Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
"Adobe didn't just buy an SEO tool – it bought a negotiating position with the AI overlords of discovery." – Juan
Jacqueline and Juan unpack what "more human" marketing actually looks like when AI is mediating everything from search to Black Friday deals. They break down Adobe's acquisition of Semrush, quarterly Martech earnings, the Black Friday/Cyber Monday shift toward mobile-plus-AI shopping, BNPL's surge, and ChatGPT's three-year impact on how people search, think, and buy.
Brought to you by Hightouch — the leading composable CDP and decisioning platform trusted by brands like Domino's, Chime, and Aritzia. 90% of customers have a real use case live within their first week, delivering world-class personalization at scale. Learn more at www.hightouch.com/msom.
Timestamps
00:04 – MWF NYC debrief and why this year felt like a turning point for Martech
05:10 – Stranger Things and what "good" co-marketing actually looks like
10:30 – Woo-Woo vs data: how much of marketing is still intuition dressed up in dashboards
16:20 – Adobe buys Semrush: GEO data, media consolidation, and why Adobe blinked on AI search
24:40 – Quarterly Martech earnings: mid-market outpaces the enterprise and AI narratives without ROI
33:30 – BFCM early numbers: mobile-plus-AI shopping, BNPL growth, and fewer margin-killing discounts
36:56 – ChatGPT's third anniversary: national rollbacks and the societal risks of AI
42:15 – Subscriber question: How to drive change inside organizations when tooling and incentives clash?
Connect & Subscribe
Subscribe to Making Sense of Martech wherever you get your podcasts. Engage with the community on Reddit and follow Making Sense of Martech on LinkedIn, and don't forget to like and subscribe on YouTube.
Leave a review, share with your team, and send us your questions and confessions.
We may feature you in an upcoming episode!
https://theMartechweekly.com/podcast/question/ https://theMartechweekly.com/podcast/confession-corner/ https://www.reddit.com/r/MSoMPodcast/comments/1morng8/office_hours_questions/
Creators and Guests
What is Making Sense of Martech?
Unfiltered takes on the biggest shifts in marketing technology. We spotlight what matters, who's leading (or lagging), and what's next. In Martech, clarity is power — and we're here to deliver it.
00;00;05;00 - 00;00;08;03
Speaker 1
Welcome to the Making Sense of MarTech podcast. I'm Jacqueline Freedman.
00;00;08;05 - 00;00;09;20
Speaker 2
And I'm one Mendoza, and this.
00;00;09;21 - 00;00;23;13
Speaker 1
Is Office Hours, and we cut through the noise and discuss the latest and greatest in the market landscape. So opening thoughts were officially back from Magic World Forum New York. We are done for the year. What were your thoughts at the penultimate of the season?
00;00;23;17 - 00;00;24;19
Speaker 2
I love the.
00;00;24;19 - 00;00;26;00
Speaker 1
Penultimate.
00;00;26;03 - 00;00;29;14
Speaker 2
Well, it would be the penultimate is the second largest.
00;00;29;16 - 00;00;34;29
Speaker 1
Never mind. Well, it could be to next year for the ultimate event of the season. How do we feel?
00;00;35;01 - 00;00;55;01
Speaker 2
I feel great Jaclyn Montag, World Forum New York City has been our biggest event we've ever done in all metrics. We sold out both the sponsorships and also the ten day passes. Just brilliant. My take Will form has been an amazing conference series, New York City as being the first time we've been there this year, and just a very warm, welcoming reception.
00;00;55;04 - 00;01;06;09
Speaker 2
It definitely feels like across North America that New York is definitely the place for marketing technology professionals. I would say it's the best place in the world to be doing business in martech. I'll tell you one reason why.
00;01;06;14 - 00;01;07;13
Speaker 1
Just in the world in.
00;01;07;13 - 00;01;25;04
Speaker 2
General, it is. I am convinced of that now. Look, I am like New York has my heart at this point. It is an amazing city for doing business in martech. And I'll tell you why. We have a lot of global brands in New York. There is a lot of companies that are either from overseas headquartered in the United States, and often they will headquarter in New York.
00;01;25;05 - 00;01;47;26
Speaker 2
You have very strong retail presence, finance, healthcare. You got all those sort of core verticals that the large consumer base sort of requires. And then you just have a lot of companies that just have the categories for martech in comparison to, say, the West Coast and Silicon Valley. MarTech is not martech. It's an engineering and it's product. And it's a very different world, a different taxonomy and terminologies for how martech is actually communicated.
00;01;47;26 - 00;02;07;12
Speaker 2
But in New York, on the East Coast, we do have heads of martech. We do have global marketing technology managers. We have these people that straddle both IT and marketing in a really effective way. And so it was just blown away by just the incredible global brands that were with us from Disney all the way through to Pfizer to some amazing speakers as well.
00;02;07;13 - 00;02;10;19
Speaker 2
But I'm going to throw it back to you, Jacqueline, what were your favorite sessions?
00;02;10;20 - 00;02;33;25
Speaker 1
Yeah, I'm a huge fan of Tony Byrne. I mean, it goes without saying. He loved his forward thinking, forward looking at 2030 planning as kind of a visionary, don't forget that being stuck in the weeds you don't get to think about. And so I was just grateful to have one a legend. But to someone on stage to really just reflect upon where we're at today, where we could be tomorrow and the next five years.
00;02;33;26 - 00;02;36;00
Speaker 1
Yeah. What was your favorite session?
00;02;36;04 - 00;02;39;24
Speaker 2
Well, I have three favorite sessions. One was a bit like, I'm not too sure that's.
00;02;39;29 - 00;02;40;19
Speaker 1
Cheating, but.
00;02;40;19 - 00;02;50;28
Speaker 2
I'll give you three quick ones. So Scott Brinker, as always, a good friend of our business, the person behind the martech landscape, super graphic with 15 16,000 different tools on it, which.
00;02;50;28 - 00;02;52;27
Speaker 1
Came out yesterday as a that's.
00;02;52;27 - 00;02;54;09
Speaker 2
Exactly what.
00;02;54;12 - 00;02;56;27
Speaker 1
I know came out yesterday as of publishing this.
00;02;56;27 - 00;03;14;17
Speaker 2
That was exactly right. Yeah. Go check it out that they're just on their latest update. But Scott gave us a good preview and a teaser, but his talk was all about AI and how consumer experiences are changing with AI. And he did a very interesting, slightly awkward presentation on trying to buy something from his former employer, HubSpot.
00;03;14;18 - 00;03;15;27
Speaker 1
I've seen it.
00;03;15;29 - 00;03;41;05
Speaker 2
It's hilarious. And I think that, like he showed like, okay, he is hubspot's AI customer service experience, right? Help me find the right plan. Versus using like Claude. And it was literally chalk and cheese. You know, the experience you can get with an Lem. That is generic of everything versus a in built platform that's focus just on HubSpot data is yeah, very, very different.
00;03;41;05 - 00;03;58;01
Speaker 2
So I thought that was like a cool, also kind of awkward because he used to work at HubSpot, that it was very fun kind of experience. My next one was Chris Marriott. You know, Chris Marriott, he's been very experienced in the email space in the marketing automation platform space, and he kind of challenged the audience to think through, do you even need a CDP?
00;03;58;03 - 00;04;14;18
Speaker 2
And, you know, he's hearing things that I'm also hearing out in the market where a lot of brands are like, we've got, mo engage or it'll roll or braze that can't. They just outbid our customer engagement platform. And he made an argument for it. I'm not sure how many people actually agreed with that argument, but I thought that was a good sort of challenge to go.
00;04;14;18 - 00;04;37;20
Speaker 2
Well, what's the role of the CDP? His whole talk was about the CDP is basically in the old folks home at this point. But I would say that for an enterprise company relying just on a customer engagement platform for all your data orchestration, identity activation, probably not the best idea, but I can see kind of where he's coming from as well, which is like smaller companies potentially will just use the engagement platform, which is more efficient.
00;04;37;28 - 00;04;55;18
Speaker 2
But the bigger the company, the more complex a data orchestration and even just tapping into things like composability and the data warehouse and the cloud, things like that, there's a good argument to say that a CDP still have a very important role there. So that's Chris Marriott. I'm very controversial. I would say my last one was actually just a quote from Bree Graham.
00;04;55;18 - 00;05;14;01
Speaker 2
So she's a head of martech block. So block is the holding company for three really important apps. Square Cash App and Afterpay. So it's a sort of an innovative financial infrastructure company, and she manages marketing technology across multiple business units. And she said this, which really resonated with me, and it kind of felt like it was the theme from the event.
00;05;14;08 - 00;05;38;12
Speaker 2
She said that when technology says people marketing becomes not just smarter but also more human, that's when it truly works and multiple sessions, especially from the brand side leaders that this theme continue to come out, which is how do we make our customer experiences more human? How does technology enable more authentic and human experiences? And I think part of that is a reaction from a lot of the AI slop we're seeing out in the market.
00;05;38;17 - 00;05;52;26
Speaker 2
You know, a lot of people using AI tools to buy things. So there's less humans in the equation. You know, there's this really interesting focus on how do we make these experiences more human, more connected to the human experience, and not less. And so I thought that was really great.
00;05;52;27 - 00;06;15;03
Speaker 1
I'm a big fan of anything Bree has to say, but I kind of want to turn some things upside down for a moment and talk about stranger things, because there's actually some marketing components that are worth discussing that is both physical, tangible as well as oh, marketing co branding. They've really turned it up a notch for the mind all season.
00;06;15;05 - 00;06;17;08
Speaker 1
I'm curious to hear, are you caught up?
00;06;17;10 - 00;06;30;11
Speaker 2
I am now caught up. Jacqueline I know that you have you are a mega fan. I didn't I had no idea that you were such a huge fan of Stranger Things a few weeks ago. We're in New York City. Just after the event, you went and saw the, I think it's like the prequel musical.
00;06;30;16 - 00;07;03;24
Speaker 1
Yes, they do things. The first yeah, yes no spoilers, but you should go see it even if you're not a big play person. Broadway person. If you are a fan of the show, it is basically a movie on stage, as in the special effects. They won a bunch of Tonys for a reason. It was that incredible. And also, you get a couple of snippets and really the background story to one of the primary characters and really try not to have any spoilers at all if one has not caught up on certain things or watched anything as it relates to Stranger Things, but it's worth a watch.
00;07;03;24 - 00;07;17;07
Speaker 1
Even if you just watched a video that kind of highlights, main narrative. So there's some key insights that are really beneficial. But I hear you have a favorite oh marketing toe branding moment that the Stranger Things franchise has completed which like.
00;07;17;07 - 00;07;40;07
Speaker 2
Yeah, that's a great question. So KFC they have partnered up with Netflix and Netflix are doing this really interesting. Like beyond just programmatic advertising on that platform like actual brand activations, which is really interesting. I saw something similar, earlier this year with, Squid Game two. The next iteration. They did a very tight collaboration with McDonald's where McDonald's did this sort of branded campaign.
00;07;40;07 - 00;07;57;17
Speaker 2
You can get all these different sort of, Happy Meals, all kinds of stuff related to, to Squid Games, and KFC have going in that way as well. And they created this like upside down burger, you know, so the chicken on the outside and the burger buns on the inside, it's all, you know, it looks a bit creepy, but the advertising placements, are quite fun, you know.
00;07;57;17 - 00;08;14;13
Speaker 2
So I deliberately take the cheap version of Netflix. Not because I'm cheap, but because I'm interested in the ad placements, particularly around some of these bigger shows. You know, Stranger Things is one of the biggest shows that Netflix has ever produced. It's getting a lot of kudos from the market because it's one of the only shows they produced.
00;08;14;13 - 00;08;20;04
Speaker 2
And I've actually almost finished, you know, so they haven't killed it because of some algorithm.
00;08;20;06 - 00;08;39;21
Speaker 1
Yeah, marketed to some. I could see it being completely over marketed because yes it is. However, I am proud of Netflix to actually see their marketing strategy and prowess to fruition as opposed to just putting it on the home screen and moving on to the next. And so it's nice just to see it be a really holistic like campaign.
00;08;39;21 - 00;09;03;28
Speaker 1
So kudos to the Netflix team and where's that be? And agencies that were involved because it's been fun as both a fan. But also this when you analyzes the market it really experience and what. But there was one topic at MWF that didn't happen at the event. It was in the late night hours and the in-betweens that the team and I had a lot of conversations about.
00;09;04;00 - 00;09;11;10
Speaker 1
That is well, well, I'm curious first, on what was your response when we asked you, what is,
00;09;11;12 - 00;09;13;20
Speaker 2
What is that? That was my.
00;09;13;20 - 00;09;37;23
Speaker 1
Response. That is interesting. There's no one knew what it was. And to be fair, that's it's not exactly properly defined, but my definition is it's something to do with mystical and spiritual thinking. And I think a lot of it has to do with intuition. And all of us recognize what was once we we defined it together. But I'm curious, what do you see marketing often, as I see it, as the magic with it?
00;09;37;25 - 00;09;57;02
Speaker 2
Yeah. It's interesting. Like marketing is always an intuition based discipline. You know, you can't run everything just off data, just off analytics. It's not an operational part of the business either. I actually would say that there is a pretty big spiritual component to marketing you connecting with people. You're talking to people, right? And, I like it's psychological.
00;09;57;04 - 00;10;06;26
Speaker 2
I would say I'm a spiritual person. I believe that the spiritual things going on, you know, just as a disclaimer here. But I would say that, yeah, we were I don't know if I'd use the term we were, but there is a.
00;10;06;29 - 00;10;10;09
Speaker 1
And it's way fun to say.
00;10;10;12 - 00;10;28;12
Speaker 2
I would say the intuition really matters. I spiritual connection and like most people are religious in this world. Right. Like the majority of billions and billions of people in this world are religious or they believe in some sort of spiritual reality, right? It's not. We don't live in a agnostic or an atheistic world. We live in a spiritual, religious world.
00;10;28;13 - 00;10;46;11
Speaker 2
And I think marketing should tap into that more. I think that there is intuition, there's a spiritual discernment that happens sometimes. There can be mystical things that happen. But, you know, even our own marketing, we see people connect with our message or connect with our own campaigns or the right partners come along at the right time. And, you know, often those things are not things that you can really discern with just data.
00;10;46;11 - 00;11;01;14
Speaker 2
You know, it's also deeply relational marketing as well. You know, it's the team and how it works together. The partners that they have, their integration with the rest of the business has all of these relational things happening as well. So if you want to put that all under the umbrella of marketing, where would you be? My guest? But I would probably choose a different word.
00;11;01;16 - 00;11;20;20
Speaker 1
Is the writer. And it's way more fun to say it. Okay, the marketing and the brand of it are more fun, but let's get to work. Serious conversations. We were on stage at MWF, and the news came in at that CES right before Thanksgiving that Adobe acquired fresh SEMrush had recently acquired Third Door Media, which is also martech talk.
00;11;20;20 - 00;11;34;18
Speaker 1
And I know in a lot more context and experience with all of these different platforms and organizations. But curious what your thoughts are about this decision and also really the history of all these different acquisitions, because it's kind of a snowball. Yeah.
00;11;34;20 - 00;11;46;12
Speaker 2
It is. It's an interesting acquisition. Totally out of left field. Caught me by surprise. One of the analysts at MWF actually told me about it at 730 in the morning. As they turned up to set up their expo space, they said, hey.
00;11;46;14 - 00;11;47;03
Speaker 1
That is that.
00;11;47;09 - 00;12;03;19
Speaker 2
I think that is literally piping hot straight out of the kettle. But my first reaction to it was like, what? That makes no sense. And then I dug a little bit deeper and I can talk a little bit about Third Dome media as well, but I want to give you some stats, and then I'm going to talk to what this could actually mean.
00;12;03;21 - 00;12;24;23
Speaker 2
So the first stat is that the price tag at $1.9 billion, is almost twice the valuation of SEMrush in its premium market capitalization. So SEMrush was valued at 1 billion. This is double right. So this is Adobe taking a big risk. You know, you know well well above the asking price. Another stat is that this is one of Adobe's largest purchases.
00;12;24;23 - 00;12;37;15
Speaker 2
So the and only comes second to Marketo. And Marketo was just shy of $5 billion acquisition. So there is also the Figma acquisition that would have been quite large as well. But,
00;12;37;17 - 00;12;38;14
Speaker 1
Never have they got.
00;12;38;14 - 00;12;46;23
Speaker 2
To be. Yeah. That's right. There's also another platform called Macromedia that was acquired a long time ago for $3.4 billion. Right. So that's how much that's when you.
00;12;46;25 - 00;12;49;15
Speaker 1
Heard that company name in, fairy. Yeah.
00;12;49;20 - 00;12;51;01
Speaker 2
So but you know.
00;12;51;04 - 00;12;51;26
Speaker 1
I don't know if it's.
00;12;51;29 - 00;12;55;23
Speaker 2
In the top three, SEMrush. So, you know, which is kind of interesting. Right.
00;12;55;29 - 00;12;56;25
Speaker 1
Thank you for Adobe.
00;12;56;25 - 00;13;19;19
Speaker 2
It's a it's a big deal for Adobe, but not the biggest deal. And if you think about how big Adobe was back in 2005, they were making big acquisitions. Then the now. Right. So it's not a massive thing, but still it's quite significant. One of the stats that Adobe put together to justify this investment was that they're seeing that a 1,200% year on year increase in website traffic to US retailers.
00;13;19;19 - 00;13;47;10
Speaker 2
So Adobe kind of sees this. And this is kind of where I think what's happening. And my umbrella for this is that Adobe blinked. Adobe saw the increase of LM driven website traffic, how websites are now very quickly, pivoting to being able to integrate with LMS and SEMrush sits in a very interesting space. They are not a generative engine optimization startup.
00;13;47;10 - 00;14;12;07
Speaker 2
They're not an LM, but they do have probably the best source of data in the world for website traffic and what ranks. And so I wouldn't I would say that it's not necessarily an AI play. It's more of a data play. You know, CMO, you know, I would say ACM rush, this opportunity for them is coming right at the right time because the transformation that they have to do to keep up with Geo is significant.
00;14;12;14 - 00;14;29;05
Speaker 2
Yes, I have the data, but can I actually pivot to be able to offer a service that can integrate with LMS? There are plenty of new start ups with new approaches, fresh VC funding getting into this space, generative engine optimization. But I would say Adobe here is this is what they're trying to do. They're trying to collect that data.
00;14;29;08 - 00;14;49;21
Speaker 2
They know that the more data that they can collect, the more rich media they can collect, the more value it is to, to marketers. And so I think that's kind of the big play there. I'd also say that, you know, there's there's an interesting angle on this, which is SEMrush have been on a buying spree over the past three years for media companies.
00;14;49;26 - 00;14;52;10
Speaker 2
So we mentioned earlier on medium, which is.
00;14;52;10 - 00;15;15;13
Speaker 1
Yes. And I think also, if you take it into context of what Adobe is purchasing and also the fact that they cannot afford to lose at this point because they can't have someone else finding these discovery layers and this data loss, they'll be left up to even more than they already are, which we can get to the earnings after this end of our conversation.
00;15;15;13 - 00;15;22;25
Speaker 1
But I would love to hear more about all the different media companies they've purchased. And maybe there's something interesting, this place that my check weekly involves.
00;15;22;25 - 00;15;47;06
Speaker 2
Yep. So I personally know that SEMrush, where trying to acquire many media publications, marketing and media publications. So multiple podcasts. My third Dau media owns several quite large, media organizations in search and in martech and many other areas. But I think the strategy there was post ChatGPT, there was this, oh, whoever owns this data will be the winner.
00;15;47;07 - 00;16;06;09
Speaker 2
Not necessarily just the access to anyone that owns the data that owns that media will have a more valuable place in the market. And that was Sam Rush's doing that. We're literally in a rush to acquire media. And third, more media is an interesting one. I mean, you know, they have several large, organizations. We've had some run ins with those guys as well.
00;16;06;09 - 00;16;26;05
Speaker 2
But we, you know, I think that acquisition at that time when Sam actually took over automated it, like, what is this going to be about? Is martech.org just going to be another SEMrush marketing rag like, you know, we were you know, and over time, I think that, you know, the media have done an okay job, not a great job of trying to preserve their editorial integrity.
00;16;26;07 - 00;16;39;12
Speaker 2
But at the same time, you know, you've got this small fish that's been acquired by a medium sized fish, and now the big fish, Adobe's acquired all three, you know. And so you look at it and you're like, okay, there's some serious content consolidation going on here. But the content makes.
00;16;39;12 - 00;16;42;13
Speaker 1
Me wonder about the mercury. Oh yeah.
00;16;42;16 - 00;17;02;16
Speaker 2
Yeah, I got to watch that. Watch out for that I think. But you know, in this whole ecosystem, the media is being consolidated into the technology. And the technology platforms are wanting to own more media, which tells you a lot about the direction of LMS and AI is that the value is not necessarily the models, but the data.
00;17;02;18 - 00;17;27;28
Speaker 2
And I think this is what this whole acquisition is about. Adobe blinked. They have been on a year to date decline of 25 to 29% this year in their their stock price. So the value of the company has been declining all year. This has not been a growth story for Adobe, but I think they've blinked and gone actually where we need to invest, where the growth opportunity is, is collecting as much rich data as possible to enable LM optimization.
00;17;27;28 - 00;17;44;17
Speaker 2
Integration with LMS personalization within LMS, enabling companies to obviously optimize for their own LM experiences on their own websites. So I think that's what's going on. My initial reaction was, what is this? This is so random. But now I think it kind of makes sense. Yeah, it.
00;17;44;17 - 00;18;15;07
Speaker 1
Still feels a bit random, mainly because of the recent history of all the different acquisitions within SEMrush. So I hope it's not Amrish. I have to edit it one way or the other. It's an interesting choice and also a really good tie in to the next conversation. We're glasshouse about quarterly martech earnings. From a growth divergence perspective. It's really interesting in terms of where mid-market marketing automation platforms are outperforming enterprise cloud, and really the new players to the old players.
00;18;15;07 - 00;18;40;14
Speaker 1
So raised was up 24%, Lavia was up 32% and HubSpot was up 21% versus old guard, Salesforce was up 8%. Adobe similar to kind of what you're talking about, it's been declining. It's only up 11%. And then sprinkler. If we're going to be brought to the martech category, was up 8%. What was super interesting across all of the earnings calls report was I watching.
00;18;40;14 - 00;18;43;02
Speaker 1
Imagine that. I'd love to hear your thoughts.
00;18;43;03 - 00;19;00;24
Speaker 2
Yeah, obviously we are in the season of I getting into all the earnings calls that are happening. Q2 was a good reflection of that. I'll give you a few stats. Adobe. They mentioned AI 200 times in their earnings call, but they did not disclose any revenue from AI products.
00;19;00;27 - 00;19;01;28
Speaker 1
I think they need an AI.
00;19;01;28 - 00;19;24;03
Speaker 2
That to me, Jacqueline would be a really good definition of woowoo where you're talking all about all this stuff, but then you actually got nothing behind it. And similarly with Salesforce, you know, the massive agent force narrative, the way they're trying to influence the market with their agent force positioning, but less than 5% of revenue is coming from AI, very small part of the market.
00;19;24;07 - 00;19;41;12
Speaker 2
HubSpot, Klaviyo, braze, all in those earnings calls and in the reports. AI features are largely free to run monetize at this point, as a user of HubSpot, I am starting to see that they're trying to they actually getting some stuff right now with AI. There are some features that we are actually using daily, you know, but it's been what, three years?
00;19;41;12 - 00;19;58;15
Speaker 2
And we're really just starting to see some features that we're using and then we might actually pay for. Don't tell a HubSpot account rep about that, please. I think that this sort of eye washing, you know, the younger is coming for the older, obviously, Salesforce and Adobe and MarTech at the top end of town, and then you've got all the hungry ones in the middle of the market.
00;19;58;15 - 00;20;15;27
Speaker 2
You know, the braze is a Klaviyo is a HubSpot. These are all publicly listed companies that are trying to go after that, that business. But I would I would say here that, you know, both Salesforce and Adobe one another massive call out here was that both of those companies were relying on renewals. So their growth is actually based on renewals, not on new customer acquisition.
00;20;16;00 - 00;20;38;01
Speaker 2
Yeah. Whereas it's actually the opposite for HubSpot. Klaviyo embrace all their growth is coming from new acquisition, new customer acquisition. So I would say so you can see here there's this interesting narrative. You know, it's also Wilson Adobe investing big in AI but not seeing the revenue. The whole market's looking like that around martech at the moment. But at the same time you've got this angle which is well the smaller a kind of coming for the the older right.
00;20;38;01 - 00;20;58;00
Speaker 2
The companies that are coming up, I certainly take a lot of that business away. And, you know, I'm here for it. I think the year, the days of the marketing suite a kind of over I think it was over five years ago, to be completely honest with you, and relying on a one vendor for your entire marketing tech stack, there's not only one point of failure or one risk point.
00;20;58;02 - 00;21;21;21
Speaker 2
It's also, do you really want, as a enterprise marketer, do you really want? I say, no, customer. We can't build that experience for you because it's not on Salesforce or Adobe's roadmap, you know, whereas the younger players, they're more malleable, right? You can go to a braze or KBR. Yeah, you can go to them, say, hey, we want this for our customer and they will actually make ways to build that, you know, without the huge overheads.
00;21;21;23 - 00;21;24;19
Speaker 2
It's more modular. You know, it's a fractal fractal.
00;21;24;21 - 00;21;46;24
Speaker 1
Your voice is much more likely to be heard. You said there are some interesting components. Granted, these are all publicly traded companies that we speak to. A lot of private companies in terms of the internal culture of some folks where they are hungry and want to acquire more customers by innovating, versus some are also taking the dinosaur approach.
00;21;46;27 - 00;22;02;24
Speaker 1
Nope. We want to yeah, we want to acquire assets, but we also want it maintain and just keep adding upsell internally. And so it's very interesting as we think through are all the different components of who will come out ahead here, because there's definitely some trends. More to.
00;22;02;24 - 00;22;19;25
Speaker 2
Come. I definitely think there's more to come here. We are right in the middle of the forest of AI. You know, we we're not in it. We're not out of it. I think there's going to be another two years here to see who the real winners are. But we're starting to see some signals, I think, you know, and, I think it's quite exciting.
00;22;19;25 - 00;22;36;03
Speaker 2
But let's move on to, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, this wouldn't be a martech podcast without touching on the biggest sales and marketing event of the year. If you are listening to this and you've just come off the FCM, you're a retail marketer or e-commerce or direct to consumer.
00;22;36;09 - 00;22;39;00
Speaker 1
You get a yeah, please, please implication.
00;22;39;00 - 00;22;57;08
Speaker 2
I know, I just want to say right off the bat, I'm sorry that that happened to you. I'm sorry that that subject line was a mistake. I'm sorry that, you know, whatever you CMO is over the top of your shoulder, constantly looking at the dashboard and screaming at you all weekend. You know, it is such a massive event for marketing.
00;22;57;10 - 00;23;14;28
Speaker 2
But what I'm going to do is I'm going to do a summary of what we got more of this year in comparison to last year and what we got less of. We are still getting some numbers out. So as of recording this, we are recording this on Cyber Monday, in the US. So the number of you coming up, we get preliminary numbers in our next office hours.
00;23;14;28 - 00;23;33;06
Speaker 2
We'll do some more concrete numbers. But I want to give you what's more and what's little less. And then, Jacqueline, I want you to give us some analysis because I think that, you know, you have been in the middle of Bfsi and way more than I have been and you have seen it. You've worked with marketers all over the world who have really been in the middle of building their Black Friday, Cyber Monday strategies.
00;23;33;14 - 00;23;56;04
Speaker 2
So let me give you the more and the less. Okay. So more there's more in-store retail this Black Friday. There's more mobile shopping and more acquisition of customer through mobile. More buy now, pay later, more AI, so more AI to influence the shopping experience. Longer promotional curves. So starting well before Black Friday, the promotion starting and then well after as well.
00;23;56;06 - 00;24;14;16
Speaker 2
And then some anecdotal data we're getting. And again, this is pretty fresh that the amount of email campaigns that are going out is double at some brands. Some of them could be even tripled. So more email, more direct channels going out. That's the more okay, more reach out, more mobile Mo, more Bnpl, more AI, longer promotional curves.
00;24;14;16 - 00;24;35;00
Speaker 2
And then more email. That's more what's less? Less reliance on big discounts this year. So the discounts have not been as big as in comparison to previous years and e-commerce has cooled from 14% to 10%. So we've had more in store retail and less e-commerce, but it's only a very small amount. You know, it's not huge.
00;24;35;02 - 00;24;43;09
Speaker 1
It only grew 10% versus last year grew 14%. It still grew a lot. I would just state like it cooled a little bit less in terms of the gross.
00;24;43;15 - 00;25;03;03
Speaker 2
That's right. So e-commerce as well. The other side of this is that e-commerce and retail are at parody now Black Friday, Cyber Monday is really showing that that we're really on equal footing. You know, an e-commerce every year is being growing and it's total market share of, of transactions. And now we're kind of a parody, right? It's an interesting sort of balance.
00;25;03;03 - 00;25;10;24
Speaker 2
Say we're seeing more in-store retail, but e-commerce is continue to grow as well. But it's a very interesting sort of set of numbers there. But what's your take on all of this?
00;25;10;24 - 00;25;36;20
Speaker 1
It's both surprising and unsurprising. So the this is, for example, Klarna, they told us that there was 45% increase year over year for this year from like last year about how folks are using buy now, pay later, which just further exemplifies where the economy is at and not getting political or anything like that. But just in general, you know, budgets are tighter.
00;25;36;23 - 00;25;55;14
Speaker 1
And so it's going to be very interesting to see what the overall spend for Black Friday, Cyber Monday will be when we get for the estimates range, but we're still in the midst of it being Cyber Monday, still here in states that there were a few key metrics that come about from Black Friday that are just worth highlighting and recognizing.
00;25;55;21 - 00;26;25;17
Speaker 1
So just Black Friday alone, that that day, there's been a 9% increase from last year to this year. But what I found super fascinating was there are 67 million shoppers for Small Business Saturday. I think there was just an enormous increase and record setting here for folks wanting to buy local, as opposed to by the big box store to describe what a doorbuster was to hand during this call, which was very entertaining, I have to say, and I'm.
00;26;25;20 - 00;27;03;26
Speaker 1
And so speaking of the total number of sales so far has increased 4%. And so we've got a lot of things happening. And you said there were more in store sales. Yes. But it wasn't by much and only 1.7%. So yes, it was more. But compared to the over 10% growth for e-commerce, it's very minimal. I think we've kind of met the peak for retail in person, and so it's worth noting, yes, that in-store experience is important, but I don't think it's going to get that much more interesting regardless of your doorbuster influence.
00;27;03;26 - 00;27;31;12
Speaker 1
I don't know what that is. It's like a special discount or freebie that you get if you're within the first hundred people who show up, it's really just to get such an effect. But I think the most interesting component of this year and really encapsulates where we are both world on the AI trajectory, you name it, and just one year, Black Friday shifted from really being mobile first to mobile and AI mediated or AI.
00;27;31;14 - 00;27;51;17
Speaker 1
This year alone, the mobile share of online purchases this year climbed to 59%. And so that is a huge surge of several hundred percent year over year with a half of the U.S shoppers tapping AI to find to evaluate deals. I personally didn't do that because I know exactly what I want. I do from gloom and I see Black Friday.
00;27;51;17 - 00;28;13;25
Speaker 1
Cyber Monday is a really great time to stock up on the basics that you already know and love, but at a better price versus giving that new things. That's and everyone is different, but it looks to be for next year. The main takeaway is actually how do you want to optimize between, you know, Adobe purchasing SEMrush and the geo part of the world is really coming to the forefront.
00;28;14;01 - 00;28;39;15
Speaker 1
The profound element are we marrying AI and mobile understanding? That's the new default. And is that actually going to eventually replace the E-Com facing store? You have your website. There's a lot of question marks. I have a lot of thoughts on interfaces and things like that, but it's just a really important thing to note that there's a lot more that happened this year, but that's the newest and most needing and uncharted territory.
00;28;39;15 - 00;28;48;22
Speaker 1
This is another thing to add to marketers lists of channels and things to do. Yeah, I'm intrigued to see this evolves. And as we get more numbers, what we can learn.
00;28;48;25 - 00;29;07;13
Speaker 2
Well, yeah, I think so. I mean, it is such a bellwether for retail. And you know, it sets the trend for where retailers invest next year as well. You know, where where it comes from. But if I'm hearing you right, I think the two big insights from this would be that omnichannel is not negotiable. It's required. You know we have parity now, right?
00;29;07;19 - 00;29;25;16
Speaker 2
Like I still talk to a lot of retailers and believe me, some of the biggest fashion retailers in the world, they still say to me that their app, the e-commerce app or the website is still seen as another store and that separates that company out into like, okay, the stores get these investments and then you get this investment.
00;29;25;18 - 00;29;49;14
Speaker 2
You know, that's just the wrong way of thinking about it. It's omnichannel. It's not another store. It's a substrate with every customer purchases unit. So omnichannel is one of those things where the big retailers, they have to continue to invest in. And these data, this data points actually validate that. And the second point is exactly what you said, Jacqueline, is that using ChatGPT, using different search engines, using LMS is becoming the way people buy things now.
00;29;49;14 - 00;30;08;01
Speaker 2
And you have to be really prepared for that. And this is very much not the Black Friday, Cyber Monday, but the AI Friday and the Cyber Monday. You know, it's very much about AI and that what metrics experience. And we're seeing that increase every month. But Black Friday I see Cyber Monday is that key point data point to say.
00;30;08;01 - 00;30;28;10
Speaker 2
Yep a lot of consumers are using AI now to shop. Heck, I used ChatGPT last night to buy all of my Christmas presents for our team. So every single team member has a unique gift. How based on something they did or something funny that happened to them this year. And you know, to help me do that, you know, I said, you know, I've got to.
00;30;28;14 - 00;30;29;22
Speaker 1
Get, you know, or I'll get it.
00;30;29;22 - 00;30;50;28
Speaker 2
I've got a sales guy that, you know, he likes to drink champagne and he likes his first class. And what's a gift for him? You know? So, like, you know, I, I basically I were able to customize and get that experience in a retail situation, which is like it's not comparable with anything else I've experienced. You know, I can't get that kind of imagination or those ideas out of Amazon.
00;30;50;28 - 00;31;08;12
Speaker 2
I can't find it at at my local grocery store. I can't find it at a fashion retailer. In fact, it's so much easier to find products and services using these tools. Now that we cannot ignore this as marketers, it is the next channel and it gives beyond any other channel. It gives more power to the consumer than ever before.
00;31;08;17 - 00;31;27;28
Speaker 2
The internet and search and websites have given more power to the consumer over time. You know, like for example, you know, there was once a time when, you know, if you wanted to buy a new refrigerator, you would have to go into the store and then haggle with a customer service rep, you know, and you'd have to do that because you had limited information.
00;31;27;28 - 00;31;45;25
Speaker 2
The stores and the sales reps had all the information, but now I can use ChatGPT to go, here's my specifications, which are the most, you know, competitive prices. Heck, I just put in a $10, which for my kids for Christmas on Black Friday. And I walked into a store and they said, yep, this is going to be forward in $50.
00;31;45;28 - 00;32;06;24
Speaker 2
And I said, well, ChatGPT tells me I can get it from this store for $100 less. Can you, price match? They said no. And then I walked out of the store. You know, so, like, I'm able to scale up how I can actually get information about products, compare them. And it has really very little to do with the actual brands or interacting with them at all.
00;32;07;01 - 00;32;16;06
Speaker 2
So this definitely Black Friday, Cyber Monday for retail definitely feels like the AI weekend. And it's definitely feeling like a new world, especially for customer experiences. It's very hard to ignore it.
00;32;16;06 - 00;32;35;10
Speaker 1
Brought to you by our sponsors. If there's one theme that's followed me at every stop in my martech career, it's trying to get good data into the hands of marketers. That's why I'm so excited to tell you about our sponsor, High Touch, the leading composable CDP, an AI decisioning platform. Companies like Domino's, chime, Aritzia and PetSmart trust high touch to power their data.
00;32;35;10 - 00;32;53;21
Speaker 1
And here's the kicker 90% of customers have a real use case live in production within their first week. That means you can implement a world class CDP in months, rather than the usual year long headache. That's why top brands choose high touch to personalize every customer interaction at scale. See what high touch can do for you at high touch.com forms.
00;32;53;23 - 00;33;23;04
Speaker 1
And now back to the hotseat, which is a perfect transition to the before and after. As in, we just hit the three year anniversary of ChatGPT launch, which was remember, third, 30th, 2022 a world ablaze in a very different way. And obviously it's no longer just a friend. It is a structural shift in how we think about things, and it's been extremely profound for martech, business, politics, you name it.
00;33;23;06 - 00;33;59;19
Speaker 1
And also it was at the time the quickest, fastest growing app to 100 million users. But it was quickly replaced by threads, which is also an interesting 10:00 back, which is still the number one free app on the Apple Store. But according to Pew, this year that 34% of adults have used ChatGPT, and that's doubled from 2023. And among adults under 30, 58%, two thirds of the world under age 30 leveraging it, 60% of our users are actually using it to search for more information, 74% of that they under 30.
00;33;59;26 - 00;34;11;06
Speaker 1
And so I'm curious if you've got some interesting stats because it's not all sunshine puppies, rainbows and omnibuses. And so I'm curious what you have of hiding up there.
00;34;11;06 - 00;34;19;26
Speaker 2
So yes. So ChatGPT three year anniversary. Do you remember the moment when you found out about ChatGPT? Yeah. What was happening? Do you remember.
00;34;19;28 - 00;34;25;03
Speaker 1
I worked at Grammarly. There were a lot of questions. As Grammarly did.
00;34;25;06 - 00;34;26;27
Speaker 2
That was.
00;34;27;00 - 00;34;42;20
Speaker 1
Which. To be fair, I don't think so, because I still have use Grammarly Premium or Pro, correct? ChatGPT because it's dang and Nash's and I love him and so ruined my favorite punctuation mark. But there's still a place because ChatGPT is nice. Yeah.
00;34;42;22 - 00;34;43;16
Speaker 2
It's interesting.
00;34;43;18 - 00;34;44;24
Speaker 1
It doesn't mean you.
00;34;44;24 - 00;35;00;21
Speaker 2
Need to, you know, the way I think about this is that there's like Bayesian a day, right? You know, before common era and a day. Right? Judge is one of those moments. It's a real specific moment in time. At the end of November when that came out three years ago and the transformation, you know.
00;35;00;27 - 00;35;01;18
Speaker 1
Where were you?
00;35;01;23 - 00;35;18;23
Speaker 2
Well, where was I? I was actually really frustrated because in three weeks I was heading to a European vacation for two months. So my wife and my kids are packing up to go to Europe, and I'm like, oh crap, I'm going to stick around and actually analyze this. And, you know, because at that point, I was doing a lot of analyst work in our newsletter.
00;35;18;23 - 00;35;50;07
Speaker 2
I was also just left my employer as well. And I was like, all right, I'm about to go start this research company. What does this mean? I wasn't necessarily surprised because I was following OpenAI very closely over those past couple of years before Chegg launched, and every month there was something new coming out. Dollywood came out. Yeah. Were other copywriting apps using AI, you know, so I think it was like as early as 2021, right in the middle of the NFT mania, you know, so like everyone was talking about metaverse and NFTs, I was saying, that's not the vector of change.
00;35;50;07 - 00;36;08;23
Speaker 2
Your AI is a vector of change. Let me give you three startups that you know are using AI to transform how you write, copy or to do analysis, you know, so there was all of these like little small blips until ChatGPT actually was that cataclysmic moment. So I wasn't super surprised. And I also had a funny moment with, Scott Brinker.
00;36;08;23 - 00;36;27;04
Speaker 2
Actually, at that time we were doing a podcast, a limited series called Big, Big MarTech. And I had a big argument with him because he said that, you know, ChatGPT, this whole AI revolution could totally change everything in martech. And my argument at that time was that it could totally destroy martech and actually lead to a lot of pain and suffering in the economy.
00;36;27;04 - 00;36;28;06
Speaker 2
And some of the stats.
00;36;28;09 - 00;36;29;07
Speaker 1
I think you're right. Yeah.
00;36;29;07 - 00;36;45;05
Speaker 2
And I actually think three years later, some really, really good stuff. So I'm really, really not good stuff. Right. And that's nuanced. But you've kind of talked to some of the penetration there in the market. You know, some of the fastest growing up in the App Store, only quickly replaced by threads a year later. You know, majority of people are using it now.
00;36;45;08 - 00;36;56;14
Speaker 2
But let me give you some really interesting stats around what happened over the past three years. He's a concerning one Columbia country of Columbia. 85% of judges are using ChatGPT to speed case processing. Is that.
00;36;56;14 - 00;36;56;22
Speaker 1
A good.
00;36;56;22 - 00;37;18;21
Speaker 2
Thing? I think that, or I'm not too sure about that. I think that it definitely accelerates knowledge work. But I don't feel super comfortable about having it in our critical industries. Really, anything in engineering and healthcare, finance or the judiciary or the legal system, those critical parts of society. I would say that it's tread very lightly.
00;37;18;23 - 00;37;40;05
Speaker 2
South Korea, one country that actually roll back its national AI program. Judy, accuracy issues, privacy concerns, teacher workload. Like there are some countries that are totally rejecting this because it's just not good enough. Yet another one which is also quite concerning, is that health queries are among the most common. I think it's in the top three most common use cases for using ChatGPT or another LLM.
00;37;40;08 - 00;37;46;03
Speaker 2
So a lot of people going there with their health concerns. ChatGPT is not your doctor, but people who it's.
00;37;46;06 - 00;37;47;06
Speaker 1
Not your type.
00;37;47;08 - 00;38;06;24
Speaker 2
You know, this study that came out from MIT recently. So any based on 50 participants, but it caused a lot of noise saying that people use LMS to say, write an essay or to do cognitive work when they use ChatGPT, they see a significantly lower neural connectivity, which means that their brain is not working and not processing information.
00;38;06;26 - 00;38;32;23
Speaker 2
And and over time, that actually atrophies your ability to cognitively criticize or analyze information or process information, you know, so there is some like, you know, smoking is bad for you and limbs are bad for your brain type things going on as well. And then there's a really sad stat, which is this came out recently, I think OpenAI actually estimated this, that, that more than a million people every week show suicidal intent when chatting with ChatGPT.
00;38;32;26 - 00;38;54;08
Speaker 2
Now, there have been some high profile cases in this where the parents of children or teenagers have said that to encourage that person to commit suicide, there's definitely been a lot of very disturbing things around that. But there's also a recognition here that there was just as many people searching for suicidal topics, on the internet as well, you know, so it's not like ChatGPT is creating all these suicidal people.
00;38;54;11 - 00;39;15;25
Speaker 2
I think there's definitely evidence to suggest that the platform and not just chat about all of them, have a role in motivating or in kind of supporting that person's decision to commit suicide. But there it's not, you know, there's a lot more suicidal people out in the world. It's more that ChatGPT is playing a role in those conversations, which is disturbing and sad and, you know, just terrible.
00;39;15;27 - 00;39;24;07
Speaker 2
But that's kind of the societal impact, right? We thought we'd give you some stats on what's happening out in the bigger world around the use of technology. Yeah, because.
00;39;24;10 - 00;39;59;13
Speaker 1
To say the least, it's very reminiscent to me or what Facebook and Meta has in the world. The good and the bad. It's brought more interconnectivity, but also more loneliness and also more depression and similarly suicidal thoughts amongst certain age groups. And so it really for me, just highlights further needs for guardrails as well as laws and regulation, which I think I tell rooftops I'm almost any topic, but regulation is required amongst all these things, that everything can be good and everything can be bad.
00;39;59;14 - 00;40;21;18
Speaker 1
And my favorite example of that was in high school. I had a chemistry presentation and decided to go first presented the very end my teacher shared. You didn't mention that water can be toxic levels. I got marked down a couple points. Meanwhile, every presentation afterwards verbally stated, oh, but of course, if you drink too much water you could die.
00;40;21;21 - 00;40;28;01
Speaker 1
So this was a perfect example of yeah, you should drink a lot of water. But remember, at the end of the day, it could be bad for you to actually cause yourself to drown.
00;40;28;08 - 00;40;49;17
Speaker 2
Well, a lot of sort of internet based technologies. You have this real dichotomy thing that happens, you know, incredibly good things, incredibly terrible and saddening and and sickening things. I mean, right now, the arguments to that, well, where does it roll in these technologies? Well, I actually think the role sits with each person. It's your own discernment. If you're a leader in a company, you know, how much do you embrace these tools?
00;40;49;18 - 00;41;08;03
Speaker 2
That comes down to personal values. You know, for me, I find that, you know, there are some tools. Like everyone, there's something tasks that I'm more than happy to give that away to ChatGPT to do for me or to set up for me, because I never really want to be good in that skill. But there's some things that ChatGPT will never do for me because I want to keep those skills.
00;41;08;03 - 00;41;23;07
Speaker 2
It's almost the equation now which skills you want to keep? Which skills are you happy to let go of and atrophy, and which ones do you want to build and which ones do you want to grow in? And the discerning person would say, even in marketing, you know, do we want to give out copywriting to LMS? Do we want to give out design LMS?
00;41;23;07 - 00;41;35;27
Speaker 2
Well, do you want to get better at that? Do you want your team to get better at that, yes or no? Right. There's I think there is a good argument to say that, you know, there are thing there are trade offs with every time you, interact with these LMS and it's figuring out which ones are the right ones.
00;41;35;27 - 00;41;58;28
Speaker 2
And so but I'm going to leave you with one of these last sort of interesting stats. And this kind of goes back to our main vector of change. And Black Friday, Cyber Monday, which was generative AI search, was that as a 2025 survey shows, that 55% of people now use ChatGPT or Gemini for tasks previously done by Google Search, and generally that a search traffic is going 165 times faster than traditional search.
00;41;59;00 - 00;42;20;01
Speaker 2
So traditional search is being well. Google search primarily has been sitting on a 90% market share for a long time. There's no more growth that they've won the market. But generative AI is growing extremely fast, which is exciting, and I think for all the reasons we've mentioned, is also a massive mental shift for marketers as well. And about 13 million US adults.
00;42;20;01 - 00;42;28;03
Speaker 2
So roughly about two 3% of the US population are using AI as their primary search tool. Again, you know.
00;42;28;03 - 00;42;47;17
Speaker 1
That this feels to me like the the worries of Wikipedia when I first came out all year, two terms I don't use it. It's a bad it's an unreliable resource, and I feel like it's in a similar vein, like Wikipedia now is is using all those references. There's folks who really publish purposefully on Wikipedia. There's pros and cons of issues.
00;42;47;17 - 00;43;00;25
Speaker 1
There are two citations and authorship, but that's where we're at with it. Is 2004 Wikipedia user torsion. But if only that question was asked fresh by the senior leadership that are creating.
00;43;00;25 - 00;43;19;24
Speaker 2
100%, it's, you know, we are in a in a step change, I think right now and LMS it's the before and the after the BCC and the idea of the internet infrastructure. And we're in a new world. But it's exciting. You know, I, someone posted yesterday on LinkedIn, which I thought was brilliant, was that if you knew what Google search would do, how would you build your website back in 1999?
00;43;19;26 - 00;43;47;21
Speaker 2
You know, if you knew what social advertising on mobile would do to the economy, how would you change your apps or your your data strategy? Where would you invest your money? And I think for us right now, we're in the curve of like, this is a greenfield space for marketers apply. And, you know, it's actually quite exciting. And I guess we've had if you look over the history of the internet, you had the initial internet and then, you know, the platform shift with SAS in the cloud, and then you had a shift with mobile, which was back at the start of last decade.
00;43;47;22 - 00;44;07;02
Speaker 2
And then we're now in the next shift, which is AI. And so it's an exciting time. I think that beyond all of everything that we've talked about there is for marketers, just a playground here of new opportunities, like I think of like companies like HubSpot, that really one search back in the SAS category that were the best at optimizing the content.
00;44;07;04 - 00;44;08;21
Speaker 1
Leadership, and you.
00;44;08;24 - 00;44;27;14
Speaker 2
Were SEO the best SEO in the SAS industry. I think of companies like even Barack Obama's presidential campaign a long time ago with US president to use Twitter. You know, I think about like, which are the companies like might be question is which companies are going to build their online store and ChatGPT, which would be the first company to build a retailer and they don't have a website.
00;44;27;14 - 00;44;28;29
Speaker 2
It's just an app, you know, and it's.
00;44;28;29 - 00;44;40;19
Speaker 1
Just making me reminiscent of the Space Jam website, where it's still stuck in 1996 or whatever your was. And it's glorious and it's beautiful. It's a really yeah.
00;44;40;21 - 00;44;54;26
Speaker 2
It's a product of its time, right? The world has gone, has passed it by. But we're in a very fascinating space where there's a lot of change in the market, which means a lot of opportunity, a lot of opportunities to leverage this new technology and make the most of it. So I think it's very exciting time.
00;44;54;28 - 00;44;56;24
Speaker 1
And it sounds like maybe you believe you can fly.
00;44;56;25 - 00;45;01;07
Speaker 2
Yes. Maybe you can believe we can fly.
00;45;01;09 - 00;45;08;17
Speaker 2
I love Space Song, right? Movie. I actually watch space now for the first time on the plane about a month ago, and I was like, Michael Jordan, I think, you know.
00;45;08;22 - 00;45;09;11
Speaker 1
Where.
00;45;09;13 - 00;45;15;28
Speaker 2
I had the T shirts and I, but I never actually got the VHS and watched the damn thing. So I watched.
00;45;16;01 - 00;45;19;18
Speaker 1
The you're like the children who wear the Ramones shirts, but nevertheless, that's.
00;45;19;18 - 00;45;29;19
Speaker 2
Exactly right. Yeah, like Space Jam was a cool thing when I was a kid. But you know. But you know what? Michael Jordan's acting was pretty wooden, right? I'm looking back and I'm like, man, this guy is like a brick wall. It's like.
00;45;29;22 - 00;45;32;09
Speaker 1
You can only be the goat of so many things.
00;45;32;09 - 00;45;56;06
Speaker 2
Like, that was a cool collaboration, but, you know, anyway, next gen websites and JB, today all the good things are happening. We have one question from the audience, and this actually came out of material form and I thought that was a really good one. There's a often when we talk to marketing technology leaders in enterprise, there's a constant battle with the CTO and it so this person's question was, I'm wanting to invest in a new personalization platform.
00;45;56;06 - 00;46;11;07
Speaker 2
I've done the payback in ROI analysis. I presented it to the executive team. Our CMO wants to invest, is happy to invest, but because the investment requires more IT resources, the CTO has blocked it. What can I do to get it on board with our vision for a modern personalization tooling?
00;46;11;09 - 00;46;39;07
Speaker 1
I love this question multifold because replace it with engineering, with product, with sales doesn't matter what team, it's all going to be the same answer. And that is twofold. One, you need two different. It's like for me to speak their language AC, martech and Mops, folks at the nexus of every company. And you are the key translators. That's translating technical as translating non-technical.
00;46;39;10 - 00;47;04;15
Speaker 1
And that is translating up and I think down translate this, I translate you name it every direction. And that's why it's such a complex role. And why so passionate about the community? Because it is so unique. There is no one martech or else like and that's why it's so diverse in the best way. Well, I just know that your soft skills of understanding and consulting and being that consultative resource within the company is your superpower.
00;47;04;18 - 00;47;24;13
Speaker 1
But you have to learn how to speak their team's language, other departments, language. Granted, you get lucky sometimes and find that bridge person who helps elevate yourself and or explain things in such a way that you can better stage it. But think of it from a marketing perspective. You have to meet your audience where they're at, and otherwise you're not going to get anywhere.
00;47;24;14 - 00;47;33;16
Speaker 1
You're not going to make that sale, quote unquote. It's the advice I would give anyone, regardless of the team. So it is no different from edge. They're your friend if you like them.
00;47;33;16 - 00;48;04;07
Speaker 2
Yeah. I think it's like dealing with it. They have a different incentive set. You know, so often they're incentivized for building capabilities, not necessarily outcomes of what those capabilities will be to provide. And often in these situations, the way I would go about it, it is I would sit down with the CTO, intensify the relationship with that person if you can and understand their goals better, understand what they're wanting, and then take that information back and look at the blockers for that person.
00;48;04;07 - 00;48;22;02
Speaker 2
You know, in an honest, good faith conversation. You know, an executive in a business will tell you what they need and why they're concerned about a certain investment. And having that conversation means that you can just tailor it to them. You know, it could be a bunch of reasons for why the CTAs block this person, but I would say get to the heart of that.
00;48;22;05 - 00;48;43;17
Speaker 2
And the best way to do that is actually figure out the commercial alignment. Like, okay, the CTO is building technology infrastructure. They have a budget. Yes, it is a cost center, right? It's not a growth center, whereas marketing is the revenue and growth center of an enterprise business. And so, you know, they try to minimize costs, whereas marketing is trying to invest just so that they can drive better revenue, you know.
00;48;43;19 - 00;49;04;02
Speaker 2
And so how can you meet the CTO in the middle to go? Well, yes, you're going to have to increase your cost base. However, it's going to fade the business or make things more efficient. Right? There's a really very good reason in most companies, the CEO or the person that's, overseeing the executive team would actually step in here and say, well, this is worth the trade off.
00;49;04;05 - 00;49;14;28
Speaker 2
You know, it's often the deal breaker will be the CEO, but I would not recommend going to the CEO first. Okay. Don't try to circumvent don't circumvent your IT team. Right.
00;49;14;28 - 00;49;16;22
Speaker 1
But no matter the size here.
00;49;16;24 - 00;49;33;06
Speaker 2
Because that is when you're going to get them off slide right. If you have the CEO coming down on the CTO and saying, why aren't you doing this? I've heard the arguments. The CTO is not going to be your friend. So what you have to do is get understand the it's world, their risks and the concern in the investment profile.
00;49;33;07 - 00;49;41;17
Speaker 2
Take that information and then potentially petition to have the CEO be the deal dealmaker here or the deal breaker. But you know, in big investments like.
00;49;41;19 - 00;49;47;12
Speaker 1
That's not even necessary. Yeah. You're able to convince them because the investment in.
00;49;47;15 - 00;50;10;18
Speaker 2
Yeah it's it's about trusting you're not easy. Yeah. It does take time. You know like sure. You know this person is not the CMO, not on the exact team, but has got a really great strategy for a new personalization tooling and a new vision for that. Right. You know, like invest in that person. You know, it's also equally important for the executive team to invest in the change makers in their business to transform their company and to get them to the next stage of growth.
00;50;10;18 - 00;50;31;27
Speaker 2
And this person here saying that they block by growth because I personalization tooling isn't isn't good enough, you know, it does not modernize. And so in good faith conversations and true understanding of the business situation or situational awareness is the word for it. You can get past this. It's just about coordinating with the right incentives and aligning and really understanding each business's requirements as well.
00;50;32;00 - 00;50;41;01
Speaker 2
So great question. Keep them coming. Our website is ready for your questions. We'd love to tackle them. But for now do you have any last words on this question before we wrap up?
00;50;41;01 - 00;50;49;06
Speaker 1
No, I think, the combination of relationships, translation and making sure you're aligned with the business objectives, you can can't go wrong.
00;50;49;07 - 00;51;08;21
Speaker 2
You can't go wrong. I love that. And you know what? You can't go wrong by subscribing to the Making Sense of MarTech podcast. If you're watching on YouTube, like and subscribe, follow us on LinkedIn. We have our LinkedIn page where you can find Jacqueline and myself on LinkedIn. Posting about MarTech every single day. Join our Reddit community where we have people asking questions and engaging there as well.
00;51;08;27 - 00;51;21;01
Speaker 2
And you can go on to the MarTech weekly.com, click on podcast and then you can subscribe to get every episode and a transcript of each episode in your inbox. But for now, thanks for listening and stay curious.