EP17 - Driving Growth through Data Democratization with Scott Megginson

In this episode of CMA Connect, CMA's CEO Alison Simpson sits down with Scott Megginson, President of Kantar Canada, to discuss how marketers can stay ahead in a rapidly changing business landscape. Scott shares his perspective on the seismic shifts in consumer insights, the most significant changes in Canadian consumer behaviour, and how data democratization and AI are transforming the world of research.

00:00:03:06 - 00:00:23:04
Presenter
Welcome to CMA Connect, Canada's marketing podcast, where industry experts discuss how marketers must manage the tectonic shift that will change how brands and businesses are built for tomorrow, while also delivering on today's business news with your host, CMA CEO, Alison Simpson.

00:00:23:06 - 00:00:50:17
Alison
In the rapidly evolving business landscape, marketers are constantly seeking ways to stay ahead of the curve and drive truly meaningful growth for their organizations. But what if one of the keys to unlocking these new opportunities and gaining a competitive edge lies in the democratization of data and the adoption of innovative technologies? Today, I'm joined by Scott Megginson, president of Kantar Canada and a very seasoned insight leader with over two decades of experience on both the client and the agency side.

00:00:50:22 - 00:01:17:19
Alison
Scott's also a regular guest speaker and coach for the research analytics program at George Brown College. Scott's here to share his perspectives on the seismic shifts that are happening in consumer insights and in the market research industry. We're also going to discuss how Kantar is leading the charge by making their vast troves of brand data accessible to marketers everywhere and at no cost, which is certainly a remarkable opportunity for brands and businesses and a bit of a surprising approach for a research company.

00:01:17:21 - 00:01:34:16
Alison
So from navigating changing consumer behaviours to leveraging AI-powered tools and platforms, Scott is here to offer a wealth of knowledge and practical advice for marketers who are really looking to elevate the role of insights within your organizations and drive real business impact. Scott, it's truly a pleasure to welcome you here today.

00:01:34:21 - 00:01:43:09
Scott
Thank you. Alison. I hate to admit it, but it's actually over three decades of experience and I'm going to date myself there. But thank you for making me a bit younger.

00:01:43:12 - 00:01:45:04
Alison
You're aging very gracefully.

00:01:45:06 - 00:01:46:03
Scott
I'm trying.

00:01:46:05 - 00:01:52:18
Alison
So I want to start with what do you see as the most significant shifts in the Canadian consumer behaviour and attitudes right now?

00:01:52:20 - 00:02:16:01
Scott
You know, it's an interesting question. Kantar isn't a public opinion company, but we do a lot of work monitoring consumer trends. We have a group within the company that manages our, runs our Canada Monitor. You know, if you're three decades like me, you might remember the yankelovich monitor. And this is just an evolution of that same, the same tool.

00:02:16:01 - 00:02:34:21
Scott
And it's, really to monitor social trends, with consumers. I mean, this is opportune. We're going to be diving into this at the CMA CX event in June. We actually have our expert coming up to talk about some of these trends and how it impacts marketers. But, you know, when you think about top concerns of Canadians right now, they shifted.

00:02:34:22 - 00:03:00:08
Scott
They shifted during the pandemic. And right now what we're seeing won't be a surprise - inflation, the economy, health care, housing costs and climate change, in that order are the top five. But there are a lot of implications for marketers. When we dig into it, Canadians are really in a frustrated state. They're frustrated. It feels like a stacked deck. They're impatient to get ahead right now.

00:03:00:10 - 00:03:17:23
Scott
You know, they've been waiting and waiting and they're impatient to move ahead. Almost half believe that they'll become rich in their lifetime. And that was about a third of people in 2018 before the pandemic. So I don't know if people are buying more lottery tickets or waiting for the big ship to come in, but they want to be given a win, too.

00:03:17:23 - 00:03:42:22
Scott
And that's something to think about with, for marketers. They're uninspired by innovation. It's something that we're seeing as well. They're uninspired by marketing as well. They're looking for relevance through emotion, value and control. Those three areas. So what they're really looking for is a reason. It's about giving them a reason. A higher proportion about quarter, don't pay any attention to advertising right now or claim to.

00:03:43:03 - 00:04:09:18
Scott
And maybe it's more. So they're just not feeling they're getting the relevance or messaging. And another thing is they're looking for self care. And there's a whole set of implications here for people that work in wellness and health areas that could do a lot with it. But all brands can in a way because, you know, it's not just the wellness we think about with diet and other areas, but they're working with self care through things like novelty and nostalgia.

00:04:09:21 - 00:04:35:19
Scott
We actually saw people are nostalgic for the pandemic, if you can believe that. Social connection, and they really just need a break and get off the treadmill a bit. And, you put these things together and it's really supported by, economists are now saying that Canada's productivity is, it's measured at point 3% versus 1.5 in the US. So it's, productivity is super low in Canada.

00:04:35:21 - 00:04:51:04
Scott
But there are great opportunities for marketers. You know, marketers can give hope. They can inspire innovation. They can help people achieve their mental and physical health goals as well. So, you know, when there's a problem, there's a solution. There's a lot marketing can do for this.

00:04:51:06 - 00:05:11:12
Alison
And that's very insightful and very instructive to know from a, certainly from a marketer and a brand perspective. It's a bit sad to see, certainly the level of productivity in Canada from a competitive sort of North American and global scale. That's certainly something that we, as a marketing profession, but every business really needs to be able to address.

00:05:11:13 - 00:05:22:01
Alison
When you talked about a third not paying attention to advertising, I mean, that's been one of the challenges of marketers for a long time. But have you seen that increase where even more people just aren't paying attention?

00:05:22:03 - 00:05:40:17
Scott
Yeah, I mean, in this particular measure, it has been an increase and it was about a quarter. But we have other data sources, other measures that we take that would look even higher than that. And, you know, a lot of it's a clutter and the noise, a lot of it's just the the challenges that media has, with ad blockers.

00:05:40:17 - 00:06:00:04
Scott
And there's just so many ways to avoid advertising in general. But when you do have a captive audience, that's a problem. You know, if a quarter or more people aren't paying attention, all because of the cynicism they have towards the advertising, that's an issue. And that's gonna be a big issue to deliver messages. So it wasn't a surprise.

00:06:00:04 - 00:06:06:08
Scott
It's been going this direction, but it is an opportunity to deliver better messaging to consumers.

00:06:06:13 - 00:06:18:00
Alison
And when you were sharing some of the more recent findings, the one that certainly surprised me the most was people feeling a little bit melancholy and almost wishing back for the days of the pandemic. So what surprised you the most?

00:06:18:02 - 00:06:52:03
Scott
So I'm a Gen-Xer, and a leading Gen-Xer, so, I grew up in office environments and and things like that. And I mean, as a person, it just befuddles me that people don't want to go back to the office and such. But as an employer, you know, I look at our younger employees that we have as well, or people with families and lifestyles changed so much during that, like just all the concepts of pet ownership and parenting and, and, dry cleaning, just everything else really, really changed.

00:06:52:03 - 00:07:12:16
Scott
And that's why companies like Lululemon did so well. They reinvented workwear with leisurewear. You know, as a person, my age, I have trouble getting my head around it. I couldn't wait to get back. But it's pretty clear to see with how slow Return-to-Office has been with people, and some of the things that people are longing for are the different social connections.
 
00:07:12:16 - 00:07:30:14
Scott
I think everybody out on their street, you know, having a drink together, at social distance, and there's a whole new level of social connection that started during the pandemic that's starting to get disrupted, and people are just missing probably how they learned to cope with it in a way, having that taken away from them, and their lifestyle.

00:07:30:15 - 00:07:34:11
Alison
We joked about the new normal, but the reality is there's no such thing as the new normal.

00:07:34:16 - 00:07:39:22
Scott
There's no normal. We'll find out eventually. Maybe, but not for a while, right?

00:07:39:23 - 00:07:58:10
Alison
Now Scott, your experiences on both the agency and client side of delivering insights and doing that across a really vast range of industries gives you such great perspective. So I know our listeners would certainly benefit from your advice on how insights teams can be a more powerful growth driver for their organizations.

00:07:58:12 - 00:08:19:10
Scott
And, you know, I've seen a lot in my years, and I started on the agency side, for eight years, and then I moved to the client side for 11. You know, I worked in CPG at both Warner Lambert and PepsiCo, and then came back to the agency side. A lot of people don't do the full circle. So I have seen a lot internally how client organizations with research and value it.

00:08:19:12 - 00:08:42:08
Scott
And then now I have the privilege to work in so many different clients and so many different cultures, and you see a lot as well. I mean, a lot of that's my personal view on it. And I'll get back to that. But we've done a lot of work on this. So we have a whole consulting arm of Kantar, and we've been doing research in this area for a while now, and there is a gold standard study that BCG did.

00:08:42:10 - 00:09:03:01
Scott
And that was the whole piece about moving from Insight to foresight, back in the, you know, the early 2000s. And that was held up for a long time. And it was a call to action for internal researchers to to really move to the, the what now, what you know, and so what's, in all those as opposed to just the what.

00:09:03:03 - 00:09:25:16
Scott
But things have moved rapidly, and that's really seen as table stakes right now. So we did a big study and we, it was called Insights 2020, it was in the Harvard Business Review. We've had a few of these studies published there, and we actually conducted research with over 10,000 people at different levels in different sectors and organizations. And it's over 60 countries, including Canada.

00:09:25:18 - 00:09:49:00
Scott
We had a lot of interviews here in Canada as well. And, what we did was, we divided, we divided the results between high performing companies and all the other companies. And then we had the, because it was claimed, we had NYU do a validation with financial results and it was pretty accurate, actually. People who said they're a high-performing company were.

00:09:49:02 - 00:10:11:22
Scott
And you that's nice. We'd all like to be. But so we felt good about the segmentation that we had. There were a few things, like a couple of rules of three that we found out here, as key implications. And one of them was that the high-performing companies that were achieving this great growth were consumer-centric, it was consumer-centric growth, you know, putting the customer, consumer in the middle of it.

00:10:12:00 - 00:10:37:09
Scott
And what they did was - one, they delivered a total experience to customers. And think about how we bring our brand promise together, with our customer experience and the whole cycle. And then think about how the customer experience is informing the brand promise and what we advertise, and tell our customers or consumers what to do. And companies don't do this very often.

00:10:37:09 - 00:10:56:22
Scott
I mean, I've seen so many examples where the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing, and it's it's different departments, it's different agendas, it's different budgets. Whereas top performing companies have a seamless flow between the two. You know, I'll give you another plug for CMA CX, because, you know, I think you're going to cover a lot there.

00:10:57:00 - 00:11:24:00
Scott
But we saw this behaviour and the high-performing companies were four times more likely to have this, this total experience, than the other companies. So that was pretty big. Another one was customer obsession. And customer obsession starts at the top of the organization. You need your CEO, your CFO, your head of sales, your HR, your supply chain, everybody at the top and all the way through down

00:11:24:00 - 00:11:50:01
Scott
the organization has to be obsessed with the customer and the consumer. This is critical. Also leads to a purpose-led organization, which, you know, every person at a checkout counter to the driver to, you know, the people manufacturing the plant are all serving the same purpose. And it's the customer obsession. Again, the companies that did this, like demonstrated four times more than all the lower-performing companies.

00:11:50:03 - 00:12:17:14
Scott
And then the last one, and this is one that applies to our research in particular, it's strategic leverage of insights and analytics. Right. And we call it the Insight Engine. And if you want, I can unpack that a little more because it has three components to it as well. But so what do you do. So what differentiates the high performing organizations with Insights Engine is that they have a leading role of insights and analytics, meaning they have a seat at the table.

00:12:17:16 - 00:12:39:08
Scott
They often report to the CEO of the company, and they're part of the decision making. Whereas under-performers and we see this a lot as well. And I've been in organizations like this, they have a separate insights and analytics team that reports to marketing or other functions. So they divided across functions and they effectively act as a marketing services team.

00:12:39:10 - 00:13:15:07
Scott
So it's critical that the insights team is reporting up high, has a seat at the decisions. And independent budgets help a lot too. The other thing is they unlock the power of data. And you know, we we've all talked a lot about data visualization and how important that is. But it's also leveraging how research has changed, like now we have so much automated research and we have so much AI-generated research coming up in the near future, that that rather than conducting big studies and going to reams of data, it's getting early signals and then responding to them.

00:13:15:07 - 00:13:38:21
Scott
And the value that these researchers bring is that they can look at a red flag coming up, pinging on their phone, and sit down with the CMO and have a really good discussion about what happened, what we think is going on, and what can we do about it or get ahead of it, maybe it's an opportunity, right. But it's like working in real time with real signals rather than big research studies and the experiment.

00:13:38:21 - 00:13:56:19
Scott
And back in the day, YouTube was known when it got started. They put 10% of the research budget in things they had no idea if they could possibly work or not. Nobody does that. They're too conservative. Very few companies do it. And then 20% was stuff that day was wild ideas last year, that okay, let's let's prove them out now.

00:13:56:21 - 00:14:13:18
Scott
And then the other 70% was stuff they knew worked. And so you're always like, you're always bringing new thinking that way. And I think it was YouTube, I'll give them credit for it at least. But that kind of thinking with experimentation. And the third thing is that these insights engines, these companies have worked really well with insights.

00:14:13:19 - 00:14:37:05
Scott
They develop critical capabilities. And we're not talking about tech in this case. We're talking about the people capabilities and skills that bring, storytelling and creative solutions. And more important than anything else is that they are answering business questions, not research questions. So when you make a recommendation, it's how it's going to grow the business and drive shareholder growth.

00:14:37:06 - 00:14:44:10
Scott
It's not about, hey, you moved this measure up 4%. Congratulations. Here's a bonus, right. I call it smiley KPI.

00:14:44:10 - 00:15:15:02
Alison
It's such great perspective Scott. Now I've been the CMO and often thought one of the superpowers of the marketing team at that executive table is being the voice of the customer. And obviously having insights and data to lead that. When I've had the best impact, when we've had an executive team that was working together, it was around being very insights focused, recognizing that the customer wasn't just the marketing ownership, it was the customers needed to impact absolutely everything that we did.

00:15:15:04 - 00:15:27:18
Alison
I haven't been in an organization where insights was a separate department with direct reporting into the CEO. So that's a great observation that some of the top- performing companies have that. 

00:15:27:20 - 00:15:52:10
Scott
Unilever, globally has had that, and they really flourished, during that whole time. And there are I mean, there are examples around the world where that happens, like, you know, I remember my time at Warner Lambert, they made a big change. And this was back, you know, 1999, like 25 years ago or so. And one of those big visions was that the insights team,

00:15:52:12 - 00:16:12:10
Scott
they should have their own budget and they should report to the president of Warner Lambert, our division for Canada. And that was achieved. And it gave us a lot of attitude, latitude rather to, to be, strategic advisors and partners and, and if you've ever heard Peter Rodriguez and I share stories of that day, we worked together,

00:16:12:10 - 00:16:35:19
Scott
I know he's a regular with the CMA. When you have that, it's very different from when you work for an organization where you are given a budget, by marketers, could be any team, really, and your job is to go and get support for what you're doing often. You know, it's like that whole David Ogilvy "lamp post for support, rather than illumination" thing that we've heard a zillion times.

00:16:35:19 - 00:16:57:07
Scott
But it's true. Whereas, if you have control over the budget, you can invest it in areas that can have the maximum impact for an organization. Tell people things they might not want to hear. And then, tell them things that are going to really help drive the business. So it does happen in different places. Like I never got all the way to bright when I was leading insights for different organizations, but it did make a lot of progress in these areas.

00:16:57:07 - 00:17:19:16
Scott
And what I found really quickly was to do that, you needed to help every stakeholder around the table. And I mean, like the, you know, the leadership table at the company. And so what are you doing to help HR, and what are you doing to help the sales team, food service team. Obviously, you're working the CMO closely at that point too, some companies do this.

00:17:19:16 - 00:17:30:15
Scott
And the more direct connection there is between insights and leadership, it's great. It helps drive this, but you don't get a seat at the table, you have to earn a seat at the table. So you have to have something of value to bring to it.

00:17:30:17 - 00:17:39:06
Alison
It would certainly remove any perceived bias if they were reporting directly, instead of reporting through any other of the colleagues around the C-suite, so it's...

00:17:39:11 - 00:17:40:18
Scott
Accountability.

00:17:40:19 - 00:17:44:00
Alison
Something I haven't seen before. So it's a very interesting finding from my perspective.

00:17:44:00 - 00:18:15:05
Scott
When we talk about the behaviours, because I know, you know, you said in the introduction, talking about democratizing data, we'll get into that, I guess, but one of them is there's a big behavioural difference between low-performing organizations and high-performing organizations. High-performing organizations are sharing and collaborating. Everything is accessible for everybody to interpret and challenge, right? As opposed to hoarding, because it gives some level of perceived power, or control, which is really negative and could drive the organization down.

00:18:15:05 - 00:18:17:18
Scott
So yeah, that's another key part too.

00:18:17:18 - 00:18:33:21
Alison
That's a great add on. Thank you. So I am very curious to hear what inspired Kantar's decision to democratize brand data, in particular to give it away for free. And I'd love to also hear, are you already seeing brands take advantage of this very generous opportunity?

00:18:33:23 - 00:18:58:02
Scott
A bit of background on that really quickly. What we've shared is all the data from Kantar's brandz that we do around the world. I mean, this is, this is a huge country is it's multiple categories. It's, 18,000 brands, probably about 20,000 by now, it's over 5 billion data points. And, you know, as we're reporting on it, we're using it for our brand valuations on a regular basis.

00:18:58:04 - 00:19:21:01
Scott
Our vision is to be an indispensable brand partner. That's what we want to be. So we made the decision to put this forward with the idea is that democratizing data, making available for everyone. And I mean, obviously, the benefit is that people see the data that might spark their interest, or they might be, they might like our approach and want to talk to us about it, or doing some work with them, of course.

00:19:21:01 - 00:19:39:18
Scott
And we're a business now, not for profit. So we're looking at that. But it's really stimulated a lot of great discussion already. So, if we throw out the link when we put this out, I mean, as a follow up, anybody can go in there and it's, there are no strings attached, you register and you have access to all of it.

00:19:39:20 - 00:20:04:03
Scott
So that current belief is in the data democratization. And so this is one step. But we also create a lot of libraries of all the results. So if our clients will allow it, everybody in the organization can access results on a regular basis at their fingertips. And so there are a lot of steps, I mean, dashboards that have been a really great move that the industry has taken forward, to make data accessible for everybody as well.

00:20:04:05 - 00:20:22:19
Scott
And some of the biggest questions we get from Canadian clients are, what's going on with the American clients? Or what's going on with the English clients? And they don't share. We often have to help with the sharing. And you know, we're happy to, you know, if we don't get our hands slapped too hard. That type of thing. The idea here is to share the brandz data and all of everything that's in there.

00:20:22:21 - 00:20:43:00
Scott
And you asked about who's using that and such right now? And so we found that the early users, early adopters in the market, or I've seen personally in Canada, in some cases is  smaller brands like ones who don't have big tracking budgets or the data. And they're just really interested, you know, once a year checking out what's going on or are looking at other categories.

00:20:43:00 - 00:21:07:11
Scott
And so we've had some of them, using it, which is great. You know, glad we can offer that up for them. We've had some marketers who are, who don't have brand data available, at the time they need it, have big meetings or decisions to make, and had one of those recently and she accessed it. And it was very helpful to make some informed decisions based on, you know, consumers and like how they felt about the brand against competition.

00:21:07:13 - 00:21:33:07
Scott
I think one of the coolest use cases, I was, last year I was leading automotive sector in the US and, and we had a, agency planner that was really grappling with global positioning for their brand. So I introduced them to, to brand snapshot, and they were able to take a look quickly at how their brand performed in every market or many markets, like 12 or 14 around the world.

00:21:33:09 - 00:21:57:18
Scott
And see, in the strong markets, what consumers thought about the brand versus the market in the US, where they're quite weak in comparison. So ton of value right there. I could see this being of amazing use to, mergers and acquisitions going forward. Because if you  have your eye on a brand, you can take a look at how well do they fit with our brands currently or, you know, are they, is there a lot of interaction?

00:21:57:18 - 00:22:11:08
Scott
Are they truly incremental?, Yeah. Maybe a little bit of that that you could look at. But it would make a lot of sense I think as part of the research to get a little bit of a brand view in there too. So, so that's available for people too.

00:22:11:10 - 00:22:46:19
Alison
It's such a valuable offer, when I think about our, our membership and  the Canadian marketing industry, where so often we're the Canadian office or region for a global brand and business, and it's can be hard justify why we need Canadian specific marketing. So having access to this sort of data on such a global and significant level, and at no cost, is a really powerful advantage in helping demonstrate why Canadian brands and marketing teams really do need to invest in Canada.

00:22:46:19 - 00:23:00:23
Alison
Because on the surface, especially if you're looking from south of the border, you can see how we're similar to the U.S. and it might not always be so obvious how we're different. So thank you on behalf of the profession for giving us access to a really powerful way to help build that case.

00:23:01:05 - 00:23:18:03
Scott
Yeah, and that's a great use case right there, Alison, where I mean, you could compare the brand in Canada and the US as it's from the database for both, and someday, if you give me another shot, I would love to talk about the importance of Canadian creative and why U.S. ads don't transfer into to Canada, because we have data on that too.

00:23:18:03 - 00:23:19:08
Scott
You're right on the mark.

00:23:19:10 - 00:23:38:17
Alison
That is definitely a hot topic and I will happily bring you back to have that conversation. So there is very little business marketing topics today that AI isn't impacting. And obviously that's true of insights in the research too. So I'd love you to share how you see AI help transforming the world of both research and insights.

00:23:38:19 - 00:24:01:18
Scott
That's a good question. It also goes back to our discussion about insights engines and the importance of that, and experimentation and interpretation and such. As technology changes, the best researchers and marketers are going to have to change with it, or they'll be obsolete very, very quickly. And there's, you wouldn't believe how much resistance, I mean, I've been doing this so long.

00:24:01:18 - 00:24:27:13
Scott
Like, I just I use every bit of energy just to try to keep up, if not ahead of some of the trends that are happening in research. I'll give you a couple of examples, personal examples of when, you know, I've seen, people are resistant to it and I won't mention names, but there's one example, going back eight years ago or so, and we started launching, Kantar started launching automated research, and anybody could access it.

00:24:27:13 - 00:24:48:06
Scott
Again, it's different forms of democratization. You could do a study right now or an ad agency could test their own ad and show data to the client. Anybody could access it. And I remember when we first put it up, just one traditional researcher in the market just getting really upset on my LinkedIn feed saying, what do you mean?

00:24:48:06 - 00:25:12:12
Scott
Anybody with a credit card can do research? That's not right. Of course it's right!  Why not? And then, we've seen a lot. I mean, the one of the last hot topics was, system one under you know, the, the whole, you know, neuroscience, behavioural science aspect. And I remember sitting at a dinner table, we socialize with a competitor, and this competitor making a full statement.

00:25:12:12 - 00:25:39:13
Scott
Everybody at the table. Real science is just a fad, right? Well, I don't know about that. It's kind of driven a lot of what we do. But just a couple of examples, and those are just personal examples, but you need to leverage this stuff. I mean, this is the greatest opportunity a researcher can have is to try something new and get a fresh look at things. Like, we've been we've been using AI for six years now at Kantar. It's not new to us. Like we use it for text analytics,

00:25:39:13 - 00:25:58:23
Scott
We have our link AI. This is actually we were talking about ads going from market to market. We develop this for Coke and Microsoft to test how ads could move from market to market using AI and our normative database. And we use this in our tracking to forecast, based on the trends. We have always on market mix modeling now.

00:25:58:23 - 00:26:19:06
Scott
And it's incredible how you can leverage AI, but it's Gen AI, which is the real game changer right now. And it's a huge area of focus for us. We have a nature, partnership. I don't think it's been announced yet, but we're working at very high levels globally. So we can put this in everything we do. And it's going to, it's going to really help with not just our own productivity,

00:26:19:06 - 00:26:45:12
Scott
how we work, but our ability to analyze and work quickly. Like, it's going to change how we collect data. It's going to change how we analyze data, how we deliver data. But at the same time, like this is for, you know, broader for researchers, it's an opportunity to do stuff we're talking about, you know, redefining yourself, always. like, who would be a, who would be better at being a product engineer than a researcher that's been trained

00:26:45:12 - 00:27:16:15
Scott
to ask questions your entire life, right? And good questions and bad questions. Like, you know, what I play with? And I, you know, I give really bad poetry, because I'm not a good poet, but I can really probe copilot to answer some good questions, right? And it's also about really embracing the dynamism is critical. You know, I talked about being in the forefront, but you can immerse yourself in uncertainties and the uncomfortable zone and then use this for scenario planning, too, and play out different scenarios as, as AI is advancing.

00:27:16:17 - 00:27:39:12
Scott
But I think one of the key pieces right here, one of the pieces of low hanging fruit, is I've talked about storytelling, and how important storytelling is for insights. When you can get AI to build your story for you and get it 70%, you can make that last 30% the most compelling thing in the world. Make sure it makes sense and tell a great story, rather

00:27:39:12 - 00:27:59:05
Scott
than going through all the numbers and you know, it's up and down, it's just going to push us ahead. So, you know, if you look at Maslow, we're going to get towards our self-actualization if we choose to, rather than the security at the bottom worrying about our jobs all the time. So I think it's the greatest gift and the greatest opportunity, so very excited about.

00:27:59:07 - 00:28:17:16
Alison
Yeah, I definitely share your enthusiasm for Gen AI and the whole example you gave around looking at the quote unquote blank page. It's always easier to edit than it is to create from scratch. So, from a storytelling perspective, even if you don't like the starting point, it just makes it easier to then jump down and edit and refine and tell it in a powerful way.

00:28:17:16 - 00:28:36:23
Alison
So, great examples. So, in closing, you joked about your 30 years of experience, and in that 30 years you have learned a great deal, and you've shared a lot with us today. But that also means you have some great advice to offer. So I'd love to end our time together today by having you share one piece of advice for our marketers who are listening.

00:28:37:01 - 00:28:59:12
Scott
Well, any marketer who's worked with me is going to be sick of hearing this, because it's the piece of advice I've given for many, many, many years. I give it to all my colleagues and all my, all my staff and everybody else. But I believe in it. When you're standing on a beach, and there's a major huge wave, tidal wave of change coming your way, you have two choices.

00:28:59:13 - 00:29:14:01
Scott
You can stand there, deny it, do nothing, and you're going to get swept away and crushed by it. Or, choice number two, you can grab a surfboard and get on top of and have the ride of your life. That's all.

00:29:14:03 - 00:29:26:06
Alison
Great advice. So I'm definitely going to be donning my surfboard and heading out, so I hope all of our listeners will do the same. Scott, thank you so much. I've thoroughly enjoyed the conversation, and we will happily invite you back to share more.

00:29:26:11 - 00:29:30:07
Scott
It's been a pleasure, Alison. Thank you very much and would love to come back again. Thank you.

00:29:30:09 - 00:29:33:03
Alison
Thank you.

00:29:33:05 - 00:29:45:19
Presenter
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