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Marketing and business strategy podcast for executives and marketing leaders who want to improve outcomes from marketing.
Marketing veterans Devin Bramhall (Animalz, Help Scout) & Margaret Kelsey (InVision, OpenView) use their combined 20+ years of experience to increase the business impact of marketing by creating shared understanding of its purpose and outcomes among marketing leaders, founders/CEOs & others in the C-suite.
Created in partnership with Share Your Genius
An award-winning B2B podcast production company: https://www.shareyourgenius.com/
Devin Bramhall [00:00:01]:
If it works, it's quality. If it doesn't work, it's not quality.
Margaret Kelsey [00:00:06]:
I think it's easier to do, actually, where you're just, like, building that chaotic playground mind map thing of we're gonna hit them all over the place.
Devin Bramhall [00:00:13]:
I've actually become, like, less tolerant. My new phrase to people is, these are not problems. They're not problems if they're not actual problems. I'm not talking to you about this anymore.
Margaret Kelsey [00:00:24]:
I'm Margaret Kelsey.
Devin Bramhall [00:00:25]:
And I'm Devin Bramhall.
Margaret Kelsey [00:00:26]:
And this is Don't Say Content.
Devin Bramhall [00:00:29]:
A show created in partnership with Share Your Genius.
Margaret Kelsey [00:00:32]:
Don't have a meeting with Devin and hang out with her in person if you don't want some of your decisions and choices to be questioned heavily.
Devin Bramhall [00:00:42]:
That's true. That is true.
Margaret Kelsey [00:00:44]:
Yeah.
Devin Bramhall [00:00:44]:
I've actually become, like, less tolerant recently where I'm like. My new phrase to people is, these are not problems. They're not problems if they're not actual problems. I'm not talking to you about this anymore. Yeah, it's a complete waste of my time. I feel like I'm one of those people where, like, shit goes south. They always look at me and they're like, you seem like you have your shit together. I'm like, no, it's because I worked really hard at it and at times had to be independently resilient.
Devin Bramhall [00:01:13]:
Like, I don't choose this. These are not problems. These are not problems. Most people think they have problems, and the problem is them. And I'm like, if the problem's you, you fudgeing, deal with it.
Margaret Kelsey [00:01:23]:
You two years ago and not today. Because this could have had a different outcome. You were still patient with me back then.
Devin Bramhall [00:01:27]:
Oh, yeah. I lost it. Too many people coming to me with their problems, and I was like, you know what? Come to me with an invitation or something fun to do. Because I'm like, literally, even on election day, I was like, why is everyone texting me? Like, I'm experiencing this too. Go help yourself. That's a good muscle to develop for the first time.
Margaret Kelsey [00:01:49]:
Right around that time, too, I had heard a quote that was like, would it be okay with you if your life got easier? And it was like the same time that you and I had that conversation. And it was one of those interesting things where it was like, all signs pointed to, I'm the problem. Yeah.
Devin Bramhall [00:02:04]:
To your credit, though, you handled it right. Like, you didn't walk around victimizing yourself. You. Like, we had one conversation, and apparently that's. And it was like an accidental conversation. You weren't even asking my advice. I was the one who was like.
Margaret Kelsey [00:02:20]:
Looked at me like I had five heads.
Devin Bramhall [00:02:22]:
Yeah, that scenario was different because it was like you were already handling it. Yeah, I just proactively talked.
Margaret Kelsey [00:02:30]:
Just nudged me on my way.
Devin Bramhall [00:02:32]:
Sometimes I'm like, Devin, your words have consequences. Like, maybe you should keep more of them to yourself.
Margaret Kelsey [00:02:38]:
No. Because the same way that everyone is their own problem, it's their own solution too. They can listen to you or they could just put up a boundary and not listen to your advice either.
Devin Bramhall [00:02:48]:
That's how I get yelled at. I get yelled at a lot.
Margaret Kelsey [00:02:51]:
Yeah, that's for them to just have a stronger external boundary and not let it get in. I think a big thing about this always goes back to individual choice, decision making frameworks. How we decide what we like, what we don't like, what we accept and what we don't accept. So I brought it back to the topic of the day, which is delegating taste when you are in a creative profession and how difficult that can be.
Devin Bramhall [00:03:19]:
Taste. Or you could be delegating it from as a creative.
Margaret Kelsey [00:03:23]:
Yep.
Devin Bramhall [00:03:23]:
Or as a leader. Think about founders, right. I was just having this conversation with someone last night. She is the CMO at a company where the founder does have a lot of input into specific areas and in particular the brand. She's like, you could resist it or you could just let it flow and find a solution. What she'd done was really smart, which is, hey, don't hire a head of product like you be the head of product and hire someone that will realize your dream.
Margaret Kelsey [00:03:56]:
Yeah. And this is maybe slightly off topic, but I feel like I have completely updated in the last few years. We talked so much about the tension between a founder and a head of marketing and like how difficult that can be. I'm very much of the camp now of if you join a company, especially a founder led company, you're there to exactly that. Realize their vision and you can help nudge them, you can help inspire them, you can help them show new directions, but if they're like, no, I want it this way or this is the way that I want it to be, that's their company. You know what I mean? Go start your own if you really want to have full control.
Devin Bramhall [00:04:34]:
I agree with that. I think though, in practice it's not that simple because we've had this conversation before where it's like it depends on how they meddle and if they meddle and they keep changing their mind, which is I've experienced Then you get fired for not performing. And I've tried that everywhere I went, everywhere I worked, where I eventually gave in and just did whatever they wanted. And both times I did that, I got fired.
Margaret Kelsey [00:05:07]:
I'll take the caveat of like executive thrashing out of it if you're getting thrashed around because there is no clear vision. Yeah, absolutely. That's not fair, but if a founder has a clear vision, that's the one that you're trying to realize.
Devin Bramhall [00:05:21]:
Have you met one who does?
Margaret Kelsey [00:05:23]:
Yes, I'm working for one now. That's why I actually went back in house after being independent for so long, cause I was like, wow, this is a pretty clear vision over here. I can help build this one, but not VC backed has been building product for 10 years before ever doing an ounce of marketing Product fit out the wazoo. It is not a normal tech startup.
Devin Bramhall [00:05:44]:
See this conversation has come up more and more through my clients just by happenstance of who I've been working with, but it's this idea that the type of funding you get dictates the type of marketing that would work for you.
Margaret Kelsey [00:06:01]:
Oh absolutely.
Devin Bramhall [00:06:02]:
And we're still not operating that way. For example, VC backed startups in the early stages of fundraising, bringing on content marketing, just don't do it. Don't waste your time.
Margaret Kelsey [00:06:13]:
You have to grow faster than what that program will allow you to do.
Devin Bramhall [00:06:18]:
But with one of my clients, they are going for a round of funding but they've been around for a couple of years and this would be their first institutional vc. Yeah, I don't know enough about where they're sourcing, but they are able to brought on marketing I think at the right time. And they have time, they have time before the fundraise for us to make progress and buy the fundraise. Like they were good with their business and their money and their budgets and they're smart. I actually think I'm going to put this in my book of like what strategy to deploy based on what type of funding you have and what stage you're at. Because like yeah, content does take too long and who knows what the F is happening with SEO. I have one client who lost their primary source of leads recently because of an algo update that buried their lead gen blog post. And like others, it's still working.
Margaret Kelsey [00:07:10]:
So there is the human perception of quality and then there's also algorithmic perception of quality. And it seems like that change in the algorithm perception of quality and buried that Legion page.
Devin Bramhall [00:07:23]:
Not even quality anymore. It's honestly AI answers Like, it's not even a thing anymore. Here's what I think. Quality is subjective. And so the only thing you need to do is define what quality looks like at your company. Write down the baseline criteria. So create a language that you can use to describe it. Have some examples and be a little flexible, right.
Devin Bramhall [00:07:46]:
I learned through having help writing my book proposal, for example, that sometimes when other people write things, like, my friend was helping me write it, my initial reaction was sometimes like, oh. Like, not negative, but I was like, oh, I don't know if I would say it that way. And then I looked at it, I was like, does it say what I meant in an elegant, professional, Beautiful. Like, the writing was fine. That's where that you have to look as a. Especially as a founder, you have to be able to take a step back and say, how much of what I'm stressing over has any impact at all that anyone else will notice but me? I think that's the part that's really hard to do.
Margaret Kelsey [00:08:29]:
And how much of my unique fingerprint needs to be on this? Or how much can I think about the fact that I am building an organization that mirrors my values and my direction and my vision, but it's necessary to have other fingerprints all over this thing.
Devin Bramhall [00:08:48]:
I think now is a really, really good time for people and companies to be defining what quality means to them, because we're sort of in that post 1990s, the early 2000s still, where there were rules. When you and I were coming up, there were rules, there was a way you did things, and those rules kept evolving. And now we're in a place where, like, it doesn't really matter. Yeah, you can do whatever you want as long as you go in with purpose and you're like, this is what I'm doing. Take a stance. There's so much more variety in what works now because I think people are realizing what once were like, sort of larger audience cohorts are now niche audiences. And so the more they niche down, the more variety is allowed and the less there's any benefit to a governing principle at all.
Margaret Kelsey [00:09:45]:
Yeah.
Devin Bramhall [00:09:45]:
And so you just make it up.
Margaret Kelsey [00:09:47]:
Yeah, I like that. And I always come back to this idea of even watching aesthetics change, right. If we're talking about taste and quality, we have to also talk about how quickly aesthetics can change. Visual aesthetics, we were in that same sort of UI design of, like, websites for a long time. Then we all came around the same, like, set of icons to mean certain things. And I don't know, we had such, like, Standardization. And I feel like when I think about even how photography has changed, we're going back to, like, motion blur and grittiness and, like, imperfection when we used to just strive for the most perfection in photographs, right.
Margaret Kelsey [00:10:36]:
And it's so interesting to see, even, like, if we think about taste and quality and how those things shift over time, we have to also look at the world and what people are wanting. And there is this retro nostalgia of mistakes in visual. I don't know, visual images, visual creative. That is really interesting to watch.
Devin Bramhall [00:10:55]:
Yeah, that's a great point, actually. And I do love those filters on Instagram. Like, I've been leaning into them. Like, I don't care. It's great because it is. If it's a different element. And you can. What I keep saying to everybody is, I'm like, courier's having a moment.
Devin Bramhall [00:11:08]:
Like, Courier is back.
Margaret Kelsey [00:11:09]:
Yeah.
Devin Bramhall [00:11:10]:
And she's so happy to be here. Just like the 90s are coming back. We had those few years where neon was really hot, and then it went away with the pandemic. Now it's coming back on a shorter cycle because culturally, we're leaning a lot harder into the 90s style, which is translating on websites as well as in our fashion. Cyclical things that come back and when. And the stories that they tell and how it's like, equal parts. They're able to be fresh again. I was watching the Pelican Brief the other night, and I was like, julia Roberts looks like the people walking around Williamsburg right now.
Devin Bramhall [00:11:49]:
And I was like, but my somewhat more cynical take on this quality thing is that I don't think it's a differentiator anymore, especially in content marketing. I realized that we've been having the same conversation about quality. I was looking back on something from, like, 2017 and how one of the things somebody said, it might even be me, I can't remember. It was like, oh, like, the internet is full of shitty content, and like.
Margaret Kelsey [00:12:21]:
Sounds like something you'd say.
Devin Bramhall [00:12:23]:
Yeah, and we need to differentiate by writing quality content. I think as I was talking about Help Scout and Help Scout was differentiated as a brand in part by the quality of their content marketing. I'm like, oh, we just come back to that, like, every five years.
Margaret Kelsey [00:12:43]:
When I'm thinking about the hierarchy of these things, of what's important and what's necessary, do you think that having a unique style is most important and that quality sometimes can nest underneath that as what your style manifests as and can be important or not important, depending on audience or not? I Mean, I think about that the neon green Brat with, like, that was the thing if you think about graphic design and if you think about quality in the way that we're probably thinking about it, which is like, polished perfection. That Brat logo was the absolute opposite of that. And it went so viral and it was everywhere and picked up by the Harris campaign and all this kind of stuff. And so it's one of those things of like, okay, a unique, distinct style is probably the thing to hang your hat on. And quality, the way we're thinking about it, which is like, polished perfection may come and go.
Devin Bramhall [00:13:43]:
Yep. I totally agree with that. Even just thinking about what I've seen doing marketing in my career, I'm like, animals. I didn't prioritize giving it a refresh in the beginning, but Walter basically, like, gave me the green. He was just like, do it because you want to. Like, he was trying to throw me a bone, I think. And so I did. And it's not that it, like, landed us business, but it was unique from everybody else's, and it didn't follow what I'll call, like, SEO quality guidelines.
Devin Bramhall [00:14:19]:
That's what made it stand out. And still today, like, people still mention it. And, like, even with my new website, it was like, I put these monsters that I remember, the monsters we made. Remember how I loved them and saved all of them.
Margaret Kelsey [00:14:33]:
Yes.
Devin Bramhall [00:14:34]:
I was like, I have been waiting to bring those back forever. So I've been incorporating them into my website and people, like, message me about them. They're like, I'm dead for these monsters. They're so cute. So I definitely agree with that. You're right. Personality, which to me in this case is style, Personality over principles of quality matter way more because that's what people remember.
Margaret Kelsey [00:15:01]:
Yeah.
Devin Bramhall [00:15:01]:
And again, because we're like, post 90s, we're like, if you didn't conform in the 90s, no matter where you were, you were considered a loser. Now it's, I don't even know what the rules are anymore.
Margaret Kelsey [00:15:11]:
No, in terms of fashion, there are no rules. I'm trying to, like, think about. All these things tie together because there is so much about when we're talking about brand and brand identity that is just so similar to individual personal style and personality and all that kind of stuff. And it's interesting to think about. I'm sure you walk around New York and there's just like, all different decades of outfits going on and no rules of what is considered stylish or not stylish or sometimes no pants, sometimes no pants. That was a trend that I did not get behind is like sheer skirts and underwear underneath, like a long sheer skirt and just like a brief like.
Devin Bramhall [00:15:52]:
I see that. That happens.
Margaret Kelsey [00:15:56]:
That one's not gonna get rolled into my own personal identity, but yeah, it is interesting to think about. And then I wonder if we'll swing back to conformity being unique. That happened even in the norm core thing, like the style trend. That was, I think the thing that brought back the 90s was this idea of, like, normcore, right? Like no branding on things, just like big chunky sneakers and like Costco jeans, which is swinging away from quality if you think about, like designer stuff and brands and logos on outfits and things. And so I wonder how much will continue to swing and if these cycles are increasing to say, quality versus nothing matters versus everything matters versus nothing matters. And are we going to get to the point where it swings so quickly? Okay, I'm going to bring this back to. I read this book to my son last night, and then we had the little star sticker that we put on his belly.
Margaret Kelsey [00:16:52]:
But there's a Dr. Seuss book about the star belly sneetches. And the book is about the fact that there's a this land that has these sneetches, these little animals. And half of them have stars on their belly and the other half have none upon thars, like stars upon ours and none upon theirs. So this guy comes and he builds this machine to put stars on the non star belly sneetches bellies. Because the ones with the stars on their bellies don't let the other ones hang out with them. So this machine comes along and they all now have stars on their bellies. And the ones that originally had stars on their bellies were like, oh, no.
Margaret Kelsey [00:17:29]:
So then the guy turns this machine and says, I can take your stars off your bellies if you want, so you can differentiate. And then they go through and eventually at the end of the book, they're all just cycling through this machine and they don't even remember if they ever had a star on their belly or not. And they finally at the end realize that that's not an important thing, but I do wonder if this is like a chasing our tail of what's important, what's not important, what's not important. And as we spin these cycles of technology and communication getting faster and faster, will we eventually come to this point as we're talking about a fashion when you're walking around New York where it's, I don't know, wear whatever you want.
Devin Bramhall [00:18:01]:
The way we are currently deploying it, it's now more equivalent to style. And style changes based on cultures, behaviors, technology and all of that. And I think that's a really healthy thing creatively because, you know, people are not static and they are, like you said, with technology, like, technology changes us also as we change and then change it. And so there's. It's a little bit more of a living feedback cycle. And I think that the only thing that makes it feel like we're chasing our tails is when we consider quality like a static style guide, one that doesn't change. If we could adapt our thinking around what does it mean to tell a story as a brand visually and in tone and writing? And what does it mean to be consistent, to show up the same way every day? But sometimes you're wearing a hat with a rainbow on it, other times you've elegantly curled your hair, right.
Devin Bramhall [00:19:09]:
It's still you. I was thinking about this when I was writing because I have a chapter on quality in the book and one of the things I talk about is I'm like, it's the wrong focus. If you're focused on quality, you're focused on the wrong things. For content marketing, you should be focused on outcomes. Therefore, if you put sort of the changing nature of style now and it's rap more rapid cycles with outcomes, what I see as more useful now is like an AI powered style guide where you put the institutional knowledge and principles and yes, like hex codes and fonts and all that stuff in there, but then it's something that you can interact with more, where you can ask it, like as you have ideas, you can work with it to see, am I going off the rails? If so, is this like an intentional thing? Whatever. And so not only is consistently easier to achieve across departments, no matter what you're doing, but also it feels a little bit more adaptable while staying consistent, if that makes sense.
Margaret Kelsey [00:20:16]:
Yeah, yeah, I think it does. I think of it. And in like slower cycles, what we would think about is as the team grows and evolves, naturally the culture of the organization grows and evolves, which means naturally the brand should grow and evolve, right. Every single person that joins or leaves the organization has an effect on the culture, which then naturally kind of affects the brand. If we think about the brand as the external, like visibility of the internal culture. And so I think these things, to your point, like, they've just moved slower. And now because these cycles are moving faster, we also need the technology and tooling to help us Stay on top of it faster and have that interface that we can also affect rather than these like big monolithic style guides of do not deviate from these hierarchy of rules and whatnot.
Margaret Kelsey [00:21:10]:
It's now it's like, all right, where can I play? It's less about finding the place to stay safe and more like, is this an appropriate place to play?
Devin Bramhall [00:21:19]:
Yeah, that's what I did when I was at Help Scout. I look at the work I did there and I was like, oh, that's the strategy du jour now. It was all about leveraging internal influencers. It was all about building authentic community around you. Which meant like the way we interacted at conferences, even when we paid to sponsor them, didn't follow the traditional sponsor playbook. We did more activations and broad content generating activities. And I was able to maintain Help Scout brand. It was treasured by all of us, including the founders.
Devin Bramhall [00:21:56]:
And they were the brand. I wouldn't have been able to deviate even if I wanted. And that was great. That was useful to me because I was able to leverage multiple different voices talking to different subgroups in their own way. And it was all Help Scout. All you heard was Help Scout. Whether it was from Matt, from Emily, from Leia, who's in People Ops. And it's hard to say, like, I'm really proud of the work I did there because looking back, I'm like, that was beautiful.
Devin Bramhall [00:22:30]:
And it's not like a toot my own horn thing. It worked.
Margaret Kelsey [00:22:33]:
You think even like now more people within an organization are active now on social media than they were back when you were at Help Scout. And so it's not just here are the executives that can speak on our behalf and have these micro audiences and influences, but every single person speaking of, like, how things speed up and where we have to have like flexibility in these style playgrounds, let's call them that. And it's not like you have to follow this thing and be boring and say, you get to go play on this jungle gym and see what you come up with.
Devin Bramhall [00:23:05]:
One of the things that Ann Handley was talking about, she was like singing reality. And I. It's so funny because I was in On Deadline for the first three chapters. I was thinking about the customer journey and I was like, you know what? This, even Ashley and I were talking about this last year in our. One of our talks we did. It was like, this journey just isn't fucking linear.
Margaret Kelsey [00:23:28]:
It never happened.
Devin Bramhall [00:23:29]:
Yeah. And so Ann, she brings up the customer journey and she's remember when it Looked like this. I think she showed a funnel first. And she's like. And it was this. She's like, this is what it really is. And she showed that gif of the guy from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia with the mind map going crazy. She's like, this is what it is, what it always has been.
Devin Bramhall [00:23:48]:
And I was like, yes. And that looks more like a playground. That experience is more playground-esque than linear path from one thing to the next.
Margaret Kelsey [00:23:59]:
Yeah.
Devin Bramhall [00:24:00]:
And I think that to me, while it seems chaotic, there's actually more logic in that I see strategically than trying to pretend that people are linear decision makers.
Margaret Kelsey [00:24:16]:
Yeah.
Devin Bramhall [00:24:17]:
Versus like ping pongers. And I actually. It's so funny. I was just talking to my client about this and they were like, they're the nicest people, God bless them. They're like, we. Marketing is not our first competency so we are leaning on you for your expertise, but one of them.
Margaret Kelsey [00:24:33]:
Always great to hear from a client.
Devin Bramhall [00:24:34]:
Oh my God, they're so amazing. I was like, no one's ever been this nice to me. And they were talking and one of them said to me and he didn't mean it negatively and he. This was like, it was almost professorial the way he delivered it. He's. It seems confusing and I feel. And it doesn't feel like it has to be confusing. And I was like, you just communicated in a healthy, simple way like the challenge of being a marketer.
Margaret Kelsey [00:25:01]:
Yeah.
Devin Bramhall [00:25:01]:
Because I'm like, you're right, it should be simpler. Or I wish it was simpler. And I wish there was a way to say to you in simple terms that were accurate. First this, then that I said, but the truth is it actually is really complicated and it's going to change a bunch and it feels like chaos and, right.
Margaret Kelsey [00:25:24]:
Part of the process. Yeah. And that's the hard thing is like I think if marketing is ultimately being led by a founder that has a finance background or an engineering background where hopefully engineering and product, they understand they have to do the messiness at the beginning before you can really come up with some clean code, but ultimately those things are pretty logical based, right. And human beings are illogical. And to get somebody to believe something new, to understand something new and to do something new, if you're only relying on logic, you're only relying on a small piece of the tools that you have to your availability, but the other thing as, as you were talking that it brought up for me is I used to be so anxious about if somebody gets like the brand message at the beginning as like an entry point into here we are.
Margaret Kelsey [00:26:12]:
And then they get down, let's say the funnel that doesn't exist and they're getting into maybe they're self educating on product content or self educating on stuff that gets further down, hitting them then with a brand message, oh my God, that's such a waste of money, but is it? Or is that just another nice data point or memory trigger for them? So it helps solidify in the memory, but I used to be so anxious about that, right. Especially as somebody that was more in the upper funnel, brand content community thing of like, oh my God, if they're already down as a prospect, what if they get all this like brand messaging and brand content or brand experiences.
Devin Bramhall [00:26:52]:
Yeah. It's funny when you get to that point where you can think things all the way through to the absolute worst case and you're like, wait, nothing happens, it's fine.
Margaret Kelsey [00:27:01]:
And I don't even think it's a waste of money. I think that's actually great to have another solidifying marketing moment with them, even if they're super close to a decision or further down in the process of consideration or whatever it is. Like, why would we think that's a waste?
Devin Bramhall [00:27:17]:
I totally agree. I told. I think a lot of our fears were made up in our own minds.
Margaret Kelsey [00:27:22]:
About because we were having to follow this linear journey of like, why are you doing that there? If they're this part of the process, shouldn't they be getting those messages? It's because, I don't know, that's just harder to do. I think it's easier to do actually, where you're just like building that chaotic playground mind map thing of we're going to hit them all over the place.
Devin Bramhall [00:27:41]:
Honestly, when I was trying to put an actual service product together for myself, the place where I kept getting hung up was on a framework, right. People were like, you need a framework to sell. People be like, this is what I do in this order and why or whatever. And I just couldn't do it. I was like, I wasn't motivated by it. It made me not want to consult anymore. And I realized it's because there isn't one way.
Devin Bramhall [00:28:11]:
Every single customer I'm helping, I'm doing marketing strategy for one company, a startup and business advising for an agency that's trying to grow. In both of those cases, I don't know, coming in, no matter how many conversations we have leading up to it, I don't know what the problem is till we get into the work. And so to Be perfectly honest for everyone to know. If I ever give you a proposal, it's complete. And other bullshit. It is put there to make you say yes so I can come in and figure out what's really going on. And the good news is, the longer you've been doing it, the faster and better you get. You can find those answers really fast, right? But you need that flexibility to be a little chaotic or to appear a little chaotic in the beginning, because any strategist worth their salt is never going to tell you the way when they come in because they don't know if it's right.
Margaret Kelsey [00:29:08]:
Yeah.
Devin Bramhall [00:29:09]:
Like one of my clients was like, okay, you just needed a plan in this area and needed to know what to say to this employee. And it's like all of a sudden, like instantly things turned around.
Margaret Kelsey [00:29:20]:
Yeah.
Devin Bramhall [00:29:20]:
My other client, I was like, oh, your marketing goals. I'm like, oh, wait one. People just need KPIs. You need to measure things differently. What I had to do, like it was the end of the second week with this client and I was like, the thing you hired me for is not your problem. I can still help you with this, but I was like, it's actually you a product marketing problem. And like an in app, like a UX ui, whatever customer journey problem.
Devin Bramhall [00:29:42]:
I was like, this is not an external marketing problem.
Margaret Kelsey [00:29:45]:
Yeah.
Devin Bramhall [00:29:45]:
Like your insides are your greatest opportunity right now. The objectives that you need to hit in order to get to this place that you want to get to. And to their credit, they were like, yeah, makes sense.
Margaret Kelsey [00:30:00]:
And to bring it back, which is I think that people try to solve for a broader objective of brand and let's just call it creative with quality when that's not the right tool for the job right now. And I get that the reason why people are defaulting to it because for a while it was the right tool for the job, but the next higher up order of thing that still works is style, right. Uniqueness, style differentiation. And it used to be that you could differentiate with quality. And now it seems that even though there's a lot of crappy stuff on the internet, still, it feels like quality is maybe not as important to lots of different audiences right now.
Devin Bramhall [00:30:46]:
Or the definition is different.
Margaret Kelsey [00:30:48]:
Yes.
Devin Bramhall [00:30:48]:
You achieved quality if it works.
Margaret Kelsey [00:30:51]:
Yep.
Devin Bramhall [00:30:52]:
So if your shitty AI written blog post is ranking right now, you did it.
Margaret Kelsey [00:30:59]:
Not just until it doesn't work. If it's ranking, people are visiting it and actually doing something.
Devin Bramhall [00:31:03]:
If it works, it's quality.
Margaret Kelsey [00:31:06]:
Yeah.
Devin Bramhall [00:31:07]:
If it doesn't work, it's not quality. And that should be. This is when I got I like quality myself into a whole animals where I was like, we were scaling the company. I was like, we need principles and guidelines all along the way. And so we had this editing department that became like, they're almost like prison keepers in the way that we were. Almost didn't leave room for creativity. Because that's what I. I did that I was like, we need templates and processes and all that stuff, and it works to a point, but it cannot replace experience, talent, and good taste.
Devin Bramhall [00:31:50]:
And that is exactly why I find this topic is still elusive to me, because I could scale it up into a point, but at the end of the day, it only goes so far because at a hundred employees, it is really freaking hard to find enough strategists and content marketers who are actually good enough to achieve the quality level that I had defined. And I realized this might be impossible. And so you need to find another way or you need to change your promise. Which is when I changed our strategy. I said, look, it's about outcomes, not deliverables. If we can deliver the same outcomes with less work for them, we're saving them money.
Margaret Kelsey [00:32:31]:
Yeah.
Devin Bramhall [00:32:31]:
Or making them more money by being able to go faster. It's like, quality isn't editing or adherence to font or tone. It is. Does it work or not?
Margaret Kelsey [00:32:42]:
Yeah, it's reminding me, too. And I have this article open because I saw Ben Affleck was talking about AI and I really thought that his take on it was really interesting, which is, yes, it's going to speed things up and yes, it's going to. And he was like, I wouldn't want to be in visual effects right now, like, absolutely changing that industry, but the thing he. He goes back to, I'll try to paraphrase it instead of opening up and reading it. Although pretty much everything he said, I was like, heck, yeah. Ben Affleck, wow. What a turnaround on, on that for my opinion of him. And the reason it was pretty much saying AI could be a craftsman, right. Craftsmen look at what has been created before and can learn the techniques to mimic or create something like that, but true art is about knowing when to stop. That's the taste, Right? The taste is in the editing of it. The taste is in the knowing when to leave it alone and not mess with it anymore. And even I did.
Margaret Kelsey [00:33:44]:
I spoke at this dinner last week and did just a five minute started off the conversation for the tables about AI and creative industries. And the thing that I said is, okay, we're Calling it like generative AI, but is it really intelligent? Right? No, what it is, it's like content creation from large scale pattern matching, right? And that is retroactive looking. By its very nature, it has to be trained on what exists right now and it might remix it in new ways, similar to how our human brains can remix, remix things in new ways and be a little creative, but is that really intelligent? If you had a friend that was really good at like pattern matching, you'd be like, yeah, they're good at seeing patterns and matching. You wouldn't be like, this is the most intelligent person, right? There's so many different types of intelligence and I think that piece that's still human in terms of the creative industry is in the knowing when to stop is in the editing of what is being created is in the this passes my threshold of taste and now can be seen publicly. And yeah, the creation of those experiments and the creation and the bouncing those ideas together is going to be great for AI to give you lots and lots of whether it's ideas or images or whatnot, but like there still needs to be the human filter of yeah, I think this is actually going to resonate with our target audience or yeah, I think that actually, you know, passes my taste threshold and can be seen publicly.
Margaret Kelsey [00:35:13]:
And so it's not that human beings will ever be fully removed from the process, but it's, you know, and we've talked about it before, it's a tool, but I think that there's still this human filter that needs to take place.
Devin Bramhall [00:35:25]:
We're past that discussion around like GenAI boiling the ocean of the past, right? Because now what I've been doing and what more people are doing is like creating their own custom AIs, training them on their own materials and then working with them over and giving them that feedback that they can learn from and deliver and be like a collaborative partner for you. And that's been really cool because that point you made about the intelligence, in my experience, I've been working with Rob Lennon because he built me a custom GPT and he's feeding it the strategic intelligence, he's giving it these. That's why these AI engineers are so high value right now and just period, because they take body of data and give the AI thing nuance, different ways of dynamic thinking, what to exclude and include. So you're absolutely right. I'm suddenly interested in an AI finally because we've gotten to that point of customization where I'm firsthand seeing what it can do, where you gave it all the podcast episodes, it differentiates. So if, like, if I'm trying to have it play out something for me, it quotes you if it's something that you said, and if it's something I said, they. It writes it as if it were me. And it, like random bits of writing quotes I've written down over the years.
Devin Bramhall [00:36:56]:
All that stuff I had collected in all these different paces, putting it in there is now showing me myself in a way where it's unlocking creative productivity. I've been using it to help me write the book, not in, like, the production of the actual writing. I literally had to write a whole chapter once, and I was like, oh. And then I completely rewrote it. So I'm with you. I think it's a really cool and awesome useful tool. I'm even using it with some of my clients. So I'm trying to synthesize tons of data.
Devin Bramhall [00:37:29]:
I'm like, can you just have an opinion about this? Can you look at this chart and help me see in here? And it's great. It's great.
Margaret Kelsey [00:37:38]:
Especially for the micro language models rather than the large language models. I think that's going to be. And to go back like that is because it is unique and has personality and style in a way that if you're just pulling from the large language models of everything that ChatGPT has been trained on, that's not going to give you that nuance and style and uniqueness that everyone is craving right now.
Devin Bramhall [00:38:06]:
You have to give it to it, like, exactly what you said. You have to give it that intelligence. And I use intelligence broadly. It's not just the data, but the intel, like the human intelligence.
Margaret Kelsey [00:38:15]:
I know you said you had a hard stop at too.
Devin Bramhall [00:38:18]:
I do. What do we do to close it out? We just ended. Just do what works, people.
Margaret Kelsey [00:38:24]:
Yeah. Be unique. Be you. Even if you use AI to do it.
Devin Bramhall [00:38:29]:
Yeah.
Margaret Kelsey [00:38:30]:
Bye.
Devin Bramhall [00:38:32]:
Okay, y'all, that's a wrap. Thank you as always, for listening.
Margaret Kelsey [00:38:37]:
We'll be back next week. And just remember, you're doing great. You're doing great.
Devin Bramhall [00:38:42]:
30% of you are doing great. The rest, you gotta get your shit together. Come on.
Margaret Kelsey [00:38:48]:
You know, you know which side you're on this week.
Devin Bramhall [00:38:50]:
You know, you know.
Margaret Kelsey [00:38:52]:
See you next week.
Devin Bramhall [00:38:53]:
Bye.
Margaret Kelsey [00:38:54]:
Bye. That wild and crazy night.
Devin Bramhall [00:39:01]:
Oh, gosh.
Margaret Kelsey [00:39:02]:
Where we only ate bar snack olives.
Devin Bramhall [00:39:06]:
Oh, man, that day. I'm surprised you're still friends with me after that because one could say that meeting me was like the start of your life's complete unraveling.
Margaret Kelsey [00:39:19]:
One could say that that is one narrative of the story. I choose to reframe it as the beginning of the rest of my life.