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The marketing department as you know it is dead. I spent my career leading marketing for the world’s biggest brands and scrappy startups alike. But when ChatGPT hit the scene, I walked away from my global executive role because I knew everything was about to change.
I’ve immersed myself in the AI transformation, and I’m here to bring you the strategies, tools, and real-world examples shaping the future of growth. On Your AI CMO with Pallavi, I talk with visionary business leaders who have successfully unlocked growth in an AI-first world. It's where strategy lives at the top, AI does the heavy lifting, and lean teams win.
This is your shortcut to staying relevant. The future is AI-first, don’t get left behind. Follow Your AI CMO with Pallavi for bold insights, practical playbooks, and the conversations that will shape how you lead and succeed in the age of AI.
Pallavi Sharma (00:02.966)
Welcome to your AI CMO. My name is Pallavi Sharma. I'm the founder of Wit Omni AI Marketing. And I am so excited to have a friend that I've known for many, many years on today, Q Malendrino. So Q I met many years ago when I was managing the GE brand globally back when it was the largest brand in the world. And he was working at Interbrand and GE was his account.
He could tell you a little bit more about that as we get into this podcast. But one thing I know is that Q is a legendary brand strategist. He is someone whose clients have described him as the Michael Jordan of branding and the Q from James Bond. From his own firm to Interbrand, as I mentioned, to Edelman Delta, to launching his own master brand online course, Q has set the foundations for how companies express who they are.
He has worked with the largest, most influential brands in the world. In fact, when I used to manage GE brand globally, and it was the largest brand in the world, Q guided me to really make sure that the decisions we were making at GE were groundbreaking. I still regret not taking you up on your offer to meet at the SoHo house. Little did I know that it was gonna become this fabulous sensation, and now I know.
Always listen to So well, what makes this episode so special is Q's rare ability to get directly into what really matters in brand building. So let's get into it. Hello Q, how are you doing today?
Q. Malandrino (01:42.67)
Hello and hello everyone. Great to be with you. Look forward to this conversation. Very, very current topic, of course.
Pallavi Sharma (01:45.132)
haha
Pallavi Sharma (01:52.536)
Absolutely. So today we're going to be talking about how AI might be a danger to your brand. So Q and I have been working on brand initiatives for so many years. And so we've seen the evolution. As you know, if you're tuning in, I'm very all in on AI, but there are definitely some things you need to be careful about when using it because it could very quickly hurt your brand as well.
Pallavi Sharma (04:49.376)
The truth is most companies using AI and branding are in danger of doing more harm than good. I wanna talk to you about how AI might contribute and even accelerate to the shallowing of brand. And listeners, Q has some real gems of wisdom about the future that we'll discuss later in the episode. So Q, how have you been?
Q. Malandrino (04:55.47)
Thanks.
Q. Malandrino (05:17.674)
I have been great. Can I say that I'm in Rome, Italy, which is my hometown, and always happy to be here, as messy as it is, but it's a beautiful place and everybody should go.
Pallavi Sharma (05:29.002)
Yes, I agree. After visiting Rome, my first thought was I could live here. Why do I not live here? I'm based in San Francisco, which is also a very beautiful city, but obviously Rome is just like none other. So let's get into this. Q, so let me ask you about the very first question, which is around foundations. So I like to ask my listeners the AI CMO.
And my goal here is to give nine questions that will allow you to share your wisdom that our listeners can apply immediately. So the first two questions are about building a strong foundation. So I have to start with an age old question. How do you define brand?
Q. Malandrino (06:15.374)
So that's a great question and there are a million definitions out there. If you think about that you can take anything and according to where you sit you define it in a different way. I can take something as simple as water. I can define it as being something that is indispensable to humankind. can talk about two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. So they're all correct.
The point is where you're trying to say what is the context and where are you sitting. Brand has many definitions. the years there have been important thinkers starting with the mid-90s. The corporate identity became corporate branding. So the identity part became a bit more of science and then supported by things like brand valuation and the like. so brand can be a central organizing.
Principle that lets you operate in a certain way you can say the brand is a relationship that creates and secure Future earnings that's what we used for a while at interbrand. I have my own And it's in plain English so that it's the meaning it's important And I say that the brand is a perception that your audience have of you one it transcends
the merit of what you actually do, and it resides in their mind, in people's mind. So you never actually own your brain. They own it. All you can do is to define how you would like to be perceived and then operate, act, speak, look that way, earn that perception, and work hard at letting it stay that way. If I may, sometimes in...
in client presentation, also to add a bit of interest, I found a quote from Plato of old people. And the quote says, behind, above, and beneath everything we experience in our daily lives is the idea of that thing which gives the thing everlasting meaning. Now that relates to its theory of form, say something else. But I thought that this definition was so beautiful to...
Q. Malandrino (08:40.186)
define something that sits behind the reality. It supports the reality, it roots the reality into something higher. And I thought that was just a beautiful definition. So sometimes in presentation I have a big slide with a picture of Plato saying this thing.
Pallavi Sharma (08:59.212)
I love that. When I just got back from some time in Lake Tahoe and I was lucky enough to stay at a friend's house and he has so many books. And so I was reading a book by Seneca and I thought, translated of course, wow, so many of those teachings are so relevant still today. They're not, know, so I love that story.
When I was at GE and I wouldn't be surprised if Interbrand is who guided us to talk about this. When you're in business, a lot of times people don't value the concept of brand. And so the way we would convince the people internally about the importance of brand, especially to salespeople, is that it is the delta between what your customer is willing to pay. So let's say you have a sneaker that doesn't have a brand, it costs X.
but now you have a sneaker that is branded such as Nike and they're willing to pay considerably more. Obviously, some of it is gonna be in product, but after that, a lot of it is brand. So it's that delta that your customer's willing to pay and why are they willing to pay it? As you said, it's that perception that they have in their mind. So that's the brand, the ROI.
Q. Malandrino (10:12.78)
Yeah, Yeah, and that's important. And certainly at the infrared and throughout my career, I made the point of just what tap water and branded water, regular coffee shop coffee and a cup of Starbucks. So that's that's that's important that brand can support price premium. One thing as important, though, is that the word brand does not necessarily mean good.
I want to get into politics, but you can take any politician that is well known and is a brand, good, better, and different is beside the point. Brand has certain recognizable characteristics. There's a famous wine, a very cheap wine, that college students in the US used to drink. A terrible product that gives you a terrible headache. But it's so famous.
Pallavi Sharma (10:44.888)
You
Q. Malandrino (11:08.362)
in college campuses and that is a brand as much as the most expensive Rothschild bottle of wine. And so it's important to remember that. The word brand does not necessarily mean excellence or good necessarily. It's a neutral term.
Pallavi Sharma (11:31.352)
Yeah, absolutely. That's a great point. And I think you might be referring to two buck Chuck, which is actually, think, I feel like it's Charles Shaw, but nobody calls it that. Everybody would call it two buck Chuck because it was a $2 bottle of wine.
Q. Malandrino (11:46.102)
It was called something like, I want to say fire something. I don't know. I didn't go to college in the U.S. but I know all of
Pallavi Sharma (11:54.24)
Yeah, I'm sure we had it had something to that point. So that's a really good point. know, regardless of whatever it is, just think about the fact that if something does have a brand, that person is thinking about the brand. And so there's immediately some value to that. Right. And then as business people, we want to figure out how to monetize it. Excellent number two.
Q. Malandrino (12:14.67)
Yeah, very nice.
Pallavi Sharma (12:19.424)
You have an online course about branding and it's fully dedicated to brand fundamentals. What are they exactly? Please share.
Q. Malandrino (12:26.912)
All right, so 15 seconds on why I wrote this course. It's because from the mid 90s when corporate identity became corporate branding and became a bit of a science, the craft of how to create the brand fundamentals was a bit lost. There was a lot of influx of left brains into the branding discipline and it became so much of a science and bit
And so the craft of how to create these fundamentals, I'll talk about in a second, I thought it was important, a bit of a lost art. Now, I don't pretend to be the repository of global wisdom on how to do brand components, but certainly I've done that long enough and throughout these eras of branding, and it's more art than it is science. Then you use science to
measure it, validate and so forth. And so I wanted to create this course to really to show the craft that can go and how to actually do it. There's a lot of talk in a business world how brand is important and what brand does. But what brand is and how to create it, there's very, very little chatter on that. Partially because perhaps people hold their cards close to their vests and then when they give their secrets on how they do it.
But certainly it's true that everyone does branding, everybody gets paid by clients. If you come from digital, you come from advertising, if you come from PR, you do branding. And you have your own method, and I respect any and all of them. And I have mine, I believe in them, and I thought to create this course. Now, the fundamentals. Again, it's focused on the fundamentals. The fundamentals are the building blocks. Just like in a building, you have cement, you have nails, you have...
iron, have whatever kind of components. Same thing with brand and the process of branding. Use a certain components to create this brand foundation as I call it. And it is a brand story, this holistic narrative about the operation. You can put purpose as a late, this past 15, 20 years since Simon Sinek's start with why it has become
Q. Malandrino (14:53.282)
popular, by the way, in parentheses, I'd like to note that since the 1970s, McKinsey defined the word mission to be why I exist. And so in branding and in corporate identity, we always use the word mission. About 10 or 15 years ago, it became kind of obsolete, maybe sounded too corporate, and so the word purpose exploded. But it's the same thing. To me, mission and purpose are synonyms. They both mean why I exist. So you can put
purpose at the base of this brand foundation. So the holistic story, the brand story, the leading edge of it, the punch line, which is brand promise. You brand pillars. There are the key components that make the brand special, particularly in combination with one another. You have behavioral tenets, which are brand values. You have personality attributes. And to that, you add the mechanism for going to market.
which is brand architecture. And finally, you add the behavioral components, which is the whole construct of brand culture. And so I broke down in my course, there are 10 sessions, are 60 modules, there six modules per session, and I break down these components and how you actually do it. And I don't spend any time in saying why is that important and provide numbers and data. I assume that other thinkers better
than me can do all the analytics and defend them. And so I just want to delve into the details for the practitioner. How do I actually do a brand positioning? How do I actually do brand architecture? Loads of real life example, lots of practice, and some theory because it needs to exist.
Pallavi Sharma (16:44.92)
Yeah, I love that. And I know what I learned during my time where my full-time focus was brand. And obviously after I've moved into more head of marketing roles, brand is an integral component, even though then I get into demand, Jan and analytics and all of those types of things. But the brand foundation, what I try to explain to other execs or clients is that it increases your efficiency, right? So if you don't have
a well-defined brand and you're trying to do any kind of customer outreach that's all over the place, customer or your prospect is going to be very confused if you don't have a sound brand identity. And so the things that you're describing to you that you're going to talk about in your online course, I think from a business perspective, if somebody is trying to figure out is this worth my time or not, I would say the time you're going to save
if you do it correctly is going to be exponentially higher than when you're just kind of throwing stuff out that doesn't stick. And then as we talked about earlier, having a strong brand brings in that really strong perception to people that you can again monetize. So this is work that I feel continues in this day and age to be very underrated, but extremely critical if you're going to be serious about growing your brand and business.
Q. Malandrino (18:09.644)
Yeah. And you know, we'll talk in a minute in another segment what's happening. You mentioned you used to wear shallowing of a brand, which is happening in this past from where I sit. I see the shallowing of the fundamentals because clients don't want to wait. They want the shiny objects. And so the shiny objects are the logo, the tagline, maybe a brand promise worded as
a tagline, the go-to-market, and this little appetite for, well, I'm gonna take six months and do the brand. Some beautiful work have been done by some well-known companies, very well-known brands, and done much quicker. And this past six months, I saw three of them, it's a giant global program. in the old days, would take a year to do this and these things.
They were done in three months. The important thing is not to forget these fundamentals because think about it. If there's a case to be made that the shiny objects actually have a positive effect and so you do shallow fundamentals and dress them up and make them shiny and make them successful, imagine if you could make the object itself very deep and then shine it. Imagine how much better.
Could that be? And so the importance of the fundamentals, if there are clients listening, do not shortchange them. There are ways to do that quicker and we all appreciate on the consulting side your pressure, quarterly and otherwise. And so we want to serve you. But there ways. have in my own way, the course includes the offering of these short workshops.
that gets you on the way and you don't have to wait three months. It's two, three, four days workshops. So there are ways to do that. So fundamentals are fundamental.
Pallavi Sharma (20:16.329)
And you know, the other thing that I find and as I'm going into a venture where I've launched my own business and I'm acting as a fractional CMO to companies, I'm realizing, and I've always felt this, is the attention to marketing. If you're not in a CPG brand where I do feel they understand it, usually they put quite a bit of resources behind building a brand. In tech, there is this feeling that you should build an amazing product and people will come.
and not as much focus on understanding that, if you spent 18 months building an MVP or any kind of product, you got to put some resources into your marketing and in your branding, and you got to give it some lead time. I see this over and over again where the product is live and suddenly they're like, all right, let's get thousands of people signed up, and it doesn't work like that. It's a process. It takes time.
and you need to take it very seriously just as much as you are building any facet of the business. And to that end, branding is not something that is completely, it's not truncate. You have to be thoughtful about it to do it right. And that's why people hire somebody like you, Q who has a wealth of expertise.
Q. Malandrino (21:25.762)
Hello.
Q. Malandrino (21:31.24)
I would say it was such a pleasure to work with you and GE because GE is a textbook case of the type of brand that has everything including the notion of the modified master brand. have multiple units as you later a couple of years ago you went to three but you had seven or eight. You had GE Money, have GE...
I want to list them. And so you had this modified master brand. You had the power of the corporate brand positioning, which was at the root of all the divisions, no matter if they made jet engines or financial services. And so brand architecture was a huge way to let this concept go into life. So it was a pleasure. I'll be remiss to not to mention the great
team that we put together into Brent to serve you.
Pallavi Sharma (22:33.225)
Yes, likewise, likewise. That was a wonderful experience that I will never forget. I remember I used to live in New York. I would go to your marvelous offices and meet with the people. And it was just such fascinating work. And I wish more people out here in tech would understand kind of that value. And brand is not only limited to very large companies.
This is an interesting thing that I would love to get your insights on. You're seeing a lot of push towards personal branding, for example, especially as social media explodes. so again, you're using similar tenants. You're showing up as a very particular identity and there's a consistency to that. So it's really interesting to see that those principles, people taking them, whether they're doing them knowingly or unknowingly, but some people are doing them very, very well.
They are making a lot of money again.
Q. Malandrino (23:33.134)
Can I tell you real quick, my single favorite part of that program, which we worked together for a couple of years, and it was Eco-Magination. Working with Eco-Magination was magical. I'll stop there because I could talk about that. It was just a magical property.
Pallavi Sharma (23:53.287)
It was, I mean, I feel that GE at that point was quite ahead of its time, honestly, with that campaign because they were very focused on helping their clients understand the ecological impact of using a lot of their products. I remember I did a, a front loading dishwasher and the whole campaign was about how much money you can save or sorry, water you could save and yes, therefore money.
but the campaign was all about in a year you could fill a swimming pool with water, with all the water you save from going front load, something to that effect, but it was fascinating to see and I feel like we were way ahead of our times with that one. All right, so now let's move a little bit into the kind of building questions. So how do you see AI in general as a context for talking about AI
Q. Malandrino (24:39.374)
Okay.
Pallavi Sharma (24:51.716)
in and versus branding.
Q. Malandrino (24:53.998)
So, of course, everyone thinks and lives and sweats AI nowadays and increasingly so every day. There are lots of great thinkers on that and I can only see from where I sit from the brand standpoint, but let me make a...
bit of an introduction a little bit because the context for AI is important. If you remember how the internet started, I remember my first AOL with the double, you know, handshake noise and then there was somewhere 1997, 1998. I remember there was one member of my staff, I had my second company at the time. They was checking this thing like five or six times a day.
with this annoying noise. And I was checking it at 9.30 in the morning and at 4 p.m. And I was telling him, why do you need to do that? Do that just twice a day. You you don't need more. So, but there was no appreciation of the context that the world demanded more speed. And so until you adjust with your mind what the demands and the potential of the words are, then you're stuck in your own ways.
So this is not too dissimilar now. The speed of life, it's immense now. And so the internet experience, my generation certainly taught us something. Younger generation never went through that, and so AI is new. Now, a couple of additional points as context. If you remember Moore's law, Gordon Moore, the co-founder of Intel, he said that computing power
would double every 18 months. He didn't quite say that actually. He said that in 65, he said that the number of transistors on a microchip would double every year for next 10 years. Then he updated 10 years later, in 1975, he said doubling of transistors every two years. So Moore's Law was not based on science. It was based on a trend and on the guess of the speed of improvement of technology.
Q. Malandrino (27:14.228)
I read somewhere that AI is doubling in its capacity every seven months now. And some, they even say that it's better than human intelligence. Of course, you have to define better than. And so the term superintelligence has been coined already. having said that, AI is a revolution. And every revolution from the light bulb to the engine to the internet,
gets more more severe because the technology pushes us more and more forward. The problem is what do you put in it as a human being to make it more workable? Because AI can replace you in so many ways, but it doesn't have the kind of genius, spark of genius, brilliance, the imagination, the yet, the human mind possesses. And so how can you
let it do what it is that you want to do as opposed to do things for you. it's the perspective for all of us not to get lazy and let them do it and let it do it just because it can do it faster. On my course, I tested and I'll talk about that in a second because this is important. I asked for AI Engine, Gemini, ChadGBT.
Waldo and Perplexity. And I let him review my website of the masterbrand.com course and other courses. Plus I fed certain modules against certain books on brand architecture. And in less than 90 seconds, he gave me an entire report. And my course is 632 slides. So in 90 seconds, he read every single one of
He read three other books. It's just, it defies belief. But then you had to interpret it. So I'm not saying anything new. Big thinkers. I speak of the head of strategy and growth at Publis, a gentleman by the name of Rashid Tabakawala. Him and some others which I'll mention, they're great thinkers. He has this theory of roots and wings.
Q. Malandrino (29:42.136)
So use your humanity to have your roots and then use AI to give you wings to think higher and to expand your knowledge in the shorter period of time. So we'll talk about it in the next segment. So AI is a beautiful thing. In every session of my course, I made a judgment on what part AI can help.
more than in others, and in which part you should just put it aside and not use it.
Pallavi Sharma (30:17.535)
Yeah, I agree. know, and I see this all the time where I agree with you, there's a lot of AI washing going on. There's a lot of just slap AI on it. And as part of what I do, I test tools and technologies and I'm constantly talking with other business leaders that are in this space. And, you know, we're kind of going back to your brand, right? my gosh, Q, this just occurred to me.
Do you remember when like ChatGBT really started gaining speed and suddenly Google realized that they needed to start talking about it. And so suddenly you have Microsoft and Google, they're doing all of these, know, Amazon even, well, we're going to improve Alexa and it's going to have much better AI and we're doing all of these other features and releasing them.
you know, mind you, they never said when they're releasing those features. They just said, we will be doing these things. And as a consumer, you're so excited. my gosh, I can't wait. This is going to be even more phenomenal than when I first discovered AI and then it's crickets and those things don't happen. Open AI has actually done a really tremendous job of releasing a mind blowing number of features very, very quickly. But a lot of the bigger guns just did a lot of fancy dog and pony shows. And then we're just waiting. And then when I would test them out,
It was honestly very underwhelming at times. And so that to me, it did hurt their brands because I said, well, before I used to have all my panels open of the different LLMs. And then I got to a point where I'm like, this is just not moving. It's not doing it for me. I'm just going to stay over here. And so you have to be careful no matter what your size is with what you are putting out there in the market and be, I feel as truthful and as honest because once a customer actually then interacts with your product, you want
your brand to reinforce that experience, not it to be smoke and mirrors as they say when you actually use it.
Q. Malandrino (32:15.854)
There's one thing that AI does that hurts me personally because I'm sure you've seen those posts that if a piece of writing has dashes, it's a telltale sign. Well, I love dashes. I use them all the time. So now people might think that let AI do my writing, but I don't. I just like that.
Pallavi Sharma (32:39.007)
Gosh, talk about brand. I mean, to me, that's like the biggest thing that stands out about, especially chat GPT, is the amount of dashes. like, it's branded. You know it's AI. It's either AI or it's Q. It's gonna be one of the two if you see it.
Q. Malandrino (32:52.43)
Yeah, exactly. That's my mother tongue, as you know. And so I like writing with M dashes, where it can say.
Pallavi Sharma (33:01.557)
yeah, that was the other thing about working with AIs. I can spot the writing and it almost turns me off. I actually have this visceral reaction when I see very AI generic writing because there's certain sentence structures, certain terminology that it tends to use. I have a hard time reading further. I'll just kind of shut off and I'll know that person didn't take the time to edit it and refine it. I mean, I use AI for everything, mind you.
Pallavi Sharma (33:54.791)
You've talked about brand fundamentals being non-negotiable. In your opinion, how should AI support and not erode those fundamentals?
Q. Malandrino (34:09.838)
So as you might imagine from what I said so far, the answer is yes or no. Can AI help in branding? Yes or no. Let's stay with branding and not identity. Because identity we're talking about coming up with names and logos and it's a design function. So we're talking branding, so let's exclude identity, let's exclude the design for a second.
And so the fundamentals, conceptual fundamentals. So the answer is yes and no. In the course, I made the point that there's always a section in each of the 10 sessions that says, how can AI help me in phase one, brand positioning. And there are different parts of brand positioning, different parts of phase one investigation. So it can help here, competitive review, it can help.
here, if you're doing asset audit for brand architecture, et cetera. So each of these parts of branding has parts in it. So AI can help in some ways more than others. For example, if you talk about brand architecture, AI can help you with finding products and services of a company.
You can scour, it can give you things that maybe it's dead. You can scour databases, can scour trademarks, and these are dead. When you get to the brand-not-brand decision, which is the core of a brand architecture decision tree, for example, what do you do with portfolio management? So you decide what the business should be selling, and then you have to decide how those properties go to market. So portfolio...
Management is one thing, brand architecture is a different thing. Many times the two are put together. AI can help in one more than another. Can it help in personality attributes? Can it help in brand pillars? I mentioned brand pillars because it's completely useless. If you develop a brand promise, which as the word says, promise is something.
Q. Malandrino (36:25.962)
And brand promise can be an exhortation, for example, just do it or let's create for IBM. It's an exhortation. It's not really a promise. But other promises that exist in the marketplace from big companies can be articulated in a certain way. That articulation give you the brand pillars. You don't need AI. And so sometimes AI becomes the default just because you're looking for words and you don't want to think to anymore.
additional minutes. And so it's like, you know, give me the pillars of this proposition. You feed the position statement and said, you know, feed me and you just copy. You do a bit of editing. I'm saying the temptation to use it. It's great. It saves time. It's a, you're busy on the consulting side. We all work on four or five, six projects at the time. It's not that we have one client. So the temptation is great.
But we shouldn't give in to that. I want to spend a word on the brand promise because there's a difference between a tagline and brand promise. So Nike, just do it, it's not a brand promise. The brand of Nike is about the notion that if you have a body, you are an athlete. I'll support you in your quest, blah, blah, all of that, summarized into...
the shiny object on this tagline. I've had, there is one brand promise that I love the most this past year. It's it's spectacular. And it's for Airbnb. if people don't know what it is, I'll hold that for a second and I'll set it up. So if you feed the business of Airbnb into an AI engine and say, me a brand promise, you will get a ton.
of clever wordsmithing of that business model. So you get things like a new way to a hotel. So the touchstone of a good Brad Promise is if it forces you to do something more or better than you did yesterday. So a new way to hotel is a shiny object, maybe it's even cool, or you come up with a cooler word. But it does not let...
Q. Malandrino (38:52.824)
the organization do anything different than yesterday. That's what they did yesterday. You just put the shiny phrase in front of it. So Airbnb came up with the concept of belong anywhere. Now an AI engine will never come up with something like that. Because you can't transcend the reality of the business. And so maybe one day I'll do that. I'm a big Isaac Asimov in the serious science fiction. So maybe there'll be something.
Pallavi Sharma (39:08.479)
Yeah. Yeah.
Q. Malandrino (39:22.286)
one day, but not yet. And so that's where AI, you should be humble enough on behalf of AI. AI cannot be humble. And so be humble on their behalf and say, I'm not going to ask you this because it's not fair. Because you're going to give me lots of clever copywriting and that's not
Pallavi Sharma (39:46.889)
I agree. So I do use a lot of AI in brand work for clients. And one of the reasons I launched the business was because I've done it manually all human in the past many times and I wanted to test AI out and I was kind of blown away by what it was doing. But the asterisk is that I have trained custom GPTs with a lot of brand
knowledge. And so when I use my custom GPT, what it spits out is really good, but then I, the human, then further refine it or I use it as a tool or I ideate on it. So that's where I feel like AI and human together are the ideal combination because as somebody who's worked in the field, who's studied aspects of brand, you know, I can tell what seems to be good, what's not.
And using AI as a tool helps me discern that. And so sometimes AI may give you three, four, five different options. So what I usually do is then I take one that works and then I drill further as a kind of a brainstorming tool, if you will, just the way I would other humans. And so again, it's not, they keep saying it's not turnkey. I couldn't just go and say, give me a brand promise and then away I go and it took two seconds. It's not how AI works.
But in my example, I'm using it as one person, whereas before it may have taken me a much longer time and more people. That part I can collapse, but you definitely need the human to really define what is kind of transcendent, if you will. And yeah, maybe AI will get there, if you will.
Q. Malandrino (41:33.518)
Transcending is the right word. In my definition of brand, I actually use that word and I said, trans-ends what you actually do for a living. I see and I tested it. I see some beautiful quote unquote brand story made. I fed the brand story that I wrote for a client.
about a dozen, a good dozen of it. And then I asked that I fed the business of that client to a couple of engines and they came up with the brand story. They're very accurate. They were written. Maybe there's a turn of phrases, turns of phrase that I didn't think of it. Maybe I'm not good enough writing it. So I appreciate that. But the kernels of difference, they just weren't there. AI didn't uncover those.
And so, you know, maybe someone will be better. I have some friends that they go level one, two, three, and they know much more than I do. But, you know, the human mind is a human mind.
Pallavi Sharma (42:43.477)
Yeah, yeah, I agree. All right. So let's, so I'm gonna pause real quick. So let's try to, we're already at this point, 42 minutes in. So let's kind of go and try to be more succinct, I think, in the remaining ones. So we don't like go way over time.
So let's move on to the next question. What's unwise in how some companies are using AI in their brand strategy today? And what's the danger of putting out AI-generated brand fundamentals? I know we talked about it a little bit more, but let's dig into that.
Q. Malandrino (43:56.034)
Yeah, yeah, but we talked about, so I'll keep it short. There are two questions there. The first is, it's what's unwise of what some companies may be using AI for brand fundamentals. It's very helpful, it's inexpensive, it's fast. But if you use that as substitute for true thinking, it's like intellectual cheating. You we all love shortcuts.
But you have to decide and choose where you need the shortcut and where you will short-changing yourself actually paying a price. To the second question which is related, what's danger of having these AI generated fundamentals? It's Airbnb would have come up with a new way to hotel and shortcut themselves. So what is the price of not having enough depth at the root of your price?
And so, it's not good strategy for your own company whether you sit in a corporate marketing department or if you are a consultant serving that client. And I spoke earlier of the shiny object, right? So you can take a new way to hotel, make it real shiny. Make it shiny as in,
important come up with better wording but fundamentally you're not saying anything new you're just spinning a reality.
And I said, what if that object was deep to begin with, and then you shine it. So it's got far more power. One telltale sign of what's happening in the corporate world is the rise of a new corporate title. It's a corporate title that did not exist until a year ago. At least, I've never seen it. And it's VP of Brand Marketing. That title did not exist. So that tells you something.
Q. Malandrino (46:03.608)
Give me something that I can market. So brand becomes something that you market as much as is no longer a root, out of which is Kona light, that everything stays within it and keeps that in same direction, but it's something that you market, just like the price or features or anything else. And so the shallowing that you spoke of at the beginning of this call,
It's dangerous to me. You lose depth and if you lose depth you lose meaning. And if you lose meaning you lose the notion of long lasting and brand built.
Pallavi Sharma (46:48.095)
Yeah. And so let's talk about that for a second. when, again, when I was, at GE, they used to use the brand, not, wasn't a marketing function. It was the essence of the company. and so we actually had it there when you hired, when you fired people, when you did yearly reviews, it was the brand attributes that people were measured against. And the belief was that.
every aspect of the company should reflect those brand attributes. And so that includes the people. And the talk that I used to give to many new employees at the time was entitled, You Are the Brand, to show how your behavior is a reflection of the brand. And we would give many examples of employees kind of going above and beyond when interacting with different people to
hold that brand value in their interactions. And so it isn't just a marketing function. It is the essence of your organization. you know, it's a concept, honestly, being back here in Silicon Valley, I haven't seen it much. It's like, I have to go and explain to people that this isn't just a logo. It's not about colors. It's not just about marketing. It's about your company and its essence. And there's definitely some companies that are doing
better than others, but it's still not as widespread as you would think.
Pallavi Sharma (48:46.163)
You can comment on one of their posts and they'll often respond back and they're looking for feedback. And it's a really, really fascinating place to be for me. But how do you recommend that leaders test AI tools without compromising the depth that is necessary for them?
Q. Malandrino (49:02.638)
Watch for a telltale sign. If a brand concept at the root of then the five things that influence perception, there are only five, corporate actions, there's cultures, there's people behavior, communications, identity, and the way they speak and messaging.
If this brand does not require you to do anything different than yesterday, it's a shallow shiny object. It has little value. Certainly, if you were messy or you didn't look good or you looked old and you do this quote unquote rebrand, yeah, you you polish a reality, it might have some value. But true brand should do more, should dig a little deeper.
deeper than the reality. So it's a corporate conscience. If you sit in a corporate marketing department, how best can you exploit the power of brand for your own employer? If you are a consultant, it's a consultant conscience. How deep or how shallow it is what I deliver? So I leave it at that because
Every professional, there are no more pure brand consultant. My generation of pure brand strategists is disappearing and now there's a slant. So you are in advertising, so you do branding in order to then do ads. You do digital, you do branding in order to do that and PR, the same thing. So pure brand strategists almost don't exist anymore. But that sense, that the conscience of a brand as root should be...
because it's invaluable.
Pallavi Sharma (50:57.909)
All right, so now let's talk a little bit about future and influence because initially we discussed the importance of building a strong foundation and then building the brand. But now let's talk about what happens in the future once we do these things. So what signal are you watching in the AI meets brand space that most people aren't paying attention to yet?
Q. Malandrino (51:23.79)
Yeah, very shortly to watch for the absence or presence or hints of this human sensitivity and sensibility. Because we all know that AI can take human knowledge and compress it in a 90 second answer. It's a fact. The speed is incredible. So what does give you? Does it give you the human sensitivity?
You will never see signs of that if you don't have that yourself. So you have to start with yourself, not looking at AI. So start with yourself and look at AI as a tool that can help you. If you have that perspective, then you'll be critical of AI. You'll be able to see holes here and there and what's missing. But if you don't, if you trust it, you just trust it. Then you don't do the thinking work that allows you to see where the pitfalls may be.
Pallavi Sharma (52:23.561)
You know what's interesting is I feel that as a, I'll say marketing leader and maybe really frankly any leader, if you were working with humans and a team, you would review, you would check the work and AI is no different, right? It does pretty amazing things, but you still have to check it. You still have to guide it.
It's just very different than dealing with a human. I personally love the fact that you don't have to deal with any of the human emotions that come around with iterations and going back and forth and the speed is incredible. But you still got to do those things really. you know, set it and forget it is not a thing yet. And that's what also scares me about kind of automations and AI agents as like the next thing everybody's jumped on board and talking about and people are doing.
But again, you you have to make sure that there is human checks so the quality of output is good. Going back to the AI tools, I'm not going to name the brand, but there is a brand out there that claims you could basically put in some basic information, put in your website, and then it is going to just spit out lots of social media content for you. So I tested it out and I would never post any of the content. They had a really good interface. I love the concept. And maybe one day they'll get there.
But as somebody who looks at quality in terms of the output, I would never put those items, those graphics out into the marketplace. And maybe that's the kind of tool where somebody that is less versed in marketing and branding might think, my gosh, this is so efficient. This is great. I got an image and I got some text. Let me put it out there. But as marketing and brand professionals, we know that
that's not the right approach, especially for more elevated brands. And so, maybe again, one day that tool will get there, but I definitely would not use it and prefer to be a little more hands-on with my AI. Alrighty, so who are a few thinkers or frameworks you recommend for leaders looking to master brand fundamentals?
Q. Malandrino (54:27.011)
Yeah.
Q. Malandrino (54:35.15)
All right, so let's have the easy one. So framework. Every consultant has one. You're not a consultant if you don't have a framework or some kind of a chart. And in my course, I keep mentioning the course. I'm not trying to promote it. Just because this course contains all that I know.
Pallavi Sharma (54:45.407)
Ha ha ha.
Pallavi Sharma (54:51.039)
You should promote it. That's what we're here for, partly.
Q. Malandrino (54:58.318)
And so I refer to it because it's in there. So I have some sub-frameworks, some competitors, some others, some things that you find on Google. So frameworks, you have to have one. Which one is the one I prefer? Are mine.
Mine are great, really, really good. I've been doing that since the 80s. I lived through the transition of corporate branding and I contributed to that transition with some thinking about this framework. Let's put that on the side. As far as favorite thinkers, I would mention some direct colleagues because they're all great. I don't want to favor one over the other.
There are some thinkers outside, if you will, my arena of corporate branding that I really, I can't wait to read what they say and one is, I mentioned Rashid Tabakoala at Publicis, there's Rory Sutherland at Ogilvy, there's Martin Neumeyer at Liquid Agency. So there are.
some thinkers that they write and of course I'm interested in what they write about branding but you know I respect their views, I have mine so I don't consider one to be better than the other but they think broader and they think of the impact on the human race and there are some very very interesting views. Martin Neumeyer says that the most important role in
with respect to AI, it's a fight for human creativity. And so it's a beautiful concept and very well said in a few words, what I tried to say in the past hours. another one, mentioned this issue of the cost of mediocrity. This is what I was saying.
Q. Malandrino (57:07.576)
you you're shining up poor objects, you have a use for it, but you sure change yourself. Rory Sutherland calls it the doorman fallacy. And he said, of course you can replace a doorman in an apartment building with some electronic thing. But the doorman, and he listed, and I'm paraphrasing him, screens for sketchy people.
It recommends the best coffee shop, carries a bag when it's needed, a signal, a status in the building. And so it's not just about efficiency. And certainly you can improve efficiency. The question is, what is it that you lose? I have two kids, thankfully. Thankfully. One is a junior in college and the other one just graduated and they use AI.
but they didn't use AI when they were in high school, a years ago, because it just wasn't there. And as a parent, I would not know how to navigate them, not relying on them. And again, what is it that you lose by not thinking? Your mind atrophies, honestly, there are some ideas of human brilliance that you're not gonna get, least not yet.
And so don't miss out on that value.
Pallavi Sharma (58:37.877)
think that's an interesting point that you bring up because I also have two children there in high school and part of my feeling because I am huge proponent of AI, I wanted them to use it more frankly initially and they weren't really using it. And in fact, they would say, they would get frustrated because one of my daughters would say, I'm doing the actual work. I'm doing the thinking.
And then I see that other person over there just chat GPT-ing everything. And I said to her, said, well, in the end, you're the one that's going to benefit because you're growing the tool that you have here and learning, which is why you're in school versus the child over there that's just using it to shut their mind down. And so to me, that's like another aspect of AI is the point of AI is not to shut your brain down. The point of it is to...
I feel kind of unlock and be able to do things as a human that, you know, only the human mind, as you said, can do and use AI for other things that maybe are lower value tasks, for example, or as we talked about, use it for brainstorming. There are many very, very fascinating ways you can use AI, but again, the point isn't to shut your brain down. If anything, I feel it's to increase your capabilities and creativity.
So, you know, I've stopped pushing chat GP. I'm like the only parent in the world probably that's like trying to get their kids more into AI, but I've stopped because I'm like, you know, this is amazing that on their own, they would prefer to use their own brain.
Pallavi Sharma (01:00:26.773)
Wrapping this section up, what will separate enduring brands from forgettable ones in an AI-dominated media world, in your opinion?
Q. Malandrino (01:00:34.83)
We talked about it. I'll summarize it with two words, the two words are depth and meaning. You have poor fundamentals or shallow fundamentals. Not only you shine them up and market them, but they lose sheen quickly. You have to keep shining them up. You don't have much to work with if the roots are not...
deep enough and yet they keep shining. That's expensive and tiring and repetitive. So have those fundamentals too. Have that, have meaning and build on.
Pallavi Sharma (01:01:13.287)
Absolutely. Well, you know, to wrap our time up, if someone listening is rethinking their brand right now, what's one move they can make this week besides contacting me to help them with their business and contacting you to learn about brand fundamentals? Those are givens. But what do you recommend they do?
Q. Malandrino (01:01:34.894)
Use the word rethinking, which is interesting. So there's an assumption that they are thinking about it. Because most of the thinking is done, how much can I do with a brand I have? And so some companies are more prone than others to rethink the fundamentals. And maybe the reason that they can't do that much with their brand is because it's fundamentals.
don't give them that much permission. You can imagine that, again, Airbnb, a new way to a hotel, there's only so much you can say, but if the context is belong anywhere, your world open up. You have permission to get into a new business. So that's the broadening of permissions or the consolidation of permissions, a huge function of...
a good branding. what they can do this week, I would say look at your brand fundamentals and see are they working well enough for you. What else could you do? At the end of the day, the recreation or the rearticulation or the betterment of fundamentals is a point in time. It's something that can be done while the train is running. It can be done reasonably quick in a grand scheme of things.
is a steal because no matter how much I can charge, it pales in comparison to then the million that you will spend in marketing and communicating your brand.
Pallavi Sharma (01:03:06.217)
Yeah, yeah, and losing that money if you don't do it correctly. So great. Thank you so much for joining us. But before you leave, can you tell us a little bit more about where people can learn about your work? Sign up for the Master Branded course. And if possible, I'm happy to share the link out as well. But please let our listeners know.
Q. Malandrino (01:03:28.526)
I have two main venues. My LinkedIn profile has a lot. write lots of articles. there's a repository of thinking brand related. There are testimonials for clients. There's my career, et cetera. So that's a lot in there. It's linked to my master branded page. The course is at master branded.
and on purpose, and I looked at so many branding courses that exist, and on purpose you will not even find a price. I don't have a price. If you click I'm ready to start or I have a couple of buttons to get to the point, you'll see that there's a form that I would like to know what it is that you think you need.
and whether it is a workshop, a private workshop for your actual problem you're facing today as opposed to general knowledge because I would like that to be bespoke. I don't want to give you something that you don't need and so according to what you need I'll articulate this knowledge in a way that is worth to you. so I chose to do that right, or indifferent. MasterBranded.com
as the site.
Pallavi Sharma (01:04:57.695)
Thank you for that. And it's so strange that you say that. I literally just wrote an email to a prospect when we were trying to figure out the scope. And I said this to him. said, look, I don't do turnkey marketing. And I really hate seeing all of these shops popping up that are claiming they're going to do all of these things because that's not how marketing works. It is a very bespoke kind of a function.
And it's very specific to your business needs, your ICP, your goals, your budget. There are a lot of things that go into it. So I really warn people off of hiring any agencies that are just doing the functions. Sure, anybody can do a Facebook post and anybody can send an email and anybody can do a website. That doesn't mean you're doing it right or that you're going to make money or you're going to connect with your customers or you're to get long term value from those customers or get repeat customers, all those things. So, you know,
Please, please take marketing and branding seriously. It's, you know, those are kind of my parting words, but McHugh, thanks so much for sharing your insights. And you know, if this episode gave you something useful, please take a moment listeners to follow the podcast, leave a review, and then share it with someone else who is working on their branding to help scale or build their organization.
If you prefer video, can also catch this episode on YouTube, but the audio version is available on all major platforms. You can just search for your AI CMO. I'm Pallavi Sharma. See you next time. Thank you so much, Q, for joining us today.
Q. Malandrino (01:06:38.338)
Thank you. Thank you and thank you everybody.