Making AI Work for You: What Marketers Need to Get Right

Speaker A: Winning is crazy.

Speaker B: Your opportunity, your opportunity.

Speaker A: I think it's also a huge risk to be too dependent on AI because at the end of the day, no matter which platforms, which AI tools you use, unless you develop them yourself, you're using someone else's tool. And if you get too reliant on that, dependent on that, um, it might be a huge, huge risk. Once the things are changing, maybe this tool is not available anymore. Is all of these demos that the big tech companies and all these AI startups present every day, is that actually already possible or is that just kind of, you know, future how it's going to look like in five years and 10 years? And I think that's something that um, is also a big, big risk of underestimating and kind of missing out on that transformational moment that is happening. I would also always recommend being aware of once you decide to do a task that an AI could do for you to continue doing it manually, you better make sure that you do it better or you do it quicker or you do it in some value adding way. I think emotional intelligence continues to be one of the biggest, if not even more important skills than it was back in the days because this, that's something that an AI, at least at the moment, doesn't really have the skills for to do. And jokes aside, probably also most likely won't happen to have in the future. Um, if you trust the potential of AI, this is definitely going to be even bigger, um, much, much bigger than the shift in the Internet and mobile.

Speaker B: Hello and welcome to the We Marketers podcast. I'm Andrew and my guest today is Maximilian Vomiser and a senior digital growth strategist at Google's EMEA headquarters in Dublin. Max works in close collaboration with businesses from various industries to help them find solutions for growth. Passionate about applying AI in online marketing, Max is here unpacked exactly that, how these tools are reshaping strategy and what it means for the rest of us. Maximilian, happy to have you today.

Speaker A: Yes, hi Andrew. Um, thank you very much for the invitation and thank you very much for these, uh, kind words of introductions. I'm happy to be here as well. Pleasure is all mine and uh, curious to chat with you for the next few minutes and give a few insights into my job, AI and marketing, and everything else that we are going to cover here today.

Speaker B: Thank you for joining this Sunday afternoon to kick off our conversation. We as marketers usually uh, are on the forefront of applying AI in our practice. Um, but at the same time, uh, over reliance on AI can Uh, lead to a lot of risks for us. What risks do you see when we use uh, AI too much?

Speaker A: I think, ah, that's a very good question. To kick it off, I, I personally see a lot more advantages than risks in AI, but of course I know where the question is coming from and it is something that I think about personally as well as professionally a lot of times. Also I think one of the biggest risk is overestimating and underestimating at the same time. So I think especially you were saying, we marketers, uh, I think in the online marketing space, in our jobs, um, also in kind of the bubble, the tech bubble that both of us, plus I guess a lot of the audience are um, it's quite easy to at the moment overestimate the progression of AI. So I think in our day to day jobs it's so normal. We are using generative AI tools, we are using AI for analysis. We might be using already AI to um, to use for marketing in creation as well as in targeting. So everyone's speaking about AI, but that everyone I think at the end of the day is just a very, very small percentage of people at the moment. Whereas the majority of, especially the other side of marketers, all the users, the consumers, the audiences that marketers are trying to reach, a lot of them might not be at that level of, of comfort with AI yet. So they don't know yet what's possible. They haven't really experienced much yet. So I think that is, that is one of the risks of kind of overestimating, especially how common it already is in most of target audiences. Um, but then on the same side there's the underestimating AI of I can hear a lot of people kind of questioning okay, is this actually already possible? Is all of these demos that the big tech companies and all these AI startups present every day, is that actually already possible? Or is that just kind of, you know, future how it's going to look like in five years and 10 years. And I think that's something that um, is also a big, big risk of underestimating and kind of missing out on that transformational moment that is happening not just since now, but maybe since a year or two at least in the mainstream marketing, a bit longer already and in other niches, but missing the moment to now learn about it, to now adjust to it, to now adapt to now. Think about, okay, how is it going to impact my job as marketer but uh, especially how is it going to impact the people that I'm trying to reach with my marketing with my advertising. So I think these are the big risks. And then, of course, there's a lot of nuances on how it looks in, in practice, in terms of missing out on trends, in terms of, um, being, you know, too reliant on AI and taking the human side out of it. But I think these are then the details in general. I would say most people I see are kind of one of these two, um, sides of the spectrum of like, hey, they love AI, but they overestimate how common it is, or they haven't really experienced it at all, and they kind of putting it off as like, oh, it's this future trend that will not impact me yet. And both of these, I think, are very, very dangerous with a lot of risks. And the flip side is, uh, if you embrace the middle of that spectrum, um, it leaves a lot of opportunities for marketers these days.

Speaker B: So you mean that, um, when we say that we are overestimating, um, AI, it means that we are thinking that they will solve all our problems, right? Or am I going in the right direction? In the wrong direction, yes, more or less.

Speaker A: I think there's a lot of people that, with rightfully all the hype around AI, um, they start to rely a lot on it. And I think there's been a lot of talk about, like, how much will AI replace humans? How much will AI replace certain jobs? And I think the first thing that then comes to mind is, oh, AI can do all my job. AI can write my emails, AI can answer my customer questions. AI, AI in a marketing context can create all my ads, assets, texts, videos, pictures, um, however, what a lot of marketers in that then overestimate is the fact that no matter how much AI can do, and it can do a lot, um, on a little side note, and the impact will be very, very big on not just marketing, but a lot of, uh, industries, if not all, um, but the human side is still there. So I definitely am a big believer of AI will not replace humans. Will it make certain tasks more easy? It might also replace certain tasks, yes. But the human side, uh, in a job as well as in a marketing job, where, you know, businesses try to advertise to humans, that human aspect, um, should never be forgotten. And I think it's one thing the human aspect, and the other is with a lot of the changes that come with AI, I think it's also a huge risk to be too dependent on AI, because at the end of the day, no matter which platforms, which AI tools you use, unless you develop them yourself, you're using someone else's tool and if you get too reliant on that, dependent on that, um, it might be a huge, huge risk. Once things are changing. Maybe this tool is not available anymore. Maybe this tool is changing in a way that you weren't really prepared for. And if all you did the last, I don't know, 12 months was writing emails with AI, uh, and out of a sudden you're stuck in a meeting or in some setting where this is not possible, I think that's also a huge risk. So it's important to, you know, make sure to focus on these skills that at the moment and possibly also in the future cannot be, uh, replaced by AI. And even if they can make sure that you still know the basics, because I think that's also one of the, one of the risks. And now I'm throwing more and more risks in here. But, um, I think at the end of the day AI is going to be a huge, huge help, but it's not going to solve everything and everyone slash also, especially in marketing, we should be prepared for, um, still being there and still putting in the work that can't be replaced and done by AI in the future.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's very interesting and I think that um, um, in relation to your thought that we as marketers, it's a risk that we will become less skilled in terms of writing really good emails, writing really good content and so on. We will again over rely on this.

Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. And I think that starts in marketing and that starts already in, in school. I think we all remember how we used to be in school. At least when I was in school, uh, our teachers were still telling us, hey, you need to learn your math because you won't always have a calculator with you. And I don't know, 20 years ago people started laughing at that because out of a sudden you had your smartphone and your calculator with you all the time. Is it still a good skill to know how to do manual mass? Yes, and I think, uh, a similar analogy would work for marketing or for all business jobs in general where yes, it's amazing to write emails with AI and to just optimize workflows. And I mean I'm doing that, um, in my professional job as well as my side projects as well. I'm trying to work smarter with AI. However, I'm also still proud that whenever I write an email or I read an email or I see an email, I have the personal manual skills that you say to say, hey, this was a good email. Or not. But it is, it is something that I think as society, if we want to um, look at the bigger picture here, we need to think about. And then especially in, in online marketing, in digital marketing where you know, as we said in the beginning, AI is so omnipresent already. Um, it's a risk that people lose um, a bit of their skill by, by overestimating AI or not even overestimating but in that case relying on it too much. And I think that's an important reminder that I'm a big believer of that um, it's good to every now and then uh, take a step back and consider okay, how much of my job am I actually still able to do without AI if I were to do it? Which uh, I guess to be realistic will never be uh, required to do anymore. But um, always good to reflect on that.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's a great point, great point. And if we look um, at um, growth of AI not from marketer perspective but from our customers, uh, are there any um, customer behavior changes that you see that may impact our work as marketers? For example, simple example that people uh, start using search in a different way. For example instead of going to, directly to search bar, uh, they use chatgpt or Perplexity or other platforms.

Speaker A: Yes, absolutely. And let me try to not go too much into the Google specific examples here because of course that's what I work with day to day. But I'm here today not as Googler but as myself. Um, nevertheless a lot of the things that you just mentioned, that's exactly what I see in my day to day job. That's what I hear from businesses that I work with. But that's also what I, what I see left and right when doing uh, things beyond that. User behavior is changing and I think people already expected a few years ago when a lot of voice uh, assistants started coming up, uh, things to, to change a lot because that's first when users, when people in their houses, in their homes with their smartphones started interacting in different ways, voice commands became a thing, voice searches across different platforms became a thing. And with the launch of AI and whether that's Gemini or ChatGPT, um, as the two big ones, but also all the others, um, people have changed the way they interact and the way they research and the way they search if you want to put it that way. From looking for simple answers and for looking for specific words to basically expecting to communicate with technology in a conversational way. The rather than uh, typing simple keywords as like restaurant in city X, Y, Z, uh, it's more a conversation, it's a, hey, can you tell me the best restaurant in this city for this occasion that is open on that weekend that I'm here? And people expect an answer and people expect to then also uh, give a follow up question, be like, hey, can you tell me whether there's some vegetarian dishes on the menu in this restaurant? And this is something that I think marketers can, can learn from because that doesn't just affect search and AI chatbots, if you want to call them that way, but that affects online behavior in general where people just want to have that experience, that conversation. And that is uh, also something that I mean a lot of websites have implemented over the last few months and years. Um, these um, support chats which also used to be very, very basic a few years ago. Um, but nowadays responses are better, responses are quicker. Um, and that's just something that I think a lot of users just expect. They expect an amazing service. They always benchmark it to the standards that they know from the big players. Uh, the E commerce experience that they are used to from an Amazon for example, the search experience they are used to from a Google, the just overall experience that they see on all these big, big um, companies and smaller companies need to really compete so to say with that because that's the expectation of a user. Um, beyond the user expectation, uh, another thing that is, I think a very, very big trend in online marketing is just the unpredictability of user behavior. Yeah, a few years ago, maybe even a few months ago and in a lot of uh, traditional cases also still to this day we think of marketing as this funnel. So people somehow become aware of certain things, um, traditionally through an upper funnel marketing campaign, usually video or display, and then they go down this funnel until they end in the research phase and then from there on they buy. And I think that's also together with the customer expectations that I touched upon a few minutes ago, this is also becoming more and more blurry because touch points of users just become so intertwined with each other. It's people are on social media, they scroll on TikTok, on Instagram, on YouTube, then they go have their connected TV, then they research, then they chat with an AI, then they go back to this. So they really seemingly um, switch from channel to channel. And that of course for a marketer makes it almost impossible to predict what's next. Whereas in a traditional sense it was okay, you saw an ad on tv, maybe out of home, maybe you heard it on the radio, the Next thing was you go online, you research and then you buy. And nowadays it's just so different the way where people research for information, um, could be on YouTube, could be on TikTok, could be on Google, could be on any other um, platforms where they find information, um, like forums on Reddit or discord communities or whatever. So they start there, they might then go to the website, they might in the middle ask a chatbot and confirm their research. They might do a bit of back and forth brainstorming with an AI until they, who knows what, end up in search again or go directly to the website. So that unpredictability is also something for marketers to be aware of. And that is where AI will in my opinion in the medium to long term future play an even bigger role. Because at the moment we look a lot at uh, generative AI. So AI is here to make work easier to generate uh, ads and everything. But in the long run I think that analysis part of AI and an AI potentially predicting what is Andrew's next step in the, the customer journey. Because you did XYZ today on a sunny Sunday in the morning and the AI or whatever platform we are talking about here kind of knows that and based on that can predict, okay, what are you going to be interested in the evening and which channel might you be interacting with in the evening? Maybe Netflixing on your couch, maybe YouTube, maybe TikTok, um, maybe none of these but some other channels. And using that predictability or that predictive AI to then tailor an ad that hopefully gets it right and doesn't completely blindside Andrew, but is kind of something that resonates with you because you're like, oh, I was actually thinking about that or oh, I was uh, looking into something similar earlier. So here's this ad. This actually comes to the exact right time and, and I think that's where in marketing I don't want to downplay the generative part, but I think marketers have always been very good with assets and video marketing was amazing and text was amazing and a lot of businesses will definitely benefit from m the generative part because they just didn't have the resources. But I think the analytics and with the analytics, the targeting part behind it, um, will probably have the even bigger impact even though it's not the most shiny and sexy topic, so to say, because it will be the bit more back office data crunching, um, analytical part of marketing that often gets forgotten a little bit. And a lot of people are also not uh, that familiar with.

Speaker B: When I prepared for uh, this podcast, um, I found a study by Salesforce. It is titled state of the AI connected customer. So they found that 73% of customers expect personalized uh, experiences but 61% are concerned about how their personal data is used, how to balance this, um, so the amount of prediction that uh, we can give and uh, this personalized data, um, where, where people have concerns.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think that's going to be a big challenge and a big uh, almost philosophical uh, question and a political one for sure. Because especially what you mentioned in the beginning, uh, I think there's a lot of uh, predictions out there. There's a lot of serious uh, if I just think about Black Mirror, where a lot of the negative potential future aspects of AI and, and the scary uh, parts are laid out. And I think it makes sense to look into that as well because it is a technology, it is something that is so new and it comes with so many challenges also for regulators and for societies and for everyone that I think it is important to look into that. I personally think it shouldn't be something to be scared of. But me personally, I would also love that my personal data, as long as I don't want it to be shared, is also not being shared. Weird. And is then also not being used to predict. But on the other hand, going back to your question that you know, asked, uh, with the study, I think that's a bit of a problem that comes with a lot of new technologies and also just changes in general. And that personalization versus data I think is something that in marketing has always been around where people really want to have relevant ads. They would love to have an ad that caters to their, their personality, to their, their buying purchase behavior and just to their, their context. But at the same time they don't want to give in all their personal data. And I think that's, that's, that's right. And I think marketers need to find the balance in exactly that. And I think regulations that are um, that are given and set by, by governments and by countries are one way to of course you know, play by the rules to make sure that every data point that is collected by a company is done so in a, in a compliant way according to data regulations. Um, and on the other side also make transparent though what this data is used for. And I think especially in the, in the eu we do have a lot of great regulations around that that pose challenges to marketers but at the end of the day give the user exactly these choices. But then there's also a lot of examples where companies go beyond that and clearly point out, hey, this is what we use your data for, this is how it's used, this is what AI is doing, this is what we are manually doing. And I think that is kind of where I do see the future. I also do see that high percentage of people being not willing or afraid to share their data, um, to go down with more and more adoption of AI. Because going back to what we talked about in the beginning of the podcast, I think a lot of people are just scared that all these scary, creepy, dark kind of, you, uh, know predictions and future outcomes from, I don't know, science fiction movies where an AI is taking over, they are kind of top of mind and that's what a lot of people associate with AI, you know, the Terminator style machines taking over. And once AI usage is actually becoming more and more mainstream and we are on, on a way to get there in, I don't know, uh, months, years. I'm not, not an expert on, on that, don't want to make any predictions, but I think we're on a very, very quick way. And once this is happening, I'm pretty sure that people will start trusting AI more and will also be more willing to share data if they know the company, the platform, the AI. So to say that we're sharing that data with, we trust that company, we trust that institution and they're handling it in the right way. And at the end of the day hopefully the user can still choose which data is being shared and which is not. And then that whole predictive um, analysis will hopefully come together and benefit both, benefit businesses to run better ads and benefit customers to have more transparency over what they share, but also have a great experience in getting relevant ads. And hopefully this numbers won't clash that much anymore. Because I fully agree, 70% saying I want personalization, but 70% being um, scared about or unwilling, whatever. I forgot what exactly the phrasing in the study was. But that's a bit of a clash and of course that, that poses a lot of challenges for marketers.

Speaker B: You mentioned uh, trust uh, for brands, uh, in terms of usage, uh, of AI. I think almost all brands now are using AI for creating content in different ways. So the question is how transparent should be brands in terms of uh, how much of AI are they using in their work?

Speaker A: That's a very good question and that's a very uh, tricky one to be honest as well. I think there's different aspects. I think first and foremost it's again legal regulations, it's copyrights. Even if you want to use AI, I think everyone should make sure that it is happening within legal boundaries and there's no trademarking, copyrights or anything else that's being violated in general. And that is a very personal opinion, but I'm a strong believer in that. I think AI generated content and especially advertising, advertisement will become the new norm. And I think that consumers and customers, at the end of the day, they will care much, much less than what people currently think. And I think a good example that I was thinking of the other day is, um, Hollywood. And we look at movies and we know a lot of it is cgi and we know a lot of the stunts that are being done, they can never humanly possibly being being done without any, any casualties. Everyone enjoys these movies. And then you have um, maybe a very recent example with the new Mission Impossible um, being launched. We have Tom Cruise that supposedly does so many of his stunts, uh, by himself. And people love that. Does that mean that Daniel Craig as James Bond doing less of the stunts, um, himself is a worse movie that people enjoy less? No, I think it's just two different aspects. One where everyone knows, okay, AI CGI in Hollywood, AI. If we want to make the context to online marketing, it's there and people are enjoying it. Uh, but maybe the bigger learning for companies would be how to tell a story beyond that. Because how do we all know that, uh, Tom Cruise is doing his stunts himself? It's not the movie explaining it, it's not the movie producers explaining it. It is kind of pop culture building variety and being really curious around it. And maybe Tom Cruise himself, maybe Mission Impossible building that brand of like, hey, look how amazing this is. And this is what makes them stand out. And I mean, on top of it, there's plenty of CGI in these movies as well. But that maybe is a learning for brands and for companies to embrace AI, use it, but on top of it, use storytelling, use behind the scenes material, use, use that human side which again we talked about um, a few minutes ago already, to build something on top of it. Because I think at the end of the day users are not going to care as long as it's good, as long as it's entertaining. Um, speaking in the Hollywood analogy here, I think that's what um, James Bond and Mission Impossible both do really, really well. And in a marketing aspect, I think doing it well, it's kind of doing it the same in an entertaining and an authentic way. If I read an email and it's just a bad Email because it's not personalized. It has a bunch of uh, formulations and wordings in it that I know no human ever possibly would have written. Um, or I interact with a company that I've interacted personally before and now I get this over the top written email that I know is just not done by them, then that's bad. But if it is done in a way where I feel like, okay, this is genuine and this in a Hollywood style, might be a little bit over the top, but it is still fine, or it is over the top but I get to learn a bit about the context, why it is the way it is, and it's just entertaining. Then I think it's also perfectly fine for online marketing content and for ads to use AI. And whether it will have to be kind of shown as AI generated or not, again, I think is a task that regulations that governments, that institutions need to figure out. But in my personal opinion, it will become the new norm. And I would just recommend all companies to already start experimenting with it and embracing it, to not miss this opportunity, uh, which is right now where it's just uh, still an early phase and people can really, you know, jump on that trend and benefit from it before it's too late. Because others have uh, already the advantage, so to say.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, it's a great point. And I remember recently I received email, uh, from a person who wanted to participate in uh, my podcast. And the email was uh, from AI agent. Uh, so he said he or she, I don't know how to call it. So it was, hi, for example, I'm John, I'm AI agent of person A, want to pitch this person to your podcast. And for me it was like, okay, AI agent, no problem. So they transparently said that they are, uh, AI agent and they are working on this. So maybe, maybe transparency, more transparency from companies like this article was written by AI or something like that. Uh, this will build more trust.

Speaker A: Absolutely, absolutely agree. And I think that's one thing that is never going to change in marketing. It is about trust and whether it is trusting the company, trusting the AI or trusting the company with the AI. But I love that approach and it is one that I actually for myself, especially in emails, use a lot as well, where there's a personal part and then there's a part where I, in one way or the other, um, make clear that this is a summary taken from somewhere and whether that's taken from, from the web, from a resource or from an AI. But I'm not pretending to Write that it's either hey, this is what is written by AI or this is what I have found from other sources. Just as you know, we wouldn't copy paste some Wikipedia article and pretend it's ourselves, right? So I think uh, I love that approach. I've never gotten an email like that. But I think that's also definitely with AI agents becoming more and more relevant, um, something that um, businesses and users will adapt to. So I love that. That's an interesting approach.

Speaker B: In the beginning of the podcast, um, I promised that we return to the topic of uh, self development, uh, in terms of usage, uh, AI. And you are actually writing uh, a lot about this, um, on your LinkedIn. So what is your personal approach, uh, to stay on top of this game. Maybe uh, you can share with us uh, what we can apply in our practice.

Speaker A: To me personally it is a lot of learning, a lot of doing and a lot of researching, uh, reading. So for me personally, as you said, yes, I am quite active on, on LinkedIn for two or three years now and this is definitely something that I use as my primary resource because I follow a lot of great creators, I follow a lot of great uh, companies, some very, very big, some very, very niche. And I think probably I spend a lot of more time on LinkedIn than I should. But it is something that I use a lot for inspiration, for knowledge, for learning, for, for building a network and then for also trying to understand uh, what are current trends so this and whether it's happening on LinkedIn or anywhere else. I think um, everyone needs to kind of figure out their own way. But just reading and informing myself a lot, um, and that can be on social media, that can be through newsletters, that can be through certain websites that do great content or news or also um, learning opportunities. So that's definitely one thing. Um, another one that I could just, uh, would just recommend to, to everyone is go beyond that. And I know a lot of companies and a lot of uh, countries also really, um, support additional learning opportunities for employees. So taking certain time off or getting some financial benefits to do courses and classes. Um, I've done one on the technical aspects of AI. I've done one on AI in marketing, which were both from universities, so they were a bit more research, um, heavy on the technical side, which was also something very, very interesting because it goes kind of beyond my regular day to day. Um, but then at the end of the day applying it is something that I would as the biggest recommendation give, give to everyone because all theory, it's always Nice to have. But applying it and applying it doesn't necessarily have to be um, to reinvent the wheel. It doesn't have to be doing everything that one is currently doing, completely different. But maybe just a few small things, maybe just trying to edit the next email that one is going to write with AI. And I'm saying editing, not writing, and I'm not saying it necessarily needs to be sent in that way. Um, but just as a very, very basic first step for me personally, um, I experiment a lot on LinkedIn with content creation with AI, whether that's text, whether it's videos and um, whether that's video and image editing. Um, so this is something where I personally learn a lot of like I read it, I hear about it in theory and I somehow try to apply it myself. Um, it's also something that I discuss with the businesses I work with professionally a lot on how they can use it. And I do the same the other way around. I listen to what do other people do, what do other companies do? Once some tools come up that I'd never heard of, first thing I do is I look them up and I think about, okay, how can I possibly use um, that in my personal workflow? Whether that's professionally or personally, in whatever other things are going on, or whether it's just in day to day life to, I don't know, become more used to interacting with an AI, to research, to possibly set up that um, AI agent that is going to book my next vacation for me. Which, um, also to me sounds like a bit of future, but I think it's not a too distant future. So long story short, I would say reading, learning, educating, but then also trying. And once we have tried then to critically think, okay, is that something I feel comfortable with, Is that something that's going to help me, um, or is that more hype than maybe I thought it was? And at the end of the day I think it's very important to always have that trade off because AI is amazing and AI is amazing at doing a lot of things. That does not necessarily mean though that anyone listening now needs to do everything with AI. And just because one person says AI is great at doing that doesn't mean everyone needs to do it. However, I would also always recommend being aware of once you decide to do a task that an AI could do for you to continue doing it manually, you better make sure that you do it better or you do it quicker or you do it in some value adding way. Because if you are sticking to that manual task Just because you don't want to automatize it and the output is not better or not any different than an AI could do it. You are running into that risk that we mentioned in the beginning of you slash that process being replaced by an AI. Um, and that's something that unfortunately I also see a lot in my day to day job where companies are just stuck in, I've always done it that way type of mindset. Um, and in terms of personal development, that would be next to trying, learning, educating oneself around AI. Um, that would be probably the first step to just build that mindset of okay, I'll go out there, I will learn, I will try, I'll think, I'll have an open mind. And if at the end of the day I decide it's nothing for me, that's fine, but at least I've given it a shot. And um, this is definitely something that I would recommend and that I'm also trying myself to um, live by. Every day sometimes works better, sometimes, sometimes less. But um, trying to really keep myself accountable to, to put myself out there and try new things as well.

Speaker B: And in terms of mindset and skills, what we as a marketers should, um, work on, should train in ourselves not to be kicked off the game by AI.

Speaker A: I would really, and I think I wrote a similar piece um, on LinkedIn the other day, I would really try to look at my own job and look at, okay, which of my tasks especially of course the repetitive ones, maybe also the ones that are the least favorite ones, um, maybe the ones that are the most difficult ones that I struggle personally with to complete. Which of these can I get help from by an AI? Which of these can potentially be replaced by an AI? As in not I'm replaced, but I have an AI take care of that task so that I personally free up some time for other things. And these other things I can then use to add additional value to my company, to my business, to my advertising customer, depending on whether you know, I'm in marketer myself or in an agency or as a freelancer, as a consultant. And if you follow this kind of cycle, um, you'll see that it does first of all free up a lot of time and second of all, you'll have more time to focus on these tasks that might require more human interaction that can then not be replaced by AI. So I think emotional intelligence continues to be one of the biggest, if not even more important skills than it was back in the days because that's something that an AI, at least at the Moment doesn't really have the skills for to do. And jokes aside, probably also most likely won't happen to have in the future. So that's something whether you are working in your own company with employees, with your management, with leadership or working with customers, it always is this human ah, connection where you really need emotional intelligence for. So that is one thing, um, prioritization I think is another one because again AI can do so much. But where do you start? Where do you prioritize your task? Which one do you do yourself? Which one can an AI do? Which one do you need to look into? So that's also something and then I think understanding the user and that goes beyond the typical online marketing. But I think that is going to become more and more important for all marketing teams to be more aware who the users are, what they do, what they expect. And what can I as a business do differently or what's my USP that I can use to cater to these um, users? And that's something that we talked about, predictive AI and everything. Yes, the analysis and the data will probably be done and managed better by an AI. But it always starts with us because our business that we run as not the market is, but the business we work for, um, will always be managed by humans. And if we decide to implement or to start selling a new product to export into a new country, this is a decision that has to be made by a human, um, and whether we as marketers are that human or not, but we can support the business, the leadership team, the management to do that. And that is something that I would also really um, push for and all the repetitive tasks, I think having the trust and having the experience to use AI to be better at that, um, and then go and continue learning and put yourself out there. And I think that's uh, definitely something that I'm really excited about for the future of online marketing because it does change so much with challenges, with risks of course, but out of every challenge, out of every risk, uh, there's usually an opportunity and that's also something that I love, uh, in my day to day job to be in that online marketing space and to see firsthand the risks and the opportunities and to help companies work through them. And that's also what I would encourage everyone working in online marketing, again, whether it's a freelancer, an agency or a marketer in a company to really embrace and look at the positive side of things because I think we are going through this transformational change, um, and next to the Internet and maybe a shift to mobile. This is already the third big thing in just a couple of uh, 10, 20 years. And um, if you, and I'm not saying that myself, but I'm saying that on behalf of all experts and analysts, um, if you trust the potential of AI, this is definitely going to be even bigger, bigger, um, much, much bigger than the shift in the Internet and mobile. So exciting times for sure.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely agree. Max, thanks for joining this episode. Thanks for sharing your insights. Uh, what is the best way for our listeners to connect with you?

Speaker A: Uh, definitely via LinkedIn. So Maximilian from ISER is my name and also my name on LinkedIn. So that's definitely um, the, the best way. Feel free to reach out there, connect, send me a dm, follow me, let me know what you thought of this episode. Um, I'm sure Andrew, you'll also be happy to forward feedback if you get any to myself. But um, yeah, I'm always happy to connect on LinkedIn and um, share a lot more of my opinions, views and everything there. And for everyone that wants to get in touch, um, yeah, check out LinkedIn.

Speaker B: Thanks. Thanks a lot for joining me today and bye. Bye.

Speaker A: Thank you. Bye.