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The CIM Marketing Podcast delivers the latest news, trends, and insights from across the industry. Hosted by Ben Walker, this podcast offers accessible, relevant discussions on the big issues impacting marketing today.
We spotlight actionable strategies, highlight best practices, and source expert opinions to help you elevate your marketing game. Whether you're focused on digital marketing, content creation, SEO, strategy, or something else entirely, we’ve got you covered.
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Amir Malik 0:00
Inside the business, the inertia, the day to day tasks, the BAU, the occupation, with what's going on and the challenges, makes it very difficult to coordinate and orchestrate transformation, very difficult you
Ben Walker 0:26
today, we're with Amir Malik, managing director EMEA at Alvarez and Marsal. Amir is a digital transformation expert, and he's going to tell us what's possible in the world of digitising our industry so business outcomes, strategies and the entire customer experience can be transformed. Amir, how are you good? Great to be here. Thank you. We're going to be looking at emerging technologies, cutting edge technologies that are to come, that you think are really going to change the marketing space in the next three to five years. As an expert in the digital transformation space, what are the big changes you're seeing now?
Amir Malik 1:03
Well, the first thing I'd say is that most people are aware that the way that things have been done are going to change, and most people, equally, don't exactly know how. So we are aware that there's this huge wave of AI technology tools, solutions, which can kind of improve the way that day to day tasks are run in the marketing kind of slither of a company, how the whole operating model is functioning, creative, etc, but there's a bit of paralysis, because where do you start? What's the good tool versus the bad tool? Who are the market leaders? Who will be the winners? Where do you lay your bets? These are sort of questions that businesses are asking, and the CEO is asking, and everyone on Earth is kind of looking at AI and thinking about the existential question and what role it plays at company level. The obvious question is, how more efficient can it make a business? How can it improve a business? And how can it improve customer experience as well? You kind of need to get that balance right. I think it's interesting. You
Ben Walker 2:09
raise the word paralysis. It's almost you sort of use, I could imagine a scene where there's lots of people, a multitude, worried about dipping their toe in the water. First, people don't know which way to move.
Amir Malik 2:22
Yeah, I think varies depending on the size of the company and the age of the company. But if you take yourself top 1000 businesses, you know the people that kind of know about AI and are venturing in AI are not necessarily always trusted at the organisation are not senior enough to influence the decisions, but then you've got very senior people that are all using AI in their day to day lives. So the CEOs, you know, often we've directly experienced and say, Well, I'm using chat GPT to do this now, and I've changed the way I search. I no longer go to a browser. Surely that should? That's what other people are doing. What's the implications that are my business? And so what we need to do is bring the right people together and ensure that, you know, you've got people that are really talented with AI, that know how to utilise those tools and use AI, but they're also kind of under the right governance, and they're working transparently. What tools or businesses they're going to partner with are kind of trustworthy as well. And so there's loads of questions to answer. The typical experience is, oh, we're doing AI, you hear this a lot, so if you anyone's at lunch or breakfast or client meeting, you know that, you know B to B, there was a, we're doing AI, what are you doing? Well, we put co pilot live. That's not, yeah, you've got one utility Live, which is very useful, but that doesn't mean you're doing AI. I mean, have you set up an AI office in your business? Have you really looked across the business and think about where disruption is going to be, how it can enhance certain business functions, et cetera. What's the holistic AI adoption plan?
Ben Walker 3:57
Are you faced with blank faces when you ask those questions?
Amir Malik 3:59
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's opportunity for someone like me. So when we saw the kind of AI curve, we thought, well, we need to get really organised around how we kind of articulate what you should be doing with AI. Where do you start? What are the use cases that actually will drive value now? So that's another reason where you kind of, you have lots of AI solutions on the market, but not all of them realise value at scale. And so you can spend a lot of time looking at something, but actually the gains or the return is small, so you need to make sure you're making the right bets as well. Well,
Ben Walker 4:33
lots of people say that, don't they in business, they've introduced an AI. Sometimes it's a solution looking for a problem. Sometimes they've introduced it because they think it quite cool, yeah. But when they've looked back after five, six months of using it, they've not realised any efficiency gains. And how you value gains, presumably, that's the biggest
Amir Malik 4:50
challenge. It is. I think that's the hype theatre around AI is bigger than the utilisation at the moment. But if you kind of go in. To the where the the entrepreneurial kind of Instagram business founders are. You know, you're getting one people companies who stand up their business using AI tools everywhere, and the general public can interact with that business, which is completely powered by AI. So AI gets kind of bad press on the fact that the adoption is poorly done by businesses and the value isn't there. You know, when the CFO or the CEO pushes the, you know, the practitioner and says, Okay, right? What? What's the return on what we've done? Because we've spent this much, they can't see it. And so that's where I think you need to have some rigour in how you launch your AI solutions and launch your AI kind of action plan as a
Ben Walker 5:46
business. So go on the share the state secrets. How do you crack that nut? How do you stop people just, you know, fighting AIS and then hoping some of it works. You
Amir Malik 5:54
need to know the areas of your business which are probably which you're aware of are the most laggard. You know, you've not really updated them. Second point on that is that that's an opportunity for you. So AI can leap now where you may have been slow in the digital transformation, your AI transformation can make you ahead of the curve. And those areas where you're laggard, you also need to anchor that in, you know, what's the, what's the cost base around that you know, what's the bill to your business to provide or sustain that function, and then identify clearly how AI can reduce that cost, improve the overall quality of that function and improve the outputs. And if that's a customer facing function, then it's, it's, it's really beneficial, right? You can't even measure some or quantify some of the benefits
Ben Walker 6:43
there. We'll come to customers in a minute. I'm interested about the customer experience and the effect of technology on it, but before we get to that, we'll go back to the laggards. So if you're asking your clients, okay, guys, tell me what's really slow, time consuming, painful, boring in your organisation that you want to kill by using technology. What sort of successes have you delivered in that area?
Amir Malik 7:07
So if I you know, if you look at some businesses, they will be on sort of versions of SaaS that have not been updated for
Ben Walker 7:16
years. How long
Amir Malik 7:18
it's 10 years really, there'll be, there are businesses that are household brand names that still don't have functioning CRM,
Ben Walker 7:24
you spill the beans.
Amir Malik 7:28
No, I couldn't mention the client names, yeah? But I mean, there'll be lots of people that that resonates with, yeah, you know, and regional, you know, regional kind of stacks that are local to certain markets. So some markets are on some technology, other markets on other technologies. You know, I'm a private health insurer member. Yeah, it was a corporate membership. I moved personal when I left the company.
Ben Walker 7:55
So you this, you got it as put as a perk of a job, yeah, you were happy with the service. And when you move company, you bought it yourself, correct?
Amir Malik 8:02
Yeah, my daughter sort of sprained her ankle, right? And she's on the policy with me. So I ran out renewed it, paying three months into the second year of renewal, rang up because I couldn't log in and got through, didn't get through, got through an IVR that was about two minutes long. Select this option, confirm your date of birth. This is all IVR automated. Then got to the wait line and said, We waiting 25 minutes. Waited 25 minutes during the call. Said we can do a ring back service, press one, did the one right. We'll ring you back on this number. Then I got the ring back. Rang by a department that said, You're Amir, yes, yes. Oh, we're the corporate team. We deal with corporate policy holders. I said, Well, I'm not a corporate policy holder. So sorry, this is a number you need to ring. I then rang that number. There's 40 minute wait. We've got ringback service for you. Rang it. They rang me back again. The same corporate department rang me back. So what you're seeing there is data. CRM is not linked in this company, and this is a company that posts on LinkedIn about how they're doing wonderful things with AI, as I see it. And I know people that work there, yeah, and, and I just was utterly frustrated as a consumer. Now, the thing with AI is no one should be on hold ever again. No, you literally, if anyone's talking to the voice engine on chat, GPT, or you've heard of bland you can be concierge throughout the entire experience. Yeah, and so I don't expect them to be live with it, but I surely hope that they are bringing AI into that function to improve the experience. And I don't know who, if you know, I should have think that, you know, if I worked in that department, I'd be really concerned. I want to think like a customer, the end customer, and that experience is terrible. It took me, like, three days just to resolve it through email. It's a great
Ben Walker 9:52
example, because that's the interface of an internal process which directly affects your customer base. Correct, nothing is more maddening than. Wasting your time on a product you yourself are buying. You're paying to waste your own time. You've given a perfect example. There's no malice there, but the way the structure is set up or the company hasn't been properly looked at, and there's an AI that can do it, it must be incredibly satisfying when you're able to find tools and recommendations for businesses that can actually change the lives of those businesses and their clients,
Amir Malik 10:22
absolutely. So it's, it's really, for me, it's, it's a very special time, right? So kind of the promises of AI five years ago, pre covid, the IBM's, etc, everybody was talking about it, but there wasn't really anything beyond your content, algorithm, AI, machine, very powerful stuff, machine learning. Some might even argue that the models are using machine learning. There's a whole controversy and debate I don't care about that. What I care about is, can it provide a reliable service and be a utility that can improve the customer journey, and it can. It absolutely can. And so for me, what I identified as much as frustration it gave me. I was texting my friend saying, I just see the opportunities is endless, right? It was a colossal opportunity to change our lives and our experience. You think about airlines, I won't name nor shame any airlines, but you know, the level of frustration you deal going from one system to another, trying to log in passwords as AI can cut through all of that crap and and it's real, and this is the sort of level of conversation that the CEO should be having at his
Ben Walker 11:35
board or her board. Are they having those conversations? Yeah, they are.
Amir Malik 11:39
I honestly believe they are. I think this is very different to before, like, if you think about like martech, ad tech, the weird and wonderful world of those platforms, there was a there was a bit of a barrier between the tenured executive, the CEO, understanding exactly what's going on with all these systems and the platform companies and where their money's going. AI is in everyone's face, right? It's like you turn on, you open your phone, you're going to see an AI generated video, and you can't tell whether it's real or AI. You know, you're interfacing with chatbots that are now conversing. They no one talks about the Turing Test anymore. I can pass the Turing test now. So I think when you look at it, you got to say CEOs are aware of that. They're seeing that. They're seeing their children use it, you know, depending on their ages, they're seeing their children get jobs at these companies. They want them to work in the field of AI. So these conversations are definitely happening.
Ben Walker 12:40
People were listening to you and thinking, this guy, you know, he's he's went right across the value chain. In his job, there are a plethora, almost an infinite amount of AI products out there. There are an infinite amount of problems that organisations have. Where does he start? Where do you how do you make that assessment? So you understand what tools are available, understand the nature of the problems that are there to be fixed, and then match the tool to the problem. Because, as you yourself have said, If you don't match the tool to the problem, you get solutions looking for problems. You get ais that aren't necessary.
Amir Malik 13:13
Yeah, I think you've got to qualify the Ask by there's what people are talking about doing and hearing about doing, there's people, there's what people want to do, and there's what your company needs to do, and fundamentally, the company needs to ensure that the bottom line is healthy. It's got other other priorities and accountabilities, but the bottom line is to be healthy. So if I have a call centre function, that's costing me. And if you take a large scale organisation, multi market, you go anywhere between 100 to a billion in cost on call centres. So how can AI disrupt that? And which is, you know, the phenomenon that staring the call centre, providing businesses and technologies in the face. And so that's an area that you could, you could go and start with. You look at HR, if you want to get really lean there, you think, you know, how are HR requests, emails, how that whole department functions with the workforce. You know, AI can concierge loads of your HR requests now, so the company has an average of 20 HR requests a day. Emails. What can ai do to kind of sort that prioritise, respond?
Ben Walker 14:32
Most of them are fact finding missions, aren't they? You know, what does my contract allow me to do? What? How does this perk play out parental leave? Yeah, what's the parental leave situation? All of that stuff, which is, it's an, it's a it's a question which has a factual answer, which, if it's handled by a human, takes a lot of HR time, which could be better spent on things like resolving disputes. Yeah, where humans really add value? We've talked a lot about problems there. But what. About areas where the AI can add advantage. You spoke earlier about customer management. But how about customer enhancement? How about making the experience of products and services better for customers in your space? What have you seen that? Do you think is going to really revolutionise that space in the next, say, three to five years?
Amir Malik 15:18
So yeah, and I think, like just reflecting on how I talked about it. You know, it's a lot of like aI replacing, but I think is about not just automation, but augmentation. And so if I look at AI today, how can I enrich my agent, my kind of front of house staff that are working with customers, speaking to customers, they should be empowered through AI technology, right? So they should be like wizards of productivity with AI everywhere. And that, that, to me, is an opportunity that will allow you to increase the customer satisfaction, retention, cross, sell, upsell, which is an obvious one, and really create, I guess, a different impression around your business by the level of servicing to the end customers. And that's also direct to consumer and B to B as well. I think that the in terms of the AI, in terms of what it can provide, if we take sort of customer and marketing, creative agencies, personalization at scale, all the kind of if you look at the software and platform companies that talks about personalization prior to the creative engine that AI is, and the data kind of coherence that it has as well, you know now you can offer personalization at scale. You can really tailor experiences for people, not in a non brand way, in a branded way, in a way that is not, I guess, corrosive to your above the line. It's actually complementary, and that experience can be delivered through AI.
Ben Walker 16:54
So give me an example of what it's changed, what's different now to how it was three years ago, five years
Amir Malik 17:01
ago. So I think if you look at sort of like, take open AI, for example, just now, they're launching a campaign where they are, they have, clearly, Instagram creatives, where open AI is personalising a sneaker or trainer, depending on the colour the viewer. And that's that dynamic creative experience that you'd expect now, you could do dynamic creative. And I'd say, you know, probably you could. I'm thinking that 25% of large companies had got some form of testing around dynamic creative in the last or three, or three to five years, and their platforms like smartly that are very good at that as well. With AI, I think not only can you have the dynamic creative you can then have the landing point that is generated off the context of the user, so they click through and they are now on AI generated digital product or asset, and the person and the individual can interact with that, and that's all AI handled. So the journey is then kind of owned by AI to deliver the last mile to the human engine or to the Commerce transactional event. And that, to me, is an area so you sort of like open AI was, sort of people thought was the dawn of AI. We could get our pieces faster because it could handle our toppings. AI is targeting legal. The legal sector is targeting HR consulting. Marketing is coming for areas that you know, take some sort of human intuition and delicate handling previously to to manage, and that's interesting.
Ben Walker 18:40
Most marketers and almost all of this audience are humans, however, so they'll be interesting. They'll be interested in what you're saying, perhaps fascinated, perhaps darkly fascinated, and wondering, Where do I come in? Whereas a creative professional, where do I as a marketer come into this loop? What role am I going to have to play, if not now, in two or three years time, if this stuff can do all the intuition?
Amir Malik 19:06
Yeah. And as I said, I think it's about how AI complements augments your business provides services that you couldn't do. It fulfils your imagination. I'd say the two qualities that a marketer should have now, they need to be open minded and curious, and they need to have the imagination to test and learn. You know, be willing to fail fast. You know, I we all meet naysayers on AI. We know there's a lot of hype. We know that a bubble could put, could burst, but it doesn't. Doesn't mean that AI can't fulfil certain journeys and fulfil certain functions. It can.
Ben Walker 19:47
So, so what's the starting point? You you, you paint a really sort of rational picture of it, actually, that, you know, guess there's hype. Yes, there's probably a bit of a bubble. Yes, there's a. Whole bunch of gimmicks. There are also great solutions. There are also huge advantages, and there are also things that we can do now that we wouldn't have been able to dream on five years time, but we've got to match the right jobs to the right technology and to the right journeys, as you put it. Where do you start in that as a marketer, if you're a marketing team, if you're a head of marketing, or even a middle of marketing team with an interest in this stuff, and you can see around you, in your agency, in your marketing department, in your business, there are a whole bunch of things that could either be fixed or improved or even introduced by some of these technologies. When earth do you
Amir Malik 20:35
start? So I think you need to engage the market leaders in AI so you know, 80 cents of every ad dollars going to the hyperscalers, the Google with metas and Amazon and the retail media wing of their business, the ad business has grown exponentially. So you should be talking to the platform companies, and you should be pushing them on what AI services they have are they are being disrupted by AI players. You need to locate who they are, so open AI is one of them, and understanding the role that that would play in your value chain and ecosystem. But there are other players, and in terms of the various customer marketing function that you are, you're focused on find out who the market leaders are, a bit of research, maybe speak to people like us as well, so we can tell you where to go. And I think that that that's the opportunity, which is an engagement plan. But in terms of where do you start, I guess, with AI. You know, really, you need to kind of bet on two, two variables. One is what AI is good, actually good at, and two, where you're going to get the most value from. And so, you know, as I was speaking to a business that is a conglomerate of businesses, large retail businesses, and takes photographs of their their products and dresses. And they had to reorganise a whole shoot because they had a dress on a model whose contract expired. So the model was not being paid anymore, so she was in the dress, she's in the dress, and they could no longer use the photography. No longer use the photo correct. So then they kind of scrambled to arrange a photo shoot in a studio with a model for the same dress, and there's a bolt, some products on, and did some photos. I mean, come on, this. Can completely be disrupted by AI. Now, is there an argument that the image of the AI is not real? Well, one fun activity is to test your colleagues with AI versus real images. Tell them it's a test and say, Well, what do you think's AI? What is this thing's human, and you know, in areas like journalism, this is really difficult, is a really taboo subject, and it's happening there as well.
Ben Walker 23:08
My work can be mimicked easily. But to that point, though, I mean, you've made, you've given a great example, because I was once told if you try to change, when I started my career, I was told by two of my elders. If you try to change anything in any organisation, you're going to hit barriers. You're going to there'll be people who are to use your phrase naysayers. You may see something that's wrong, but it doesn't mean you're going to have the wherewithal to be able to change it. And actually, if you're going out to this space now, you can see what's wrong, but you're still going to hit barriers, and you still got to do a bit of convincing. So something you have to do, although it's your job to do it. But marketers have another job as well. When they're trying to do the convincing, when they're trying to do the changing, what are the tips you will give them to make to win the hearts and minds, you have
Amir Malik 23:59
to this is why consulting, advisory work, third party validation exists. It's there to embolden and validate what you're saying and what your bets are. You know that that, for me, is not going anywhere. I'm a big believer in that as well, right? You know you're telling your business that change is coming. We need to adapt or we have an opportunity to make this change. Business resistance is part of preservation, right? And organisational resistance sometimes it can be politics, but in other situations, is that changing a part over here might break something over there? Yeah. So, you know, that's why that advice rings true. You know, there's the old interview question, you know, your boss has asked you to do something. You found a better way to do it. Do you, you know? A, do it your boss's way. B, go and tell them you found a better way to deal. C, do you do it the way that you think is better? And some employers. Is they they want a do it your boss's way. They will hire you only if you answer A, I will do it the way the boss told me, even though I found a better way. And that's because they don't want you to rely on your ego to come back to the business and say, Look, I'm way better than you, by the way, I was one of those guys. Were you? Were you? Did you answer A, B or C? I'm an A guy. You're an A guy. I'm an a guy, because the context the guy, yeah, which is, which is fine, yeah, the context matters, yeah, yeah. However, what I do believe is the right forum, yeah, to present a different way of doing things, yeah. So for example, typical company activity is Excel reporting or Google Sheets, if you're using Google Sheets, but as Excel is the most important business productivity tool. So you look at the exercise, oh, this, this table is crap. I can rearrange this whole table and it can be so much more clearer, but then someone in finance is going to kill you, because actually that part of the table links to this over here. And there's a reason why this month gets invoiced here, and that month gets invoiced there, and you didn't have that context. And so I think with AI and with business change, you do need a bit of validation externally. You do need to ensure that you're not just kind of operating off adrenaline. You have to have there are some instincts which are obvious, and all businesses will see that, but you have to have a bit of you have to have a bit of kind of rigour around what you do and what you recommend to the business, because also you be accountable
Ben Walker 26:30
for it. Well, it's easier to lead change when you've got expert lieutenant to help you. And then I think that's an important lesson. Is that you know, there are people out there to help you consult with your business about this stuff. It's not something you have to be isolated and exposed saying, We got to do this and do this now and do it this way. You've got guys out there that can help you go and find them.
Amir Malik 26:53
Yeah, exactly you. You when you don't know, ask those who know,
Ben Walker 26:59
ask those who know. Yeah, I don't know if I'm going to regret saying this, because we talk a lot about, we have talked a lot about AI beyond what you would call classic AI. What do you see the big technologies that are going to be changing the marketing space in the next three to five years?
Amir Malik 27:16
So I think we might be moving to a prompt based future. And to illustrate what I'm talking about, the way in which you would have Googled or you would have searched content is if you wanted to check football results, you'd write football results in Google, or you'd write at Chelsea Man United. But when you use chat GPT, you frame it as a question. You're prompting the agent, so you say, what was today's results in the Premier League? Say, what was the score with Chelsea and and the way you frame your asks is as if you're interacting with a human, and what you're getting back is a much more precision level response. And right now, you don't need to go through the 10 pages of advertising to get to it or links. You actually just get the consolidated response. And Google was obviously adapted to this by creating AI mode. So AI overviews in AI mode, which is hammering the traffic of publishers and websites, but it also begs the question, like, why wouldn't I have a single interface where I access all of my tools and my information? So I think if I was a marketer, I'd make some bets. I'd bet on, you know, something like chat, GBT, and it could be the others as well, perplexity, et cetera, becoming the single most utilised app on your device, and therefore ensuring that the responses that are related to my business or my product lines are pointing to my business and directing people to my business. And then also, how do I kind of create a relationship directly with the customer using AI as well. So, you know, I recently flew to New York on Virgin Atlantic. It was operated by delta. So you know, when you was it was it a Delta aircraft. It was a Delta aircraft, right? But just the gauge has been badged online as your whole journey's virgin in terms of the digital journey, and they sent me a WhatsApp message reminding me to check into the flight. And I thought that was interesting, and I read it. And prior to prompting with chat GPT, I would have been, I think less I would have been for this, a bit more invasive than I would have liked post, chat, GBT, if I had a question, or if they gave me a chance to prompt, I probably would have prompted it back as well. So do you know what data is, or what terminal, etc, and so I think we're moving at a pace where prompting will become a norm, and therefore people will will have a more recent. Research based frame of mind around product purchases. So how do you create collateral that is responding to a research frame of mind? This
Ben Walker 30:07
is fascinating, because I was listening to you speak then, and I just thought that I've made that segue myself, and I've not noticed myself doing it. The football example was perfect, because when I'm in the car, I press the silly button on the on the steering wheel, and I asked her what the scores are. But I asked it as if I was asking a friend what the scores were or human and then she she tells me all the scores. It's really handy when you're driving. Should keep it with it, keep it with the scores. And I hadn't actually noticed that change, yeah, in the way that I'm using searching the internet. You know, you're almost going back Back to the Future, to people who are young, could listen to the show only remember Ask Jeeves the question answer. Search engine, which was the whole thing, was designed as if you asked it a question, and it very soon fell out of fashion. It's almost like we've gone back to that where we're all talking to technology as if it is person, and what you're saying is, well, make your bets in that area as marketers, because that's the way it's going. It's only going one way. We are having more of a conversation with technology. So when you're thinking about your marketing tools, your outreach to customers, the way you interact with your client base, think of things happening as a conversation rather than a
Amir Malik 31:24
search. Yeah, and there is loads of data now around how, once somebody starts using chat G, which has the close up highest acquisition of users ever as a fast rate, they're 30% less to return, 30% less likely to return to search at the frequency that they once were, you know, and that declines quarter on quarter. And there'll be loads of data and stats you can get, you know, we can find this all time, and it's been published constantly, and so that prompt based future shows you the power of agentic AI, if I use that term loosely, and
Ben Walker 31:59
you're gonna have to explain this, but I've heard it used probably more times in the last three weeks than I have in the rest of my life. And I still don't I haven't had much to look it up, so for advantage of me and the audience, tell me what agentic means.
Amir Malik 32:12
I think agentic is being used in multiple ways, but how I just used it was the idea that humans have an agent, servicing them, helping them. And the agent is a construct which could be a human, or, in this instance, is artificial intelligence. But if you say, I've got an agent, what do you use an agent? I talk to my agent. I use my agent for X, Y, Z, AI. Agents or agentic support to humans, is precisely what you just talked about, that Siri journey you take, and Apple have us sitting on a gold mine, if they can nail that. Because every the volume of Apple users out there, you know, chat, GPT is another one. And that agentic service layer, you know, tomorrow you'll be asking your agent, you know, when was, when's? How about can you put my dentist appointment up for me? You know, can you, can you tell me when parents evening is? You know, it's integrated with your calendar. It's integrated with your chats, and that agent will be there, automating or and augmenting you throughout your day. That's where we're heading.
Ben Walker 33:24
So instead of searching for a dress or a suit, you're just saying to the agent, I need a suit for this party. I need a dress for this party. Can you go and find me some options? You're talking to it as if it's a personal assistant. Rather than sitting on a computer searching suits for parties, dresses for parties.
Amir Malik 33:42
I need to be at this studio for today's podcast at x time. When should I leave? I'm here right now. This is the journey estimate. This is what you should do. You know people I do this, and some my, I guess my colleagues are doing this as well. And my, I've turned my agent into like a military robot, and I didn't ask it to call me sir, and then it started to call me sir. And I said, stop calling me sir. But the kind of speed and efficiency it provides is incredible. Now there is also research which is showing that we are becoming reliant. We can, in theory, become too reliant on AI, and the main risk that poses is in our critical thinking ability. And a real danger is in how AI can be polluted by kind of like nefarious sources, and we've seen instances of that. Well,
Ben Walker 34:38
this is interesting. This is an interesting area, generally, philosophically, but also for you and your business, is, how do you get to a stage where you get people to rely on this stuff, but don't devolve all of their ethical, critical thinking to it? Don't just trust it, but don't trust it too much. That's yeah, how do you how do you strike.
Amir Malik 35:00
That balance. Yeah, and this might come as a surprise, but I personally don't believe that. I've not seen and I've not worked with one LLM yet that is fully reliable, no norming, right? And doesn't make errors or hallucinations. We say, Hold on a second. So why then the devil's in the detail, and that, you know that change resistance at a company is quite important, is because you need to know how to kind of ring fence the the AI to the limits of this capability, and put the right guardrails in place for AI adoption. And, you know, I'm not kind of all in on handing over AI above and beyond human activity. So, you know, analyse human activity in a business, there's still a lot of value there, and AI needs to be wholly supervised by humans. It's to for me, it's a complimentary utility at this time, it is not replacing all humans,
Ben Walker 36:04
but people will come to you, presumably, expecting it to replace human labour, expecting it to save vast amounts of costs for their business in terms of hiring and recruitment. And presumably, sometimes you're finding yourself saying, Be careful. There is big role humans in your business. They may not be doing the right things at the moment, given the technology that's out there, but they still have a huge role to play.
Amir Malik 36:30
This might sound like a joke, but private equity obviously, is really interested in exploring officials, and I'm sure my P colleagues and friends find that funny. The reality is, is that, you know, they that, that there is a lot of savings because businesses are poorly run as they are. You know, you buy businesses and and they sort of haven't updated their OS operating system. I use that metaphorically, in different departments. For years, somebody left, or, you know, the person who knew it's not here anymore, or this the right hand doesn't talk to the left. You know that that is the that is a situation that companies AI is agitating all of the basics, which may not be replaced by AI, but it's driving sort of like less patience and tolerance for sub optimal setups. And so that's an opportunity for me where I say, like, actually, you're right. This is poorly run, but you're wrong. Surely AI can do all of it, no, but it can be run better. And this is how we'd approach it, with some AI.
Ben Walker 37:35
Do you ever encounter barriers where people sort of take offence that you're looking in the business and you're thinking, Oh, God, that mean, this is really crap. You don't use that language. Well, you may use language, I don't know, but I don't
Amir Malik 37:48
like someone. I'll tell them, yeah, which has happened?
Ben Walker 37:53
You may like the person, but not like the process. And this, this needs to be radically changed. It's completely antiquated. Other organisations are doing it far better, and there's tools to help you, and people don't realise and may even get their backs up,
Amir Malik 38:11
yeah, I think, you know, I can think of many examples like that, and I can think of one clear example with a household brand name where you know the prospect of change was just too company was fatigued, and it was too much for that CEO to kind of entertain. And I don't sympathise, but empathise with that position. And I think there's more of that than than we realise, and that explains why I have my private health insurer experience in the way that I do. You know and, and sometimes you know you need, you need the right CEO who's ready to tackle, you know, change in a business, because it's quite easy to kind of tick along, especially if you're sort of more of a rotational CEO. And you'd like to think that the people that recruit in that role are looking for the right sort of person that's not afraid of change that makes the can make big bets. So who, you know, a and m is quite a shareholder kind of focused business as well. It's got a good footprint, and you can see that, you know that that role right now, in terms of the AI age, the CEO is crucial to the business, and who the CEO recruits as well.
Ben Walker 39:47
Is it common enough? I mean, to go a bit sort of maybe a bit highfalutin with this, but the government, its entire productivity plan is based around almost 100% adoption of the right technology at the right time. You know you will refer to the. Deliver that for the country, it's going to take a very high, almost complete adoption rate, and yet, you're saying there's lots of people that actually remain very resistant to change that too tired. They're exhausted. They can't face it. That's why you get problems like things which are obviously wrong in businesses obviously don't work for the businesses themselves. Sometimes don't work with customers, and still, people don't change them. Are there enough changes? Are there enough change makers around at the tops of organisations?
Amir Malik 40:26
Yeah, and, and the answer is no. And that's why the likes of McKinsey, BCG, A and M, they exist for this reason, I think, and they make a lot of money from that. Now the risk is, is that you just always are dealing with PowerPoint at the end of it, and didn't actually do any change. And so, you know, for me, it's important that roll the sleeves up and kind of get stuff done. And a&m is very much a business like that, you know, and and private equity has a low threshold, a low tolerance for for anything else. And a&m is one of the largest suppliers of consulting services to PE for that reason, right? You know, we're here to actually improve things, change things, make things better, and, and, and you're right? You know, inside the business, the inertia, the day to day tasks, the Bau the occupation with what's going on and the challenges. Makes it very difficult to coordinate and orchestrate transformation, very difficult.
Ben Walker 41:30
Some, some of it's rational. Yeah, it is rational because you, you alluded to earlier about, and you've mentioned the word risk a few times in that, you know, part of a leader's job in any organisation is to is to mitigate risk for that organisation. And sometimes leaders take a rational view, where they think, well, it might be perfect, but it's good enough. We're profitable. We're going, okay, there might be a better system, but to actually experiment with new technologies, new tools, will introduce some level of risk. I mean, how do you strike that balance? As a leader, or if you're talking to a leader, make the case for the balance. I think the the
Amir Malik 42:10
acquisition of AI and change and improving functions is is very prevalent in high performing businesses, right? It shouldn't just be a connotation that, you know, maybe we've talked about that a bit, but it shouldn't be only the conversation that your company is not performing, or it's not great, or, you know, your team are not very good. That's not how this should be framed, because it's affecting all of us. You know, I don't care who you are, where you work. Nobody has all the answers right now. You know, if you work for Google, you know, you don't know what, what open AI doing next. If you work for open AI, you're thinking, how have Google just launched nano banana like that? How do they how can they just replicate an image, and you take your grandfather or grandmother's photo, and it can change the angle, and it looks completely real. You know that these, nobody has all the answers, right? It's a it's a really exciting time, and it can be framed. Change can be framed positively as
Ben Walker 43:04
well. Does it involve a cultural shift in a lot the organisations you come across?
Amir Malik 43:09
Absolutely, that's the biggest problem. The cultural change is the biggest problem. I think, the if you're doing something, and you know how to do it and and you can see that you're getting to the goal you want. Why would you improve it? Why would you change it, or why would you change it to begin with? And you might be even cynical around improving it. I think that is a cultural barrier. You know, if you restructure companies, the culture component is the toughest part in restructuring. I think, I think I mean on different views, but you know, that's the hardest hurdle to overcome, right? People need to be comfortable with things not being the way they once were, but the core of the business retaining the core is the focus, right? You know, someone will say, well, business, you know, should be a company that wants to deliver amazing results, great customer experiences. And so the old business is a psychopath. Just cares about revenue, you know? And there's, there's research that goes both ways. I think the point is somewhere between, right you've got to you got to adapt. You got to change the culture. Will not be fixed forever. It needs to know that there is no, there's no permanent end state. So, so how are you evolving in the right way and retaining the core kind of objectives of the business.
Ben Walker 44:42
Just go back to the Where do you stop? Question, though, doesn't it? Where do you start when you see there's a cultural resistance, which there will be in lots of organisations you encounter, you're not gonna have to change that culture overnight. You're probably not gonna change in a year, but you can make them make the incremental changes in order for what needs to happen. Happen. And how?
Amir Malik 45:00
Yeah, those are tough decisions. Those are the tough decisions, right? Those are the decisions which really need to be made by the leaders of the business. You know, do you tear the band aid off? Do you have personnel change? Do you do partial change? You know, do you accommodate the way things are? I mean, those are really the toughest that's that's what makes, I think, a great leader in a business, that they're able to tackle those questions. And you can feel very alone in those questions and those answers and and you know the risks of you sort of saying, Actually, we're going to do this transformation. We're going to change the way things are, and having the vision for 235, years out to know the company will be it's for the betterment of the company. You know, that takes kind of bravery and courage. I think it's not easy.
Ben Walker 45:53
It's not it's not easy. My question really was, Are there enough of those people that are willing to take on that fear, that are willing to, you know, risk what they may perceive wrongly, but they nevertheless still perceive as a chance of failure in order to bring these digital transformations about.
Amir Malik 46:10
I think, I think time will tell, right, and what we can guarantee, almost guarantee, was that without legislation, legislation is a risk here and restrictions on AI, companies will emerge that offer what your company offers, but with a way better experience and a way smoother journey and using AI so you won't have a choice. So it's better to be an early adopter, early leader, in my view,
Ben Walker 46:41
one of the things people struggle with through digital transformation is it's not isolated to your team. Is often, rarely even is it isolated to your department. In order to bring about the transformation, you've got to make sure that what you're doing to the spreadsheet, to your your to use your analogy, is not cocking up somebody else's spreadsheet. There are a whole bunch of departments and silos in a business that you've got to align. How do you manage that? How do you bring those different parts of the business together so the digital transformation has a chance of success?
Amir Malik 47:17
Yeah, I think that's the that's the orchestration question, right? And that's why working with partners is super important. If you're a large scale business, you've got many departments, loads of employees, loads of digital transformation use cases, you have to have a partner that can coordinate all of that change for you. And then, equally, you can't have, I don't think there is time for five year transformation programmes anymore. Those annuity type change transformation projects, this is a big bet of mine. They're disappearing. They're not sustainable. The rate of change is too fast. You know, your teams, your personnel need to kind of become more digital and have a better kind of technology savviness now. And so you have to be quicker.
Ben Walker 48:11
You have to be quicker, which I suppose is good insofar as taking the band aid off, but makes it all more scarier for people. It's not something we can plan to do over three or five years anymore. Guys, we're going to do it in 18 months.
Amir Malik 48:24
Well, the thing for me is, I'm a big believer, right people, I think we've come over the curve of, you know, people are on they're on CRM, they're on, you know, email. They're on digital platforms, covid, accelerated, virtualization of the workforce. Everyone's using chatgpt and AI right now. I'm hopeful around the adoption, but you know, you've got to be open minded, and you've got to be willing to surrender some points of view that you're entrenched in, and make some tough decisions where there's resistance.
Ben Walker 48:59
Changing the habits of a lifetime is going to be necessary for lots of people. You lots of people.
Amir Malik 49:04
That, to me, would be a statement that I wouldn't make. That statement, I think it's it's it, that's where you that's what that would create fear, maybe, and but I understand why, why, why that statement is being made. That's how AI is being framed as well. It's like, you know, it's going to take over and change everything. But I think you can only do that with the human, not instead of the human. That's the key point. You are prerequisite. We are essential. AI is not fully taken over is augmentation over automation, fully by supporting us as opposed to just replacing us.
Ben Walker 49:47
So we follow those tips, we start to change the culture. We remove the fear. We manage to balance the risk of experimentation with the risk of failure. Can we start to make progress? It happens. There has been progress in many organisations. It may be tough, but it happens, and you're proof of it. How do we measure it? How do we go back in the early days of a transformation project and say to the FD, to the CFO, to the CEO, look at the change we're making here. Look at the early successes we've had. These are the bottom line improvements we're
Amir Malik 50:25
making. I think that's part of the pre wiring of transformation, right? So that's where, as a partner, we could, we could help, right? So we ensure that we anchor all of those changes into business plans and benefits cases that are measured. And this is the key point you're not going to get everything right, but you just need to get most of it right. That's the key right. And so if you can get a good chunk of return on your bets, that's great, and you have to be willing to fail fast as well.
Ben Walker 50:56
Can you Is there a need to get some early data on the board, not just so you've had success, but so you can prove that early success, because presumably, it's not a it's not a given that digital transformation projects continue, sometimes they stop.
Amir Malik 51:14
You use the word rational, right? So you can make something rational to a business, but you can't demonstrate success easily, always through metrics and quantification. And so I do believe that you need to be able to quantify the impact fulfilling an AI concierge journey, end to end, live in sort of public or production, right with a real customer that needs to go back to the board to evangelise the board and say, look, it's happening. That consumer did not complain. In fact, they went through the whole journey. So, right? So those sort of profound segments and tests, then you can scale up.
Ben Walker 51:55
It's fascinating discussion. If we think about the people that listening to this podcast, their marketers, different stages in their career. This should be exciting to them, the things that are coming their way. Big change, but exciting change. What do they need to do in terms of their own capabilities, improving their own capabilities, soft skills, hard skills, and all the rest of it, to make sure that they're the vanguard of this, that they're the people that you're choosing is the human in the loop.
Amir Malik 52:25
I think if you're the new starting, kind of new starter, early stage marketeer, or you're kind of early in your career, you absolutely should be exposing yourself to AI and whatever your job responsibility is, and you're across, you should be very curious around how AI is disrupting what you do. If you're the CMO or chief customer officers, chief commercial officers, you need to surround yourself with people that are curious around AI and interested in what's going on now, and you need to be, sort of be willing to work with partners externally, you know, you have to have an outside interview on the business. I, you know, I do believe strongly in that. Well, that's why I work in the consulting industry at this time. So I think that it's important for you to bring in that, those that thought leadership, that can challenge you with what's best in class, what's coming around the corner, and therefore, then you can make the right bets on who you hire, what agencies you bring in. You know we are hearing the right sort of signals around AI, and you can recognise those signals as well.
Ben Walker 53:38
If you could give one tip to marketers listening to the show. One thing they could do tomorrow or start doing tomorrow, to future proof themselves, to future proof their competencies. What
Amir Malik 53:47
would it be? I'd say, go all in on AI without being dogmatic about it or doctrinal about it. Oh, it's not a matter of belief, right? That's the kind of pub level conversation right now in the creative industries, I don't believe in AI. We to protect creatives. Like thinking about in the wrong way, copyright infringement is a real big problem, but I'm talking about in terms of AI's utilities as a utility, go all in. You don't need to sort of make any assumptions or be an evangelist of AI fully, but see what you can do and then ask yourself, is actually useful to how you work and to your career and to your job and your company? I'd be very surprised if anyone who was negative on AI in six months from now, will be negative on AI in the creative or marketing industry.
Ben Walker 54:44
It's interesting. You're saying about the conversation I've had, those conversations that people are treating it almost like an article of faith, aren't they, as if it's a deity that they either believe in or they don't. And you're saying that's nonsense. See it as a reality. It's there. It's a thing. It's not an article of faith. If it's a technology, work out it's what it can do.
Amir Malik 55:02
So the criticisms of AI and what what's happening with AI, I think, are quite legitimate. When you talk about sort of content that's being produced in social media, the volume of content produced in social media, the sort of level of ambush that has on the brain, and, you know, it's just loads of crap on the platforms, basically, and then how AI is weaponized In other instances, you know, for political agendas, for recruitment around certain types of thinking or fringe thinking. You know, flat Earth theories on the rise. Yep, right. I'm not saying the Earth isn't flat, but if you believe that, but, but I'm saying that that's on the rise because of social media and the ability to now create AI will just embolden that ability. So there is issues. There are real issues, but if you kind of are responsible, and you you work in the marketing area because of that issue over here, it doesn't mean you shouldn't be using AI. In fact, how can AI be part of the resistance to that as well? It's important to see, you know, the full potential of AI, because I don't think it's going anywhere.
Ben Walker 56:16
Final thought, then, how do you get that mindset? How do you get that mindset where you're an innovator, you're open minded, but you're also maintaining customer trust and being ethical and using it for good? What's the key part of
Amir Malik 56:29
that mindset? The key word is being open minded. It's being open minded. You don't necessarily need to be the person who's innovating. You can't all be innovating, and you can't all be sort of like pleasing customers at the end of the kind of customer touch point all the time, but you have to be open minded around you know? You have to care about both, right? You know, are we innovating? Yes. Are you supporting innovation? Yes. Are you? Are you trying to work towards better customer experiences? Hopefully, yes. And how can you use what's available in terms of the technology available and the innovation available to do that? So you have to be open minded on it. You know, it is that cultural change of open mindedness
Ben Walker 57:20
that's needed now. I'm Ian Malik. Thank you very much indeed. Thanks for coming on the show. Thank you very much for the pleasure. So that brings us to the end of this season. We spent this series exploring emerging technology and how it's changing marketing and potentially the role of marketers. It's been really inspiring to hear fresh perspectives and Industry Insights from our incredible guests. The contents and views expressed on this podcast are my and my guests own, and do not necessarily represent those of CIM or the companies in which we work. And don't forget to leave us a rating and review on your podcast platform of choice.
Karen Barnett 58:02
CIM membership will help support and inspire you at every stage of your marketing career. Sign up now for a range of exclusive benefits, including access to our monthly webinars. Find out more@cim.co.uk
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