Stephen Banbury:
Hello! Welcome to many. Thanks for joining us today. For our webinar. How AI changes the game of marketing. Go to market is now go to network. My name is Stephen Banbury, and I’m gonna be your host today. Just for background I’ve got: just over 20 years in marketing, working and leading functions in marketing for Mcafee, symantec abdirect reputation, and most recently at live ramp and joining me today. To discuss this exciting topic is Celeste Malia, who is a great PR expert. Perhaps you could do a quick intro before we get going that’d be awesome.

Celeste Malia:
I work with expert marketing advisors. My background is in communications, mostly in enterprise space. But I’ve worked with both startups as well as companies that are going through transformation. And so we’re excited to talk to you today a little bit about AI, and how it’s changing the game of marketing.

Stephen Banbury:
That’s great. Perhaps we could get to the agenda slide quickly. We went spent too much time on this, but essentially the challenges in marketing that we’re all facing discussing the change from Gtm to go to network.

Stephen Banbury:
Some use cases on how companies are actually using AI today, which I think will be interesting. And we’ll probably bring in some other examples that both Celeste and I have actually seen in real life versus just hypotheticals. And then discovering how you can use AI and your marketing strategies to drive ROI. Awesome. Okay?

Celeste Malia:
Yeah. I think one of the big things we’re seeing, Stephen is how we often talk about go to market and all the you know what it all encompasses from a marketing perspective. And that is still true. But I think the one thing that AI is bringing is an automation element that is also leaning both on tools and humans a little bit more. And what we’re seeing now is a lot of things that we once invested in. I think we spent the last 10 years investing in a lot of cloud tools that help automate the marketing front and it definitely helped us.

Celeste Malia:
But we’ve also seen a lot of productivity kind of being lost as part of the process. We’ve, you know, from your experience on the demand. Gen. Side you’ve have. So our SEO, even pr, all of it. We all kind of adopted tools into our environment to help us do our job better. But they’re all focused on a specific area. And so getting everyone to kind of work in a nice orchestrated ways.

Celeste Malia:
It’s been really difficult. The data that I use to do my job in PR is probably not as efficient as maybe some of the data you need to do your job right, Steven. And they all live in different places. And what’s happened is all these tools have helped us, but they’ve kind of been more general marketing. That’s what we’ve kind of integrated. We’ve worked. We’ve automated the workflow, but it was still kind of. We’re executing generalized marketing and coupled with a lot of us trying to figure out how to get the work. We need it. The information we need in front of us to do to execute.

Celeste Malia:
So we’ve seen some progress on the strategic front and helping to make decisions with the data we have today. But also: we’ve seen some progress, too, on the operational tasks, at the same time getting these tools to orchestrate together has been really difficult. On top of that we got more data coming at us. So some of the stats I’ve looked into are almost and feel free to jump in, Stephen. You know the emails that get sent. How many of us get spammed with emails, mostly a lot.

Celeste Malia:
I found that most of the emails, more than half actually or yearly, half rather going right into spam or not are not even relevant on the comms front. PR. 75% of PR people can’t even find the right journalists to connect with who is the right audience to influence. There used to be a lot of journalists. That number has shrunk. And now we’re even targeting influencers. So that’s changing.

Celeste Malia:
74% of the journalists say that they actually once received a pitch from a Pr person. It’s not relevant to them. And they consider it spam. And so over time, if you don’t build that relationship, your email ends up going into their spam. So it doesn’t really work in your favor. And we look at how we work today on the marketing front 75 as we talked, just talked about 75% are using some sort of tool to get their job done. Whether it was Marketo or you know, Asana, just to get your projects tracked.

Celeste Malia:
But ultimately all of this is really costing billions of dollars, either from the slow, you know the inability to work quickly with each other not targeting the right people. It’s costing our business money, in fact, found stats like over 600 billion dollars are being lost from time from inefficiencies, not not hitting the right people. And so what we have today is like a gap of the and it’s become so complex to get things done quickly. We’ve actually lost some productivity. And so the complexity to manage the data, the workflows.

Celeste Malia:
We also have less resources available to us. There’s not enough, you know, people I’m people are turning around like, where are where’s everyone? And so now we have this gap in marketing, and at the same time businesses need to move faster. They need to make decisions quicker. And so where I, AI is coming in. It’s moving us towards more personalized marketing.

Celeste Malia:
We see it encroaching on the content. You know there’s the writer’s strike, and being able to content. Creation is one of the lowest hanging fruits. And of course, now, with AI be helping us look at our data, we can actually target who we want to reach. What’s the right audience for? What we’re for, who we’re trying to get across our message to. So as we are finding ourselves in this gap, there really is a reliance or a need for us to kind of. Look at who our networks, who is in our network to kind of help us bridge this gap in during this period of time, as we’re moving to AI, because those people who are experts can actually shorten the cycle. Time for us to, you know, get work done to find who matters to get your messages across to find the right people to target. So that’s what I’m finding. What are you seeing, Steven?

Stephen Banbury:
The personalization piece that you mentioned is critical. As we look for better customer experiences and better journeys for prospects and customers. That’s always been top of mind. II think: that certainly when Chat Gbt came out on the thirtieth of November last year, people just thought, oh, great! I can write a blog, but it’s you know. AI has been around embedded in tools for quite some time.

Stephen Banbury:
But it’s really accelerated our ability and efficiency around creating content, because now writers and subject matter experts can do so much research in much shorter time. So I think you know 20 h of work, 10 h of work to half an hour or just minutes, depending on what prompts you’re putting in and: you know, not only that is quite strategic to a point you can be thinking about.

Stephen Banbury:
Well, what are the personas that they’re marketing to? What’s that? Icp? What are their pain points and creating journeys and messaging that really ties into that particular customer or prospect that you’re trying to either retain or acquire or potentially be upselling and cross selling to.: I think that’s a great point about the messaging.

Celeste Malia:
You know. Messaging is one of those areas that we often would just kind of go in a cave and try to figure out what was. What is it that we want to tell: our audience? And we would test it with some trusted third parties, and that still exists today. But you know, as we move towards AI, I think we can get smarter about it in really personalizing that message and done a lot quicker than how it’s traditionally been done.

Stephen Banbury:
I think that’s right. If you think about just chat bots, and maybe I don’t say traditional. But if you think of chat bots like, say adrift or intercom, or some that you see really just sort of on a website. Then just think about all that data that it’s collecting. So it’s understanding the type of personas and people on specific pages on your website so that you could be serving up relevant content and taking them to a call to action which could be watching a video. It could be signing up for a demo. It could be a webinar, or it could be just a rich piece of value, added content, like a white paper, or whatever that might be

Celeste Malia:
Right, right? I’m excited about that, very excited. So what is the Goto network? We’re we’re kind of in this phase right now, where we need to start moving and thinking about how we can utilize our data more effectively and at the same time, what can we do in the short term to help kind of make. Allow your business to run at the speed that it needs to.

Celeste Malia:
And one of the things that we’re finding is utilizing your network. People who are experts in their area are really helping you kind of get through this period of time where you can actually scale at the pace that you need to: you can move quickly because you have people who are focused in a specific area and know their domain. And you can actually look. And you know, if you’re a startup and you’re trying to figure out product market fit.

Celeste Malia:
Definitely use your network. These are the people who are. You know, sharp in one area and can really help you define what that product mark. While you think about your product market fit. These people can kind of bridge that gap.

Celeste Malia:
So I know at eMa we have a team of experts who are focused, and we’re thinking creatively every day about what is it? And marketing that’s changing. How do I do my job differently, and so lean on these resources because they are really the ones who can help accelerate and take off that burden as we move to AI and figure out the next thing.

Celeste Malia:
I think you know what we’re finding, and some of our clients, especially ones that are starting off right in AI, are that we are. The human aspect is really going to be leading the AI. It will help us do our jobs fast. And what you see here is basically a chart. This is what we did. You know, this is what we could do on the left hand side, what humans could achieve on their own. And on the right hand side you see how the tools that are coming into fold can help us do our our jobs better.

Celeste Malia:
We worked with a client who is a startup in the AI space and seeing how they think about their tool and how it’s actually the humans who are going to be training. AI is a very interesting piece. And so on. The marketing front, you know, think about. If you are in the marketing role today? How can you leverage some of the tools that you have today to and be a part of that you know, training and and helping you do your job better, because really, that’s kind of where we’re going. So shall we jump into what our customers are doing today. Steven.

Stephen Banbury:
Yeah, I think it’d be great. Just a couple of real life examples that perhaps you could talk to. I know we’ve got, I think, 3 slides in here.

Celeste Malia:
We have some examples here of consumers on the consumer front, the developer front, I think AI is hitting every aspect of the business. But stitch fix is one on the consumer front. They’ve incorporated an AI into help them with their headlines. So here’s an example of a company on the marketing front that is using AI to generate content.

Celeste Malia:
I also work with the new stack, and we look at incorporating some elements of Chat. Gp, right? How can we do our jobs faster? But ultimately, as we just said, you know, it’s the humans that have to re have to review it. You have to make sure that’s a trusted content that you want to put out there. So it definitely helps accelerate what you can put into what you can create.

Celeste Malia:
But you have to also make sure that it’s accurate. So stitch is on the leading edge of one of those companies that are incorporating that content development: on the development side, we see companies like Accenture and AWS, who are helping developers do their jobs quicker. Developers are all over the space they really, you know, they’re hampered by their time. They’ve got so many tools at their disposal, but they also have a lot of responsibilities. And so anything that could help do their job faster. Is definitely something they want and AWS. Cold whisper helps kind of bridge some of the timeliness and gaps for them.

Celeste Malia:
Sephora, another consumer brand. They are leveraging the chat bot, basically. So if you’re one of those women that like to walk into the store, it will help you kinda know what your interests are based on what you bought and then it will suggest, like a color that might be suitable for you. So that’s kind of some of the ways that it’s is looking at the data that you’ve bought in the past. And also now recommending things differently. So it’s very cool.

Stephen Banbury:
And see how your data is being used. Based on past purchases. I haven’t used sephora, Celeste but I have used Ikea and actually, they, I’m based here in the Bay area, actually on the East Bay, here in Oakland and they just opened a brand new store in San Francisco.

Stephen Banbury:
Not that I’m plugging right? I think so, Westfield, more right. But you know they do that very essentially, bringing together an AI, so that augmented reality piece. So you can actually look at you know, what will this piece of furniture look like? What will this room look like with this particular color or chair, or I don’t know. They have great names for all their products. But you know that that is just like a really good marriage in a way that the customer can actually see that in real time.

Stephen Banbury:
Some time ago I actually used another app where, which is for shoes, and that literally, you could point the camera at your shoes, and it would show you what those shoes would look like on you. So this type of marriage of AR and AI has been around for a while, but certainly stepped up, and getting even better with all the advances that we’re making with AI.

Celeste Malia:
I’ve tried. I’ve tried this out for another competitor to Ikea. I think I haven’t tried that Ikea one, but I love to see how it’s gonna evolve over time, because it gives you some idea. It’s been a while since that AR technology came out. So I’m excited to see the AI kind of coming with it, and probably looks a lot sharper than when I first started trying things out in my living room. There you go!

Celeste Malia:
We’d love to talk to you next about how you can use AR in your business, I mean, excuse me, AI, and your business is definitely changing, and our jobs are changing. How we do things is changing, and Steven has put together some things that are coming into the fold.

Stephen Banbury:
It’s yeah. It’s not an exhaustive list, because I know there’s a lot of people on this webinar, and you can’t put everything down. But these were just a few that came to mind in no particular order, actually. But you know, AI has obviously been around for some time and it’s obviously, you know, being built into SAS offerings every day. You see, it launches the whole time. Whether that’s Microsoft with, you know. Google with that G suite has been running this for some time. If you use Gmail, you’ll see it. Finish the sentences as you’re emailing or writing that email. But I wanted to call out some of the chat bots like Chat GPT.

Stephen Banbury:
This was only launched last year on the thirtieth November, and actually only took 2 months to get 100 million users, which is pretty phenomenal. I think it stands at around 170 now, just for sort of con, some context TicTok. was the first one to get to a million users, and then they did that in 9 months. So you can see how quickly that adoption has taken place. And then you have Claude Github dally, which is obviously more image centric. But HubSpot as well as salesforce Einstein, are incorporating this right to the core of what they’re doing.

Stephen Banbury:
I’ve used HubSpot. I’m in past lives and and and currently and what’s so interesting about what they’re doing with their chat Bot is, you know, it’s enabling you to write social copy prospecting emails. If you’re in sales creating competing Ctas, it’s gathering data and doing analysis on that in real time, and so it can create. It tells you what preferences and pain points. There are full customers as they’re going through that journey. So these things exist today on the ABM side. For those that use demand based 6 cents and others.

Stephen Banbury:
You can see that they’re identifying it, intent and trends that actually predict opportunities. So whether they’re aware of your company and brand, whether they’re engaged or ready to purchase and this is like really powerful tools that help a marketing person really prioritize and double down. And when there’s where they’re spending their time.

Stephen Banbury:
In a recent engagement that I had actually at a live ramp. They’re using SEO tools specifically se and rush. But there’s others out there to take content that they’re produced, and then they’re running it through to optimize it for SEO. So you know a smart way to be using content on these tools and then actually looking for Sm Rush to make some suggestions around social posting, too. So these AI tools exist everywhere.

Stephen Banbury:
I would encourage everyone to sort of jump in, get their teams together. get an all hands or get a team meeting and figure out how these things are gonna affect you and the ways that you can best utilize them.

Celeste Malia:
Yeah. I would. I would echo that, Stephen. I think you know markers are always looking forward. At least that’s part of our job. And learning where what parts of AI is is kind of being encroached in your current job today. How can you use it to your advantage? But also, what skills do you need to brush up on so that you could say something fresh you know, as you, as we kind of think about how our jobs are changing.

Stephen Banbury:
Yeah, I would just add, because I have got a background in cyber security storage and backup is, you know, when you talk, when I’ve talked to people that are using these tools, you really do, depending on what information that you’re putting in and sharing, you do need to think about data, privacy and security. You need to think about what IP, you might be giving up who you’re giving that to. So you know, I would certainly recommend talking, you know, thinking about governance around that. And I’m sure if you have someone that’s running security or privacy to go talk to those people before you start putting really sensitive information out there into the wild. That is a great point. That is a very great point, Stephen.

Celeste Malia:
And I, you know we see you know all of these trends kind of coming together, and as we are heading towards the second half of 2023, we’re finding that analysts are out there making their predictions. And of course, you know, I think it wasn’t too long ago when Chief experience officers or chief digital officers were the trend. Well, are we surprised that,

Celeste Malia:
The analysts believe that Chief AI officers are coming into the fold? So here’s a new title that we expect to kind of see, and maybe these are the folks that are going to help put that governance around some of the tools that we’re using today to your point, Stephen.

Stephen Banbury:
Yeah, it’s a great stat. So, thanks to Gartner for that.

Celeste Malia:
How much should we lean on AI kind of goes back to what we’ve been already talking about. It’s hitting just different industries the way we do tasks today. We mostly see it in creating content, right? Creating things, writing. Those are the lower hanging fruits. And so you’ll see here in the chart at the bottom kind of. And we talked about some examples even in the consumer area, right with Sephora. So you can. You could see from the top down where AI is going to kind of be more of an influence in what we do today.

Celeste Malia:
You know, I think the point of this slide is really that no matter what you do, and goes back to the security aspect as well. AI in your job is gonna help us on many fronts. But at the end of the day. The marketers, the people who are actually using the tool are still the ones who need to be at the center of a, you know, a task or an activity? It’s not AI AI is not going to take our jobs. It’s gonna just help us do it better and more efficiently and faster.

Celeste Malia:
Most people are not sure where it fits in, you know. Jump in kind of use some tools to test it out. But at the end of the day it’s just really about seeing how you can do your job better and more efficiently, and maybe even save your business a couple of 1 million dollars, thinking about how much money we are expanding on on just kind of shooting, messaging, and targets out there. So we enjoyed speaking with you today. If you have any questions feel free to reach out to us.

Celeste Malia:
We enjoyed having this conversation, Steven. Is there anything else we should mention? I mean, maybe I was and actually, this ties into QA. Just because while we were talking. We? We got this question in which was and it remind me of 

Stephen Banbury:
Something that the Cmo at the Boston Consulting Group was talking about. And the question is, you know not, am I too late getting into this? But, like, what? How do I start? And what do I need to do? And how do I start thinking about it? And of course it’s not too late, because it’s early. But you need to. There were 3 things that she said. Actually, one was, you need to start experimenting like, stop test. You know, for example, test a gen, AI chat bot on your website, for example, would be a good place to start personalizing web content.

Stephen Banbury:
Another example. I’m really pleased to start experimenting. Obviously do that within the confines of knowing what information you can share. But start doing that and and have your team involved, you know, get ahead and be involved. The second one is today, start your data transformation straight away. So package your content and data. So you can train your future models, your future Gen. AI models just for you.

Stephen Banbury:
And that really ties into what I thought was a really salient point, and one that I think gets lost. And she talked about sharpening your brand identity. And if you think about it like, how do you train the algorithms to capture the distinct elements of your brand? So then you can start officially creating content. That sounds like you. And because you’re creating that brand experience, how people feel about your brand and those interactions. And I think if you’re leaning, as she said. Actually, if you’re leaning too heavily: on genii, then everyone is going to sound alike. Everyone is going to be pretty vanilla. There’s no differentiation, and your consumers and customers are going to start tuning out. So. It was a great question. And I’m paraphrasing the Seema. Bcg’s group said, but I thought. They’re very, very smart words indeed.

Celeste Malia:
Agreed. I often find that people, you know, when it comes to content marketing just come up with ideas that in itself are kind of using a different part of your brain during their day. And even if you just use chat, Gpt to get some ideas or get your brain moving in that direction that could help jump start some creativity so it could be as small as that. You don’t have to know what it is, what it spits out, but it helps kind of get through moving in that direction. And I think that’s where these tools can be helpful.

Stephen Banbury:
Yep.

Celeste Malia:
I’ve definitely tested it out on the Pr front, you know.

Celeste Malia:
When I have to do a plan, and I want to know who likes to name me the top. Name me the top security reporters and it will have you know it’s list and I double check. I use it to basically double check my work. Do I have these people? Are they really relevant? Or I asked it once to create a press release? And you know it came up pretty well. But it gave you an outline of what you should do. So I’m kind of seeing, taking those concepts and applying it to how my role is, you know, how could I do it better? Or it gives me a start.

Celeste Malia:
So and maybe if you’re inside of an organization. And you see that, like, what should I not be distributing out to a marketing company or my consultant? Maybe I can do that at home. So there’s many things that I think it gives you information to make better decisions on.

Stephen Banbury:
Yup. That’s great. I think we’re running out of time. So if there are more questions perhaps people could reach us out to us directly. We are on LinkedIn, like everyone at the moment. So, you know. Do follow us on that. I know we’ve got a number of Webinar series that we’re putting out regularly. So please look out for those Celeste. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you so much.