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What is marketing?
Have you ever had that thought before? No? Well, I have. Quite a bit, weirdly.
Oh, hey there, I'm Jordan 👋. I'm a man from Wisconsin on a Frodo-like journey to discover what marketing is. Like, really is.
Not the fluff. Or the hype tactics. The real stuff.
Strategy. Processes. First principles. The things that ACTUALLY help a company grow and win.
Everything I wish I had learned when I started five years ago. I hope to shorten that learning curve for you.
Some questions I explore on this show with my guests:
- What is the job marketing should get done in a company?
- What is one of your strongest held beliefs about marketing?
- What is something you believe that few other marketers believe?
This podcast is for me to learn from some of the best thinkers on this planet, and hopefully, you can pick up some wisdom too.
Join me on this journey to learn.
It's 2050. In contrary to what many think right now in 2024, I do not believe robots have taken over. Hear me out here. Instead, I think they're helping us integrate it into our lives to achieve more than we could without them. Now, what does that mean for us, you and I right now, today, 2024, or whenever you're listening?
Speaker 1:I think it's important for us to realize that and accept that. I guess, obviously, the notion that the world's gonna end is probably not a great one to hold, but even if you do, I think there's a lot of benefits to adopting this view that AI will likely be around, that it's not going anywhere. Now I want to speak a little bit on that. I call this an interlude. If you haven't noticed, which is totally fine, this entire podcast season has been structured and created in a way like an album.
Speaker 1:So what that means is there was it was crafted in a way that I had certain guests next to each other either talking about SEO or different topics, and this interlude is just a way to kind of change the pace a bit. We recently had our first 2 guests episode last week or whenever you're listening to this last episode, and it took a bit of time before I was able to release my next one. So this is kind of an interlude to change of speed up, and we have 2 more guests after this, and 2 more solo episodes. So I'm going to just riff on AI a bit, where it's going, what we should do about it, and all of that. So before we get into it, let's run the intro.
Speaker 1:Welcome to On Marketing, a show where we explore marketing's first principles, mental models, and my favorite, contrarian takes. My aim is not to tell you what to think. It's assisting you in improving how you think about marketing and life. It's April 24, 2024. I'm Jordan Olgren, a marketing strategist by day and a podcast host by night.
Speaker 1:As I said, today we're talking all about AI. I'm gonna share where I think it's going in regards to marketing and what you and I can do about that. Ready to get in? Before we do, make sure to subscribe to the newsletter to get new episodes and extra insights delivered directly to your inbox every week. The link to join is in the first line of the show notes.
Speaker 1:Also, this is a reminder that if you're watching this, you can listen. And if you're listening, you can go and see my beautiful mug if that's something you're into. Anyways, the final reminder, this is for the legal department. All opinions shared in this podcast are individual views of the hosts and guests not representing their employers or associated organizations. This content is intended for informational purposes and should not be considered professional marketing guidance.
Speaker 1:Listeners should act on this information at their own risk. See on the other side. This is the other side. So as I was talking about, I think it's really important to first acknowledge that AI in marketing will be here and likely for the future. Now, I guess, take a step back and just talk about what I mean when I say AI.
Speaker 1:I'm really mainly talking about generative AI. So not as much, well, I guess machine learning is in it, but not as much like robotics or any of that stuff. So I'm really, really taking a step back and saying macro wise, AI will be a part of marketing and how we do it, the output, everything will be affected by it. If not today, definitely in 10, 15, 5 years. So I think that's something we all have to accept.
Speaker 1:Realize it's rapidly changing. If we thought marketing was changing with social medias and all those things throughout 2010 or whatever, it's only going to get crazier and faster with just generating content by AI purely. It's gonna make so much more content if we don't already have a content overload problem. So I think it's it's just unique that, that this is kind of a it's a unique time that we're in right now where I think marketing will be so different in 5 years compared to in 2020, which it definitely changed through COVID, but not so drastically as I think it will. That could also just be my optimistic thinking and as all generations throughout history, we always think we're the ones whether that's the end of times or the most rapidly evolving time.
Speaker 1:So I'm also aware of that and I think it's important to not always go overboard. So I'd love to know what has your experience been with ChatGPT, Jasper, all of these other AI generative tools? Have you found them to be helpful? Have you found them to be maybe not very helpful, slowing you down, making worse output? I'd love to know.
Speaker 1:So if you're not connected with me on LinkedIn, my email is jordan0. So it's jordan0@hey.com. Just send me an email. I'd love to know how you are using it and how you're getting the most benefit out of it. But before I go any further, I wanna just make sure that you realize this is gonna be a short episode.
Speaker 1:I promise. I'm going a little bit wild, kinda letting it go, but I wanna really pull it in and hopefully deliver some insights to you in a quick fashion, so that we can take away something of how can we do marketing differently today, so then we can be prepared for in better position for 2050, 24, whatever that date may be that we eventually get to. So I think the first thing I want to do is just take a step back and what was the old way of marketing without AI, obviously? And I think really the internet is one of the biggest changers to marketing. So maybe AI is bigger, but I really think the Internet really made marketing less of this one way communication channel that businesses would kind of broadcast their messaging, whether that was in print, TV, radio, all of that, it was very much so kind of broad, untargeted, and they were relying on very wide data.
Speaker 1:So it was kind of just I don't want to say spray and pray, pray and spray, whichever way you do it, but it was definitely not as much able to kind of be use software or whichever to either make your marketing better or even kind of analytical analytical wise it. Use analytics to improve it. It just wasn't there. Sales was clearly the dominant player and it it still could be today for some businesses, but it definitely was running the show back then. And it it brought in more ROI because most of the activities a company was doing to generate revenue was definitely sales orientated or copywriting direct mail.
Speaker 1:Not as much what we see today with marketing. And I think what I want to kind of talk about is the fact that when the internet came on board, not everybody jumped on ship. Maybe I should reverse that. When market when the internet came on the scene, not many people jumped on board. I think that's important to note that there was a lot of skepticism, lack of understanding, and just the novelty of the internet to many just meant they didn't adopt it for a very long time or they just continued with their traditional going to conferences, doing magazines, all those things and kind of just were like, maybe it won't be here.
Speaker 1:And I really see that today with our thoughts around AI, that it just will be this flash in the pan. What does that even mean? But this kind of a glimpse and then gone where I think that's the same way for the Internet where many thought that it was likely the, the next kind of flashy trend, it stayed around and it's really kind of changed the way that we both live, think, and work. So I think AI is really the same. Today's no different.
Speaker 1:I think while AI is busting through the wall, I think some people are hiding while others are proactively addressing it. And I think those who are open and curious to see how AI can help them win in the future will be the winners in the future. Because even if AI doesn't become as disruptive as some are thinking and promoting, I believe using it, people will gain skills that will only be able to be developed through working with the machine, whether that's prompting, which could improve your briefs or your ability to kind of share a vision with someone to go and do, or just tons of different ways editing and feedback and which you obviously can get from a human, but it just helps you get better at seeking those things or whichever. So kind of the mindset. And I wanna just say some of that script was written by ChatGPT and Claude 3.0, and you'll realize that later on when I go into some of my promises with AI, which I think is just important to have.
Speaker 1:Imagine it's 2050 again and you're a marketer. You leave your home and jump into an air taxi helicopter and head to work in a nearby city. What would have took you 2 hours maybe takes you at max 30. Marcus, your your AI copilot, who maybe is flying it but maybe is just in your ear, suggests a few songs you would like to listen to based on other mornings, other days that you perform very well, then it, not sure the pronoun for Marcus yet, would read you the emails from the day before asking you how do you want to respond to each one. It would then create the response, ask you if you wanna edit it, and then send.
Speaker 1:You would then have maybe a few minutes to just review your priorities or maybe not go to small task before you get to work. Then you arrive at work. Maybe you fly up, and I don't wanna go too deep into it. But let's say you jump into a customer conversation that's recorded by Marcus, so he's recording I said he. There we go.
Speaker 1:That's his pronoun. He's recording the whole conversation. After that, he debriefs you on some of the key points using direct quotes from that customer. It stores this in your database, your source of truth, and then puts everything in the correct place. Next, you work in collaboration with Marcus using the customer data and a deep understanding of your brand and or client that it produces the entire thing or most of it for you, whether that's a Google search ad, YouTube video script, or a podcast script.
Speaker 1:You will provide all the context and direction that's needed, and then it creates something that's more specific and human than clearly we're doing right now, at least I am. I could obviously continue forever, but I hope you see the point. Marketing will look nothing like it does today. I full heartedly believe that, both in the way we live vision glasses, air taxis and the way that we work. We'll do more of what matters in marketing focus more on seeking and finding and gaining and then giving that context for the machine.
Speaker 1:This requires using AI to gain context of a customer with them recorded that can compile over time into a useful place folder for the machine to produce quality content from or stuff. It's a revolution, kind of like from 1985 to 2000. Because from 2000 to 2020, maybe if you got in a time machine, it would kinda mess you up seeing what's here. But I think from 85 to 2005 with the Invent and the Internet, and I know the Internet wasn't too far at 2005, I think you would be just it'd be nuts to see kind of where we went. And I really think if you got in a time machine today and opened it up in the next minute and you're in 2050, I think you'll be the same way of like, woah we're doing things so differently.
Speaker 1:And my question for you is, are you ready for that? Okay. Now yes, what should you do? I'm not gonna go too much into kind of like exactly what you should do, but one thing is is you should play with ai. Spend some money.
Speaker 1:Get a premium. Use Grammarly, Premium Pro, or whichever. Use Otter to transcribe. Use Claude 3.0 or ChatGPT and use, like, something like SavvyCal or something a little advanced. It doesn't really use AI, but that kind of starts to make things easier.
Speaker 1:That's a bookings app. So I think that's what I would first look at is some of the tools that I'm using. Can I add some AI or just better tools that are around, to it so I can get used to kind of working with a machine or using some of these advanced tools? A mini lesson or a side note is that it's all about context. Context is what makes or breaks a prompt, and it's really what you should be focusing on, and it's why I suggest doing customer interviews, recording those using the transcript, having a source of truth that it can draw from that has just all sorts of notes, different stuff, so you get more things specific and tailored to your business or whatever you're trying to do.
Speaker 1:Now back to the question though of how you should what you should do, where you should spend your time or your money, I really suggest making AI use daily, a daily commitment. So you're gonna use it 5, 10, 15 minutes. So eventually, like for me and many others, it becomes natural. You have to force yourself to do it every day for 5, 10, 15 minutes. So I think that's what you should instantly do.
Speaker 1:There's probably much better people out there that can share with you what you should do now that you believe that it's important than me. So I'm just here to bring the news. Obviously, others are there to really help you start to implement it in your life. So I just wanna finally wrap up with sharing my promises for my use with AI, and I think you should do this as well. Whether you write it, which I did in an essay or make it on a podcast, I think it's important to just state your promises.
Speaker 1:So, first, promise 1 is think first of preserving privacy and confidentiality. So, obviously, always thinking about either using products that preserve privacy and confidentiality or just thinking, is this something I want to put into into the AI so that they have it it's trained on their models. I know there's a lot of competing, conflicting information on that that it doesn't use your information, but I really just always think first of that. Promise number 2 is never release AI only generated content. Always keep the human in the loop.
Speaker 1:I think that's the context aspect. It's always editing it then asking to change, whichever. So keeping the human in the loop never I'll never share anything AI only. Promise number 3 is to continue learning and experimenting with AI to grasp the proper ethical use of it. I think the only way we can properly know how to use it is to keep using it.
Speaker 1:So I make that promise to my millions of listeners and followers, but just to those that look to me for that advice that, hey, I'm in the arena. I'm really trying to learn, grow, and figure out the best practical ways to use it. And and also ensure that there's no incentives for me to push certain products or certain ways of thinking. Promise number 4 is to provide transparency when I rely overly on AI to produce content. Obviously, you might have forgot, but earlier I mentioned that I had used both Claude and chatgpt to create some of the script.
Speaker 1:That's part of my promise is if I overly rely on something, I'm going to share it with you. So you just know, hey, this was heavily influenced by AI. Promise number 5 is to never lie or provide inaccurate advice or recommendations to people to advance my agenda. So I actually added that earlier, but that is the final promise that I will never do anything with AI that is beneficial for me, so preach this way or preach this product. I think just in anything in life, that's really bad, so I'm going to try to stay uber neutral in this in this revolution of AI so I can provide hopefully beneficial and practical things that are based in reality and not based on a hidden agenda.
Speaker 1:So that is the episode. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you got something out of it. Most of you likely realize AI is huge. It's big.
Speaker 1:It's gonna be around, but if you didn't, I hope that could at least illuminate that insight. And then, if you want to, as I mentioned earlier in it, if you're using it, shoot me an email, connect with me on Linkedin, let me know how you're using it. If you're not using it and you want any tips, any tricks, anybody I follow, you want some links, get my DM on Linkedin. I'll definitely share Linkedin links. I'll share links to some people that I follow, YouTube channels, newsletters that really help me know what's going on with AI and also some good tools to use.
Speaker 1:So hopefully, this was helpful as I said for a third time now, but please reach out if you have any questions. Share how you're using it and just keep going. It gets better, I promise. I'm just kidding. It'll probably only get crazier and worse.
Speaker 1:Again, thank you for listening. You being here means the world to me. Take care. One thing before you go, if you could subscribe wherever you're listening to this or watching, that would really help out both you getting the episodes right when they come out and raising this podcast in the ranking. So hopefully more people like you can listen to this, And if there's anything that I can do to make this podcast more beneficial for you, if it's somebody you think I should interview, if you're the person, please comment, please email me.
Speaker 1:It's in the show notes, so we can just continually deliver more value to you, the listener. Again, thank you for watching, and have a great rest of your day, evening, week, and hope to see you here next time.