because it is kind of ambiguous when you think about it. Well, what exactly does that mean? Right. So I've had to rethink my. The way I talk about things is, um, I talk about waste, I talk about risk, and I talk about return. Right. So tie it back to production. Tight content. Production back to, um, corporate objectives, which we always recommend. Right. Is.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker C: No matter how many layers of strategy you have, your objectives, whatever it is, and your goals and your success metrics, you better be able to climb up the rungs of the ladder. How many there are to. To directly say. And this influences or supports this corporate objective. Yeah, Right. Or this target success metric.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: So you. As, as marketers, we need to be tuned in and tied to the organization as a whole. Um, and I think the change in the investment and putting, you know, getting the funding to do the foundational systems work is not about, um, you know, stopping AI investment, but it's about protecting it. Right. Companies have already done a huge spend on AI Right. So this isn't. I'm not. Some people say, ask me after, um, you know, presentations or some of my writing, it's like, why are you so anti AI. Yeah, I am not. I am, I am all in. I use it every day for a lot of things. I'm learning more and more about it. It freaks me out constantly because it's like, oh my gosh, so much that it can do when you use it properly. Right. So start understanding how to leverage it so that you're getting the ROI of implementing and learning and growing with it.

Speaker A: Um, yeah, yeah, Um, I like that. I like. I think we've probably talked about this before because I know you're a big fan of an OKR and stuff like that, isn't it? But I've. And regardless of AI or whatever the topic, uh, is that we're talking about, but I think any marketing leader needs to be looking upwards at those objectives of the company. And I also think what's interesting is when you start having those conversations, you actually realize, well, you haven't got any. You realize that the leadership actually are working to a different set of goals. And so, and you can actually be the, um, catalyst of trying to get some of this formed up. So then you can inform your marketing team of what needs to be created. So I think that's a, uh, you know, that's a brilliant answer about how we convince our leaders that we need to do less but better is. Which fucking metric would you like me to choose to measure? Yeah, okay. Um, you know, because more content is not a metric, is it? It's not a KPI.

Speaker C: That's a really good point. So the, you know, people often, and I've been guilty of this, uh, as well, is they position AI with do more with less. Right. Teams are smaller, funding is less, marketing budgets are like getting slashed left, right and center from all facets. Because again, AI, which, fine, but it's about doing less better. We've always advocated for quality over quantity.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker C: So as I said at the outset, if you can produce a hundred pieces of content a month that give you a rate of return that is positive. Right. It's showing impact, it's growing audience, it's, it's getting people to buy the things, to sign up for the things, all of the things, then that's the focus. So do more with less and do less with better aren't opposites. They can coexist.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the do more with less is actually be more impactful with less and the do less but better is just how you're going to achieve it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's interesting. And I think everybody would shy away from that. Do more with Less. I don't think you're going to find a lot of fans with that one because I think marketing's sick of hearing it. Right. Oh, quarter's looking a bit wobbly. You guys are going to do more with less.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: Why us? It was us last quarter. But, um, that also ties that into, um. A lot of what we're reading right now is it seems the pendulum swinging around, doesn't it, on this AI thing about whether we're in the peak, um, of expectation if we use the Gartner thing, or whether we're coming off into the slope of, um, disillusionment or we're actually at the plateau of productivity, if I've remembered my Gartner. Um, but one of the things I'm seeing about the challenges here and the friction that's starting to happen is the cost of these tools and the tokens and stuff. And of course everybody's talking about how Uber spent all of their tokens for the year. Um, in the. I think I've mentioned this about three times on this show, so the listener probably sick of hearing it in the first four months. And, uh, and that these things are on a transact, uh, are on a usage basis, which is again, not something we're very familiar with working with in marketing. Right. We're not, you know, we're. We've managed to deal with the SaaS changes from perpetual. From back in the day. I don't know that we're really ready for buying tokens and usage base. But, but. And I was going to quote back the stat that you quoted earlier on that 91% of marketing teams that you found are using AI, but only 41% approving ROI, which I didn't know was a drop from last year. Um, but, um, what. What are you finding around that? Are you seeing any of that push up? Because it seems to me like, uh, marketers now we're going to need to do some kind of financial governance over the usage of AI on our teams. Otherwise this thing's going to run amok. And I don't know. Is that a conversation that's starting to come up in your clients?

Speaker C: Well, it is. And I think one of the reasons. So that that's a, you know, that's a pretty big drop. That's 20%. Right. So, um, I dug into that and you know, I had my own hypotheses, but which proved out to be pretty much what people are saying is the challenge. Or I think one of the reasons why that big drop is it's not that AI is losing momentum, right? It's that the definition of ROI changed early on. More output was the win because that was the promise. The vendors are like, create more. Like it doubles, blah, blah, blah. You know, what used to take you three weeks now takes you 30 minutes and here you go. And so people are excited by that. That's like, oh my God, that's great. And then now leadership is looking at it going, okay, that's great. But how come our engagement is down and how come our revenue isn't corollary with that? Right? So as the standards rise of expectations, then the confidence dips when it's not returning on that. So, um, more, you know, from a leadership perspective, volume isn't counting as success anymore. M M. So.

Speaker A: And I also think, and again, this is something I've mentioned with um, I think Jeff and Robert on the show before as well. So interesting what your take would be is I think there's also a friction being created by people using AI tools within the business. Like only like today I got one of those Slack messages, I ran this through ChatGPT and it's like, oh for fuck's up. Now I've got a review, a fucking 10 page document that this person spent the best part of five minutes creating, right? And you're like, why did you do that? I'd rather you just told me what your opinion is and I could have done, you know, and done the work. You know, somebody who's not terribly qualified to, on the topic decides that they're going to create for you a document you need to read. Uh, are you, is there any evidence in terms of, is that manifesting itself somehow? Because I'm just imagining that everybody is now sort of putting all of their decisions and their documents through LLMs and communicating in that way. And that sounds like it's really inefficient.

Speaker C: Oh, it's, yeah, it's not good. It's, you know, the, the companies that are, um, or the teams that are, are proving out roi, they're seeing like two times return. And the common thread through those who are actually proving the ROI of the AI investment is they've built the foundation and they're measuring it. Right? They're actually measuring impact.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: So, um, I read, um, a stat, I think it was just yesterday that was saying that 75% of companies say they don't have a real AI roadmap for the next year or two, but they're still implementing. So what finish line are they heading towards? Like where are they going if they don't have a plan. Like, they're just like, yes, go, for sure. Yes, absolutely. We should be using it because it, you know, the message went from, it was, it was panic, uh, when AI hit, when Gen AI hit, and everybody's like, oh my God, this is great. And the adoption was like straight up almost. And then, okay, we gotta get on this. And then it was like, whoa, no, no, no, no, like we're gonna slower roll here and let's take our time and we're not ready and blah, blah, blah. And then it's like, ah, uh, you know what? Everybody's using it anyway, so go ahead and we'll figure it out. But nobody owns it. Ownership, again, comes down to success. Um, a measure of the success. And I would venture to guess I don't have a stat on this that those companies that are showing roi, that are seeing the returns, whether it's um, from an impact perspective, whether it's engagement or revenue or whatever, they're measuring there's ownership of AI within the org.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've actually got it on the docket that me and Jeff are going to talk about this at some point about the chief AI officer, right. Whether we need something like that, but we actually do need that governance and I think, um, you know, so that, that, you know, what you're saying. There's ah, really interesting because the other thing, of course, is that the AI vendors have been sitting on the street corner handing out free cr, right? And now they're going to say, now you got to pay for it, right? Or like we saw with the US government deciding that we weren't allowed to have the nice things. And, and so they cut that off. And um, I heard, I think, um, you know, Sonia X. Bloom reach, right, is doing her own thing now. It's built on an LLM. And she said that actually that impacted her business. And so now, you know, entrepreneurs are now trying to hedge which LLM model they should use to build their thing on, because that could be taken away at any time. And I also, I was using um, cloud code and um, it was down. And I, I, I went on to um, Reddit and there are people in despair that read that cloud code because they couldn't work. And you're like, this is, this is a problem.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: And I think that dependency is becoming a risk within the business.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: So I can imagine this being on the risk register, you know, particularly in content operations where you work, right, is like, what if this went away? Or what if, what if this became Double the price. Or what if the US government decided to. Whatever it is, or what if it mass hallucinates and we get, we get in trouble? You know that it needs to be on the risk register, right?

Speaker C: Oh, that's the huge risk. And so, uh, turning, you know, just because somebody on the marketing team who has never coded before can all of a sudden spin up an HTML micro site, doesn't mean they should.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker C: You know, um, great that they can. And in certain instances it makes total sense to do it. But, you know, but that's, that's um,

Speaker A: I, I kind of um, talked about this on LinkedIn the other day as well, is there's a blurring of line. This potentially creates a blurring of lines between the different roles on a marketing team which we all used to be able to recognize, right? Those are the data geeks, those are the techies, those are the creatives, you know, those are the people that get shit done. And um, that was always thus, right? But now the get done people are going, hey, I can, I can create an integration to the coffee machine using make and uh, vibe coding and the CRM. And I'm off and off they go and it's like the Martech people are sitting there and the ops people are going, what the fuck? So it's interesting, isn't it, the world we live in today.

Speaker C: Well, and that's the other. This wide open use of AI across organizations in different ways people are prompting different.

Speaker E: Right.

Speaker C: Because nobody's been trained on how to prompt. There's no core within the organization. Here's our standard. All prompts must start with xyz, right? To ensure that it's brand aligned. Um, so somebody puts something into the content team to be created and they're like, great, okay, we'll have that for you next week. No, I don't want to wait. So, ChatGPT, Claude, whatever, they go in M and here I've done it and now all of a sudden it's.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's a billion years ago. I did some work uh, with three M, um, and um, they had a room of lawyers. And I can tell you it was a room of lawyers because I went in there that were going through content post production looking for references to Teflon, which is a trademark they didn't own, Dead celebrities and all. And they had it. And that problem must be still prevalent, particularly if you're using chat, because it doesn't know, does it? It's going to say, oh, this particular surface is non st stick. And everybody calls Out Teflon and blah, blah, blah, and then where it goes, and then you get sued for a huge amount there. Anyway, let's bring this back to your article. Um, sorry. And that was a very nice, a little, um, side trip. Yeah. But one of the things I was thinking about when I was reading your article, right, about this idea of content volume. And then we were talking about impact and that's impact in terms of impact of the business and metrics and stuff. But also what I also thought was if you're using AI to generate content synthesized from what the LLMs already know, that content is not going to perform anyway, right? It's not, it wouldn't research, you know, so that's more. You're just, it's, it's the old slop thing, isn't it? So is that all up? How do we put in place measures of quality then? And how are your clients going to do that? When somebody hands them something, they go, well, this is just not going to.

Speaker C: That's one of the most, I think, exciting things that are happening within some of the vendors capabilities. So, uh, Adobe, um, has a brand analyzer. I think they were one of the first in terms of AI. Salesforce actually just announced one at, um, well, no, not a, not a brand. So Adobe, you can actually, if you've, if you've got your brand identity details sorted out to the detail that it needs to be and should be in every organization, should. So not a PDF of here's our colors and here's, um, you know, the kerning that you need, et cetera. But like Truly voice tone, what we are, who, who we are, what we stand for, what we don't stand for, like all of the things, right? To truly teach the internal LLM, you can put it through these tools and it will score them. It'll say, you know, this is 93.7% aligned with your brand and you, you set a threshold, so anything over 92, you're good to go. Um, anything under that needs to be further edited, right? So there's, that there's, there's truly understanding your brand and defining it and running it through these scores. The other thing is, is, you know, AI is a multiplier, right? So you put AI on top of original thought, insights, proprietary data. Um, points of view, like truly an organizational brand, stand point of view. It's going to be awesome, right? It's going to absolutely make it better, probably right? Because again, it can aggregate and all of the things, but if you're using as a replacement, so you know, AI, what it produces is an average of everything it knows. It's middle of the road. Right. So anything you teach it, it's gonna, it's gonna take the extremes and it's gonna pull you into the middle.

Speaker A: Uh-huh.

Speaker C: So you need to continually train it, but you also isolate what you want it to compare against.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker C: Rather than go and create X based on the entire thing is structure and organize your data so that you can say, hey, listen, I want, you know, I'm writing this thing, blah, blah, blah. How does it work against. Or can you come up with, um, a draft based on. And give it limiters? You know, as, as Robert, ah, has said to you on the show, and I know he and I have talked about it, AI has actually. It's made me a better writer. But it takes me longer now. Oh yeah, same like write my bare essentials. Before AI, I probably could have whipped that out having done my research and whatnot. Mhm. Beforehand. I could have probably written that, say an hour to 2. It takes me longer now because I'm validating and I'm going back and it's like, is this, you know, where can I improve it and is it aligned? And I'm doing the, I do the draft myself and then ask it questions like an editor. Right. But it takes me longer.

Speaker A: I think that's the important part, isn't it? Because I think that as. As you say, the slop comes from saying to AI, I need an article about this thing and, and produce it for me and then I'll edit it. Rather than I've got this really original idea or I've got this piece of research, or I've got. And here's a draft of something that I'm thinking about. Help shape me this and it will take you in these different directions. That's the difference, isn't it? Between. And that's really what I was talking about. So, I mean, yeah, you're saying about the scores about being on brand, but. Well, how about the school that says this is just fucking boring, you know? Do you know what I mean? This is generic. Now. The thing is, is we didn't, I mean, B2B. We didn't need AI for that.

Speaker H: Right.

Speaker A: We were already creating that content ourselves.

Speaker C: It was already boring.

Speaker A: Yeah. So. But, um, I think that that's an interesting metric that we need, don't we? As. As we're creating this content, is. Is this genuinely different? Is it genuinely going to add to the, add to the conversation or are we just regurgitate and that probably doesn't matter whether it was a human.

Speaker E: Right.

Speaker B: Or AI.

Speaker A: It's just more likely to come from AI. So I think that's interesting. All right, so I'm going to m. Move on to our last question. Um, what's the first thing you recommend to tackle?

Speaker C: People have. Teams have to understand where they're at. Right. So you have to measure. Don't guess at it. So I think in the article. I should have reread my article before I. We started talking, but I think in the article, I think the example was, um, you know, on a whiteboard, in a spreadsheet, whatever you want. How much content did you produce last quarter?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: How much can you directly tie to a. How much of that can you directly tie to a business results? And how much of it has been reused in any form? Any form. Right. Um, I think most teams would find the second and third number shockingly small relative to what they produced in total. Um, but that's your scaling problem, right, that delta. And that shouldn't take you more than five minutes to pull together. You should have all of that information at your fingertips. If you do not, that's another problem. Right?

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker C: Um, and then look at that just for what it is. It's information. It's going to help you do better. Don't get defensive about it. Don't try and defend why it's that or whose fault it is or, you know, it's the vendor. There was no project plan or I had no budget or just look at the number. Right.

Speaker A: But look, I produced more.

Speaker C: And then, yeah, and then, you know, okay, how do we fix that? Look at your strategy, look at your structure, look at your overall governance, look how it's being orchestrated in that order. Right. And if you write all those things down, like, what are you doing strategy wise? How does your. What's with your structure? What's your governance set up? How much is being orchestrated? And then the gap, the delta between produced and impact. You'll have your plan, you'll know where to start and what has to be done.

Speaker A: That's what I love about the. And we were talking about this before I hit record. That's what I love about these bare essentials is we. We add a lot to it in our conversation, but they're very succinct and they have. And you've now added on a. This is what you do next, which I think is fantastic. And just as a reminder, Cassie, when people are looking for your bare essentials, where are they going to look

Speaker H: that

Speaker C: would be setbear.com nowhere else. That's the where they're um, I'm also on LinkedIn and um, uh, if you want to see some of, you know, what's going on in my life, like you can find me on Instagram too. But um, work wise, seventhbear.com and ah, LinkedIn under Cathy.

Speaker A: Nice. Yeah. And you need to get some of those photos you were showing me just now up on Insta. I think you're a very good photographer too, so. Wonderful. All right. And um, and can I welcome you back on the show a couple of weeks time?

Speaker C: Absolutely. Look forward.

Speaker A: All right, I'll see you then. Cheers.

Speaker F: All right.

Speaker C: Thanks, Ian.

Speaker D: Thank you, Kathy. I definitely encourage you to follow Kathy and her content series. It's really tight and she'll be back in July. And of course that was recorded just before this week's heat wave hit London. Anyway, I'd love to hear what you think of these conversations as we do

Speaker A: geek out a bit on content.

Speaker D: Right, time to wind down in our virtual bar, the Rose and Rockstar, and join Robert Rose, chief troublemaker, at Cement Bear, as I pick his brains over a classic cocktail.

Speaker B: Hello, my friend. Welcome to the bar very much, mate.

Speaker C: How are you doing?

Speaker B: I'm doing delightfully well. I am about to take a few days off for my birthday, which is, uh, upcoming this weekend. And, uh, I'm going to get away from computer screens for, for four days and sort of contemplate everything about my life so remarkably well. Or just a horrible.

Speaker A: Well. Well, I hope to see you on the show again. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker D: This whole podcasting thing ain't for me.

Speaker H: Yeah.

Speaker D: Oh, uh, splendid. Well, yeah, I kind of wished you

Speaker A: a happy birthday last week because I hadn't realized that we were going to get together again. I should have done the m. Done the math or whatever it is when you work out dates.

Speaker D: But.

Speaker A: Yeah, happy birthday, mate. Look, thank you and, uh, I hope you're gonna have a great weekend. I'm recording this on Friday.

Speaker B: Yeah. And then my birthday's on Sunday and so.

Speaker A: Nice.

Speaker B: And I'm taking Sunday, Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday off, uh, back on Thursday, which should be also, you know, Thursday and Friday should be light days because then of course we have the, uh, fourth July, uh, to deal with and um, so it becomes a little bit of a jubilee for me.

Speaker A: Nice.

Speaker D: Yeah.

Speaker A: And that's the thing. It's like my birthday falls around one of our bank holidays and it's nice when you can, you know, chill out and the holidays fall Nicely for your own birthday. So they know what they were doing. Nice. And you're going to your little place. You've got a place, haven't you, up in the coast like we.

Speaker B: No, we're going to go, we're going to go down south, um, to a place called, uh, Laguna beach. And we're in one of my favorite hotels down there is uh, uh, doing a montage, um, just part of the montage family of hotels and sit by the pool and you know, eat french fries, drink fuzzy drinks with umbrellas and massages and all that kind of stuff.

Speaker A: Spending. So if any of the listeners are actually down by Laguna beach when you hear this tomorrow, let's go say hello to Robert and buy him a drink.

Speaker B: No, no, really. No, no, no, no, no. Just leave me alone. Thank you very much. I'm all good.

Speaker A: Well, I know where our listener lives, so they won't be there, so it's going to be fine.

Speaker B: There you go. Our listener. Our listener. Our one listener. Yes, indeed.

Speaker A: What are we drinking? We drank.

Speaker D: We.

Speaker A: Last week we had a, uh, birthday, uh, celebration. So I'm hoping you've got something different this week. What else are we going to be drinking?

Speaker B: We have. So. We have my, my, so my favorite cocktail. All time number one. It's my go to. It's my. So since it's my birthday I figured we'd go to it. It's just a classic margarita, right? So nice. We're going with a classic margarita with two parts tequila, uh, and make it proper, one part agave nectar and go find it, get it because it's important. Um, and then ah, lime juice of course, a, ah, splash of orange liqueur if you can find such a thing. Um, and then of course you have to have a salt rim on that and then lime and perhaps a little mint on the top of that. That's the best of the classic, the classic margaritas.

Speaker D: Nice.

Speaker A: And you deserve one or a dozen of those, my friend.

Speaker B: There will be a dozen. Yes, yes, yes.

Speaker A: Multiples.

Speaker D: Yeah, Lovely mate.

Speaker A: So while we drink these and um, to send you off on your birthday with a, uh, entertaining, you know, conversation, I wanted to ask you about, uh, something that you've written about in the Content Marketing Institute blog as I often dip into for this show. Um, and also you talk about it on your podcast, this old marketing, um. So the Cairns Lines International Festival of Creativity has finished this week and good God, thank God for that. We can finally go back on LinkedIn.

Speaker D: But something,

Speaker A: but something, um, that caught your eye about the um, awards that were happening this week is the topic du jour AI and specifically that many of the categories featured criteria around AI that seemed to boil down to a Could this work exist without AI? To quote your article, which seemed to inspire you on a splendid post and that conversation on your podcast. So what, what, what, what say you about this then? What's happening?

Speaker B: So it's the, the. So for the first time, and this is a Kudos to the Cannes Lions Awards, um, which they have historically rewarded craft and creativity. Right. So the, the craft of filmmaking, the craft of advertising, craft of all of the different things. And so that's, that's what they're known for. And so they did this time they've added two subcategories to design, uh, film, uh, ads. And there's a number of categories that they've added this subcategory to and it's called the AI Craft subcategory. Um, and so you can submit for this particular subcategory if you're in submitting for any of these particular other categories. And in the introduction to it, they, they talk about it, right? So they talk about how creativity and it's a tool and that, you know, people are using it beyond just, you know, flexing workflow or making things more efficient. And that it's around making the work deeper, better, more creative. And that's why they wanted to create this award. So it's sort of, you know, it's very, it's very fluffy language, but nonetheless, you know, it's, it's nice. The intent is clear.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And so, but then if you get into the requirements, the actual requirement or, or the, I guess the, the, the filter for what qualifies for the award. The. Basically it's, it comes down to one sentence which is that. Which is unattainable without AI or work. That would not be possible without the use of AI. And that I think is the exact wrong question because to the, the gap or the canyon between the question of did this make the work better and did you need AI to make this work is huge, right?

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: And so, and so basically, you know, and I use the example because it's like, well, isn't that just, you know, uh, you know, a difference without a meaning? And I said, well, no, it's not. Because think for a moment of an ad of two people sitting at a bus station, right? And they're, you know, there are butterflies flying around them while they talk on them. And it's a romantic scene where the two of them are Meeting for the first time. And the. And the, you know, the. The dialogue between them is beautiful. It's shot beautifully, it's lit wonderfully, and it's just this amazing little piece of film. And that wouldn't qualify in, because of course it absolutely could be done with traditional methods. It just wasn't in this particular case. And so that, to me, is the. Is. Is the. Is the problem Now, I didn't want to rant on like, oh, can lion doesn't get AI and they don't understand it. And yeah, it's like, it's not about that. What it, what. What it inspired for me is that what they have done inadvertently is to point out exactly the problem that Mark creative marketing teams are having right now with A.I. uh, which is we're mistaking. Did you use the tool for. Did the tool make the work better?

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: And, and. And, uh, it was just such a perfect metaphor for where we are with the implementation of AI into our creative marketing content. All the things we're doing that I just had to point out because it's just like, yeah, there it is right there. There is a problem writ large for you, just staring you in the face. And if you're. And if the main question that you're asking as you implement AI in your workflow and your content and your creativity is did we use the tool? Then, um, the answer is, yeah, don't be surprised then when you know it. It provides exactly what you did, which is a checkbox that you use the tool and highly mediocre, you know, or awful work. And then, uh, ask the question, did it make the work better? Now you're asking the right question for whether the tool is valuable or not.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker D: Well, I.

Speaker A: And when I was reading your article, one of the other. Well, because, um, I mean, I haven't been terribly close to Cannes lines, but I did work at McCann, and so I've been close to some of the madness in terms of how it motivates people. You know, they want awards more than they want profit, really. You know, and. And one of the things about the Cannes lines have always been criticized for is actually they reward ads that are pretty ineffective. Right. And that, uh, and perhaps never even really aired to a large audience. They were built to build to a canned line. Be. Be creative. And I think it's interesting you're saying about, oh, two people are bus stopped with butterflies flying around them. Um, the. The reason why you would use AI for that is it could make the campaign more efficient and cheaper to produce and Therefore, more effective. And that isn't really where you're going to get any award at Cannes lion, is it? But you've created this amazing vision.

Speaker C: Or.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Or if you wanted to, if you, if they change the, let's say they change the criteria, right? To say it is basically, uh, we're awarding it where the AI is clear, has clearly augmented the creativity and craft to something that, you know, is, is. Is better, deeper or more creative because of the tool, right? In other words, ah, because of the tool, the work is better and that I buy, right? You know, so if you say, okay, the work, the same piece, right? Two people, uh, sitting at a, you know, and basically because of the way we used AI to architect the way the butterflies were flying, they flew in a way that spelled out the word love or something, right? You know, it's like, and it's like it makes the work more creative and augmented because of the tool, but it's not something that at its face couldn't be produced. Right?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And so that, you know, and uh, that to me is the right question. Is. Is. Is. Is the tool helping? Because ultimately. And, and if you buy this argument, right, if you buy this argument, yeah, that's the right question to be asking what, what it then says is. And this is exactly to your point, this category shouldn't exist, right? This ultimately, this category should not exist because ultimately it doesn't matter what, you know, like, we, we don't have a, we have a category for 35 millimeter cameras and a category for Polaroid cameras, right? And so it's like you don't, you don't ever. There's no differentiation in the craft because of the tool being used.

Speaker A: You, you, you grabbed my, my next question there, mate. Because what I was going to ask was, does it matter? You know, especially now we're in 2026, right, and there's nothing fresh or new. You know, we all know AI is here. We all know the tools are here. Uh, shouldn't those pieces of work just be judged on whether they're great pieces of work? It doesn't really matter what tools we use.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think that's right. But, yeah, but I don't, I don't begrudge them the category because I think there are opportunities for us now to highlight. In other words, if I'm them, I, uh, want to, you know, not necessarily buy into the AI hype, but I want to show how. I want to demonstrate that the tool actually can be used for deeper creativity. Right? And so the way to do that would be to create a category and acknowledging maybe even that it's a temporary category to say, mhm, this is a new tool, it's innovative, it's being used more and more. It can be used to deepen our craft. Just like the 35 millimeter camera was when it was invented, just like the typewriter was when it was invented, just like, you know, every other, you know, see computer graphics when they were invented. You know, all of these things can be used to deepen and make the work more creative. And we can, and we can feature that, like, we can feature that as a. Oh, we can learn from uh, we. Oh, this is what you can do with the tool. This is the possibilities that are available to you with the tool if you just use it in a creative way. And then ultimately I think you're right. No, it doesn't matter because as soon as that becomes not a differentiator anymore, it's like everybody uses it.

Speaker H: Right?

Speaker A: Yeah. I like, I like your take though. I think I was, uh. I like your take of using it as an opportunity to showcase what's possible.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: Um, yeah, I think that's a much more positive spin than I was thinking. But I also thought, well, why does it, does anybody really care as long as the creative is great? Um, you know, and also, you know, you talk about how this democratizes the ability to be creative. So you might get a different group of people getting the awards. Not the massive agencies with the billion dollar budgets, but somebody that's actually, you know, done this in their bedroom and it's fantastic, you know. I don't know.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, it's, it's, it's a, it's a, it's a critical, uh, I mean ultimately what it comes down to is the, the, and what fascinates me so much is the qualification of the checkbox, basically. In other words. Yeah, making the qualification. Did you use the tool? Is, is literally saying, did you remember to take the lens cap off the camera and you therefore qualify for an award? Right?

Speaker A: Yeah, that's a good point. And the thing is also, it's so baked in all the tools that everybody uses. I mean, at what point do this on the sliding scale is use it and it was there.

Speaker B: That's the other thing, right? It's like how many, you know, like you and I have talked before. It's like how many, how many pebbles? You have a pile of stones, right? It's like how much AI do you know? Yes, we used AI to create one. You know, I, I was talking To a friend the other day who, uh, you know, we were talking about how AI is now being used to, you know, make the workflow of making Hollywood movies easier.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And it's like, okay, well, disclosure, disclosure, disclosure. You got to disclose. It's like. But do you really? Because if I use AI to one scene of a two hour movie, one 30 second scene, if I use an AI to de age somebody's face to show what they look like as a young person, do I have to disclose that as AI?

Speaker A: Absolutely.

Speaker B: No, that's ridiculous. I mean, that's exactly. Okay, well, how about two scenes? Okay, maybe. How about three scenes? How about five scenes? How about the entire movie? Right?

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: It's. You have to, uh. This is why ultimately it won't matter, Right. Because it just becomes ingrained as part of the. As part of the experience. Right. It's like it was that famous quote by Eric Schmidt where he used to say, you know, pretty soon there, there is no separate place called the Internet.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: You.

Speaker D: Yes.

Speaker B: You know, it's just the Internet is. There is.

Speaker A: It's like air.

Speaker B: Right. You just.

Speaker G: Yeah.

Speaker B: You're interacting with it without even being conscious of it.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, no, I love that. And I'm, um.

Speaker H: Yeah.

Speaker A: I mean, my thought was even more ridiculous, which was, if in the script you used Grammarly, does that mean it's AI?

Speaker H: Right.

Speaker A: Exactly.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Right. Anyway, yeah. Where would, uh. If people are looking for creative content that has been untouched by AI, apart from maybe a little bit of Grammarly, where are they going to find that?

Speaker B: They're going to find that on our little website, which is seventhbear.com.

Speaker A: splendid. And if they were to look for a podcast that's got ads in it that is very heavily influenced by AI, where might they find that?

Speaker B: That would be our little podcast, this old marketing dot com.

Speaker A: Splendid. And thank, uh, you very much for. I mean, we talked too much at the beginning. Um, but thank you very much for your time on your birthday. Ah, on your birthday weekend or just before your birthday weekend. And when people spin the dial on the interwebs and they're not down, um, buying you drinks, uh, at Laguna beach, where they're going to find you.

Speaker B: They're going to find me on LinkedIn for sure. Wasting way too much time talking about AI.

Speaker A: All right, mate, I'll see. And will you be in the bar next week?

Speaker B: Of course.

Speaker A: Uh, I'll, uh, see you then. Cheers.

Speaker D: Thank you, Robert. And thankfully the Cannes Festival is over for another year, so you can all get back on LinkedIn and follow Robert. But I suspect we'll look back on some of these debates we've had about this tool and laugh when nobody cares. So that's a wrap on episode 328 of the Rockstar CMO Effing Marketing Podcast. Thanks to Kathy and Robert. But most of all, thank you for putting a dime into your podcasting jukebox, selecting our track and jiving along with us. I've been your host, Ian Trustcott. You can find links to our little band and the articles we discussed in the Show Notes, along with links to our blog, newsletter and all of our previous episodes@rockstarcmo.com or follow us and join the conversation on on LinkedIn. Next week Jeff will be back and we are resurrecting our old one hit Wonder and Wonderwall series that you may remember from a couple of years ago as we look at the head of AI Role and Robert Wu back in the bar. In the meantime, a quote from Seth Goddin Big ideas are little ideas that no one killed too soon.

Speaker H: You may know you're listening to this show along the Marketing Podcast Network, but did you know there are other great shows on MPN to help your business business? Heather Eck hosts an amazing show called your Radiant Spirit. Heather, tell listeners about the show.

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Speaker H: You heard her. Go subscribe. This podcast is heard along the Marketing Podcast Network. For more great marketing podcasts, visit marketingpodcasts.net.