EP28 - Driving Marketing Innovation Through AI with Dave Burnett

In this episode of CMA Connect, Alison Simpson, CMA's CEO, and Dave Burnett, CEO of AOK Marketing, delve into the rise of generative AI and its transformative effect on B2B marketing. The discussion touches on the importance of complying with company guidelines, the rapid advancement of AI tools, and how maintaining a curious mindset is essential for marketers to stay ahead in an ever-evolving industry.

00;00;00;01 - 00;00;20;04
Presenter
Welcome to CMA Connect, Canada's marketing podcast, where industry experts discuss how marketers must manage the tectonic shifts that will change how brands and businesses are built for tomorrow, while also delivering on today's business needs. With your host CMA CEO Alison Simpson.

00;00;20;06 - 00;00;45;16
Alison
In today's episode, we're diving into the fascinating world of AI and its transformative impact on B2B marketing. I'm joined today by Dave Burnett, the founder and CEO of AOK Marketing, a conversion-focused digital agency. Dave's also a board member for EO, the entrepreneur's organization. Dave definitely qualifies as an early adopter and thought leader in the AI space. He's been part of OpenAI's beta testing since 2019.

00;00;45;18 - 00;01;14;09
Alison
He also teaches two of our CMA Gen AI training courses and brings a wealth of experience and insights to the table today. Throughout, our conversation will follow Dave's personal journey with AI from his days as an early tester with OpenAI to now using AI tools in his everyday work. He'll share the story of his a-ha moment when ChatGPT, a conversational AI tool, dramatically impacted his business and how he chose to embrace the technology and adapt to strategies in response.

00;01;14;11 - 00;01;45;19
Alison
As we explore the unique use cases and opportunities for AI in the B2B space, Dave is going to provide some great examples of how companies of different sizes are building AI-powered solutions. We'll also discuss the caution and hesitation often present at the executive level. So for marketers who may be a bit intimidated or reluctant to start experimenting with AI, Dave also offers practical advice on getting started on treating AI models like highly-educated new employees, and helpful tips for how to interact with these tools to get the best results.

00;01;45;22 - 00;01;48;23
Alison
Welcome, Dave. I'm thrilled to have you joining me today.

00;01;48;25 - 00;01;53;16
Dave
Thanks so much Alison, and I really appreciate the invite. And yeah, I'm excited about our conversation today.

00;01;53;23 - 00;02;05;24
Alison
Me too. So let's start by having you walk us through your personal journey from AI, from being an early beta tester with OpenAI to now using Gen AI tools in your everyday work.

00;02;05;26 - 00;02;27;06
Dave
So I actually found out about OpenAI a long time ago, back when Elon Musk was founding it. And I thought, hey, this is a really interesting thing. So I signed up to be an early beta tester. And just for clarity, I am not in any way technical. I'm a marketer. I'm not one of those technical marketers, really, who gets deep down into programming.

00;02;27;08 - 00;02;47;19
Dave
So this was just something that was an interest of mine back in the day. And so OpenAI came out. I got accepted into the beta program. Obviously they had low bar, a low bar back at that point. And when I got accepted in, it was really exciting for me. And they had already launched a couple of language models, so ChatGPT clawed a bunch of these,

00;02;47;19 - 00;03;08;17
Dave
others are all large language models. And when people are talking about AI, they can talk about a and a bunch of different ways. But the most common and prevalent way that people are thinking about it today is as a large language model. So the first language model they came out with was called Ada, Ada. And then the second one they came out was called Babbage.

00;03;08;17 - 00;03;24;09
Dave
And the third one that came out with was called Curie. So you'll notice the A, B, C. And then they came out with DaVinci. And as I was going through all these, I mean, they were terrible. You know, they couldn't do anything. You're in there playing around and you know, it just okay, this doesn't do what I want it to do.

00;03;24;09 - 00;03;47;19
Dave
And all of a sudden, OpenAI launched ChatGPT, and it was exponentially better than anything else that we've seen in the world. So what I realized in that in that timeline was this is a tool I can use. But the problem was everybody else realized it was a tool they could use, too. And so one of the things that we do as a digital agency is content.

00;03;47;21 - 00;04;09;09
Dave
And all of a sudden, so it was released the end of November, ChatGPT. By the end of January, we lost all of our content clients. So we lost, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of revenue, because of this tool. So that was my a-ha moment. The less polite word is the holy crap, you know.

00;04;09;10 - 00;04;28;22
Dave
Oh my goodness moment. And as a result of that, I had to learn. I had to adapt. So I spent two weeks in February, right after it had been released, three months after it had been ChatGPT had been released just trying to get up fully up to speed because I was, you know, dabbling, I was dipping my toe in.

00;04;28;24 - 00;04;49;10
Dave
And then I realized, all right, I'm now caught up. You know, I literally spent two weeks, I'm now caught up. And then in early March, of course, they released, GPT four. So it was a whole other exponential leap forward. But I had a foundation. What I realized is that everybody's on a bit of a journey when it comes to AI.

00;04;49;12 - 00;05;10;25
Dave
So the stages of the AI adoption framework are fear, skepticism, holy crap, investigation, adoption and mastery. And everybody kind of goes through those, I've found. If you can see where your people or yourself are on this curve, you know what the next logical step is. And I love talking to the skeptics who are like, it's not that good.

00;05;10;29 - 00;05;24;29
Dave
It's not going to get there. I'm like, okay, well, you just haven't had your holy shit moment yet. You know, it's something's going to have to do that for you. And once you do, then we'll have another conversation that'll be a different conversation. So hopefully that helps a little bit with the background of where I got to back then.

00;05;25;04 - 00;05;45;27
Alison
It's it's a great story. And there is there's negative moments and there's positive. Wow, I finally figured out why everyone's so excited about this. You obviously had the more negative side and I can't imagine literally overnight a significant portion of your business vanishing. So I definitely want to talk a bit more about that. The other piece that I want to talk about,

00;05;46;04 - 00;06;08;15
Alison
so in your journey, you very much were an early adopter. You weren't technical. So that gives all of the marketers listening who don't come from a technical background, comfort that you don't need to be technical. Even in the very early days of the beta testing you were doing with OpenAI. The piece you're not giving yourself credit for that I think is mission critical for everyone's journey is curiosity.

00;06;08;17 - 00;06;33;02
Alison
Because if you weren't curious enough and open-minded enough to raise your hand and join the beta in 2019 for something that really none of us knew, understood, and certainly didn't at that point understand the potential of. So I think that's a really important part of the journey, where you're probably being a bit too much of a humble Canadian by not giving yourself the credit for that open-mindedness and curiosity and for everyone listening.

00;06;33;02 - 00;06;43;12
Alison
I think those are such important elements, not just for being successful with new tools like Men AI, but for a successful career in marketing.

00;06;43;14 - 00;07;11;19
Dave
No, I agree. Curiosity is a massive thing. I've always been curious. I'm always interested in what's new, what's coming, what's next? How can I do this? Because, to completely date myself. I graduated university before Google was invented. So the fact that I now own a digital conversion focused digital marketing agency, that's SEO. And, you know, like everything digital, it required a learning curve.

00;07;11;22 - 00;07;38;16
Dave
You know, I mean, I remember Google launching. I remember, you know, when they bought what's now AdWords or Google Ads. I remember all those different things. And so seeing these things and realizing that I have to keep on top of them and doing my best to keep on top of these things is just what you have to do in order to be able to survive, because I don't know what's going to come out next week, next month, next year, and so it's all it's all exciting and to be honest, keeps it interesting.

00;07;38;21 - 00;07;51;09
Alison
Absolutely agree. So after you did hit that brick wall that Get AI created in your content business, how did you pivot and where does your business stand now with leveraging Gen AI.

00;07;51;11 - 00;08;12;11
Dave
So I use it every day. And so it's a tool. I look at it as say for example, you were a you were an author or writer. You would have Word open or Google Docs. Whatever you use as a marketer, you might have Canva open or Illustrator or whatever you might use if you're a on the design side or Figma or whatever tool that it is that you use in your, in your work.

00;08;12;13 - 00;08;43;23
Dave
And so I've incorporated it into my work and it's just made me, me personally, exponentially more efficient. I can do the same amount of work in an hour that I used to do in an entire day, maybe multiple days. You know, a lot of my work, it tends to be on the, strategy side. It tends to be on the, you know, proposals and talking to people and understanding and taking giant amounts of information and condensing them down into information that people can understand.

00;08;43;23 - 00;09;12;19
Dave
Because parts of SEO, parts of Google Ads, parts of conversion rate optimization can be very technical. It's really being able to say, look, you know, if you for content generation, for example, do stuff and then talk about the great stuff you've done, that's one element of it. But where AI comes into it is AI is great for doing foundational content, baseline content, you know, for example, in a promotional products business, what is embroidery?

00;09;12;23 - 00;09;34;28
Dave
What is screen printing? You know, what is a t shirt made of? Like all those every business has its foundational content that you need. So how I'm using it today, I mentioned that I've got multiple tabs open, but it also is great for, you know, consolidating all those things and getting getting a good read on what's going on with those.

00;09;35;01 - 00;09;59;07
Dave
So just to put it in a better example, if, for example, a news piece comes out around Google and for example, Google had an algorithm leak and their algorithm leak was highly technical, it was literally the way you could program into Google how how the search engine works. So I took that information. Not being a technical guy took all that information.

00;09;59;07 - 00;10;23;28
Dave
I knew enough how to create a text document from it, put that into Google. And, you know, and I tried to figure out what it was, didn't know. So I then took that text document and put it into ChatGPT and said, what does this mean from an SEO perspective? And it spit out these five things. You know, technically you need to do this, local SEO, you need to do this, like all these different metrics and all these different instructions.

00;10;24;04 - 00;10;43;22
Dave
And then I was able to dig down and dig down and dig down and then take that and actually apply it in my business and apply it for our clients. So it really is a great tool to be able to take massive amounts of information and make it, you know, dumb it down for me, just quite honestly. So yeah, it's a fun way to use it.

00;10;43;22 - 00;11;07;28
Alison
We talk so much around the creative uses of ChatGPT, and certainly it's a tool that way as well. But you broadened it to a more, it's also very powerful from a strategic perspective, from a planning perspective in running a business. It's also an incredible efficiency play. So beyond the marketing capabilities and ways that ChatGPT can enable us in running a business and in managing a team, it can also be incredibly powerful.

00;11;07;28 - 00;11;11;08
Alison
So I appreciate you sharing some of those examples for sure.

00;11;11;10 - 00;11;28;28
Dave
Yeah. And it's one of those things where you have a choice to make once you start to use these tools, you know, ChatGPT being primary and one of them, you are going to get so much more efficient. You're gonna have a choice, you know, do I spend my time doing eight times more stuff? You know, if I can do in one hour what used to take me eight hours?

00;11;29;00 - 00;11;43;27
Dave
Or do I do one hour's worth of work and go to Myrtle Beach or something? You know, I, you know, whatever, whatever it may be, you know, so it's it's really a choice you're going to have to make. And I think those people who embrace this as something that says, okay, this is a this is kind of jet fuel.

00;11;44;00 - 00;12;02;06
Dave
I can go from, you know, just a biplane or, you know, a paper airplane to being on a jet. And this is how fast I can move. This is how much information I can do. This is how, how, how, how, how I can outcompete. It's really a tool that you should use, for sure.

00;12;02;08 - 00;12;16;18
Alison
Now, Dave, in the B2B space, I'd love you to share some unique use cases and opportunities that you're seeing for leveraging Gen AI, and also to share if it varies, based on the company size or the industry that, the brands and marketers are part of.

00;12;16;21 - 00;12;41;27
Dave
Absolutely. I mean, it all depends. So starting at the enterprise level, there are often rules that individuals have that they have to adhere to. You know, I know in some organizations you can't access anything on your local server or from your, your intranet or from your IP address that ends in dot AI. There are a lot of considerations you have to take into account the security side of things.

00;12;41;27 - 00;12;59;07
Dave
You have to take into account what data you're putting into, and you know how you can adopt. So as a as a marketer who's looking to early adopter, you know, adopt these types of things, you are going to have to figure out what works for your organization. That's first and foremost, because you do not want to compromise any data.

00;12;59;07 - 00;13;15;10
Dave
You do not want to compromise any information. You want to make sure that you are following the rules that are set, and the rules are there for a reason. Now, if you're in a small or medium sized business, well, it's kind of the wild, wild West, right? You can just go for it and do whatever you want. So ignore everything I just said.

00;13;15;10 - 00;13;35;21
Dave
No, I'm just kidding. You still need to adhere to those things. So from a small to medium size, what I'm finding is people are tend to be plugging in to some of these public models. So they're, they're paying for paid subscriptions or they're doing things where they kind of have their own information. And then you know, separating it out.

00;13;35;21 - 00;13;58;17
Dave
So they've got their own information, but are kind of reaching out to these public models to then, you know, power it basically. So they're trying to create these walled gardens that aren't quite as walled off, I don't know, chain link fence instead of walls? So as a result of that they they're able to use the, as the models get better and better and they're able to have their own data referencing.

00;13;58;20 - 00;14;27;09
Dave
So and then the small businesses, I mean, they're just they're just accessing, giving stuff away and doing all that kind of stuff. So when I say giving stuff away, what I mean is a lot of these models are trained off of your data. So if you upload a client proposal into ChatGPT without putting any of the safeties on or anything like that, technically that information becomes part of the training model for ChatGPT to train others so other people could utilize that.

00;14;27;09 - 00;14;57;00
Dave
And I, I mean, do you have a lot to worry about? Probably not, if you're, but I you got to be careful. Talk to your lawyer. I just, you know I know this is going to go a broadcast if you're going to share any information, but at the same time, you know, you can, just understand that if you make the data anonymous and just take out the client's name and just be - a digital marketing agency is creating a proposal for a landscaping company.

00;14;57;02 - 00;15;22;00
Dave
And this landscaping company is, you know, needs X, Y, and Z, zed, x, y, and zed things. And, you know, it's just it's really something that's that you can use. Just don't be so specific. So I'm seeing people use these really varies based on their organization size and then what they're trying to do with it. I mean, I've been in meetings where people are still head in the sand.

00;15;22;00 - 00;15;40;11
Dave
This is really something that I'm very afraid of. You know, they're on that that spectrum in terms of the, the framework. And I think they're, we're all going to potentially move forward through the framework. But, you know, depending on where they are and who they work for, I, I'm seeing a lot of different things with how they're using it.

00;15;40;13 - 00;16;04;19
Alison
And if, if they're in a highly regulated industry or as you call it, a large organization where there are those limitations, and I would still encourage marketers to start experimenting with Gen AI in their personal life, on their personal computers, because it's not going to get easier to to learn. It's not going to get any less intimidating. So the longer that they're waiting, the harder it will be to catch up.

00;16;04;19 - 00;16;15;17
Alison
And it's also a missed opportunity, like when you call out that you can now in an hour, do something, enough work that formerly took you a day, like, we all want to benefit from that as well.

00;16;15;19 - 00;16;50;00
Dave
Absolutely. And I think it's it's really important to for people to experiment, as you were saying, no matter what organization size that they're in, because the more you play with these tools, the the better you'll get. So from my perspective, it makes the most sense to think about these AI tools as a newly-graduated, newly-minted MBA student who is highly, highly knowledgeable, super, super highly knowledgeable, and yet they know nothing about you and they know nothing about what you want from them.

00;16;50;00 - 00;17;14;04
Dave
So just like a new hire, new employee, you know, they're excited. Well, I mean, the machine's not necessarily excited, but they're excited to to learn and to do and to give you the right answer. But they need to know some context. So it's really important to start off with, all right, when you're when you're entering any information into this and we'll just focus on the large language models like ChatGPT.

00;17;14;07 - 00;17;41;03
Dave
Just, you know, you are a, or whatever you want that particular model to be. So for example, you are a proposal writer and and then that frames the the rest of the input and what you're going to give instructions as that. So depending on how you're using the tool you really got to frame it first. So you are a, and then tell it what it is and then go and say, okay, here's some research, here's some information.

00;17;41;05 - 00;18;01;29
Dave
And if you really want to kind of go next-level with it, you can say, here is the type of an answer that I really like. Write me an answer like that. So for example, if you were using it to write a resume, I don't know, say you wanted to switch jobs, you could put an ad, you can upload a resume and say like, here's all, here's all my LinkedIn profile, here's all the information for my LinkedIn.

00;18;01;29 - 00;18;23;24
Dave
Here's all the amazing stuff I've done. Here's the people have referred me,  here are the people of, you know, endorsed me, whatever. Here's all the articles I've written. Here is a resume. Take all this information and write a resume about me. And by the way, you also should put in, and do not make anything up, because that helps limit the creativity of the model.

00;18;23;27 - 00;18;48;20
Dave
So sometimes we touch briefly on it, but it does hallucinate. And so hallucination I view as creativity. So it gets creative sometimes, a little too much. So you just do not make anything up. And then of course once it see it, it produces, it writes you that resume, double check it. Because any of these tools are only going to get you 80% of the way there.

00;18;48;22 - 00;19;08;23
Dave
That's the other key thing that I think people miss is they just take what they got, put it into an email, or put it into a proposal or put it into something else. The tool will only get you 80% of the way there. And just like an intern really, or no, or a new hire, they are going to do some great work with how they're trained, but they're not going to get it exactly as you want.

00;19;08;23 - 00;19;24;27
Dave
It may not be in your voice, your tone, whatever it may be, and then you need to go in there, actually read it, actually take a look at it, correct it, and then use it if you're going to use it. But it will get you it will get you 80 or 90% of the way there pretty much every time.

00;19;24;27 - 00;19;25;20
Dave
So yeah.

00;19;25;20 - 00;19;50;03
Alison
Such great advice. And I really love your intern and new employee analogy. Because by investing a bit more time upfront, by helping coach them and support them along the way, they do get better and the outputs become even more valuable. And that is so true of ChatGPT. And if you have people that are listening that are a little skeptical or intimidated or don't want to try it in their first experiences, they try and say, well, this is crap.

00;19;50;06 - 00;20;01;18
Alison
It's easy to then say, so I don't need to bother, instead of saying, I'm part of the reason, that's crap. This is part of the learning I need to go through to really get the value and the benefit out of the tool and to really understand it.

00;20;01;21 - 00;20;23;08
Dave
Yeah, it's it's it's important. And I think, you know, there's references for example, if you're like, how big is New York? Right. What are you, what are you really asking? Are you looking for how big is it in square kilometres? Are you looking for how many people live in New York City proper, or are you looking for, you know, any any of these other things?

00;20;23;11 - 00;20;42;11
Dave
You need to be very specific. So if you said how many people live in the greater New York City area, and then you could refine that to, you know, how many people live in Manhattan and then double check those answers because it might have made it up. So use Google as well to kind of reference things.

00;20;42;11 - 00;20;55;06
Dave
And, and you know, more and more AI is coming into the search engine world, but, yeah, you definitely want to double check and fact check, whatever it is that you find just using that example.

00;20;55;08 - 00;21;01;11
Alison
That's a great example. And adding the simple caveat "and don't make anything up" to your promise is incredibly powerful.

00;21;01;14 - 00;21;34;23
Dave
Yeah. Well it's still makes stuff up though. That's like, it's it kind of follows instructions but not 100%. And you can also do things like, forget everything previously input or forget everything above. So you can do those types of things as well. And those tend to help, you know, kind of reset. But I always just start another chat and then I'll just start another chat just so I can I can kind of reset based on things, because in my experience, they the tools themselves tend to go off track after a while.

00;21;34;25 - 00;21;52;28
Dave
And so you kind of need to reset and you'll start to notice, be like, that quality of that answer wasn't as good as it was a while back, so you can actually copy a chunk of answers you liked, put it in a new chat, and that seems to work well. But again, it'll just come with playing, playing with these tools.

00;21;52;28 - 00;22;14;06
Dave
But there are other tools for marketers out there. I mean, there are tools that will write you songs, you know, from, from start to finish. There are tools that will develop creative content for you in terms of your your imagery. There's tools that will do a whole bunch of different things for you. So there are videos, there's amazing different things out there that you can do.

00;22;14;09 - 00;22;34;23
Alison
Absolutely. And I love that. One of the CMA training sessions that you do for us, I love how you make it very relevant to the learners that attend, and have them leverage all of the different tools to actually write a marketing plan. So putting it into practice in a way that any marketer can understand and benefit from, it's a really great, teaching technique that you have.

00;22;34;23 - 00;22;36;03
Alison
So thank you for that too.

00;22;36;05 - 00;22;43;29
Dave
I'm happy to share for sure. What might be fun is to create a song, you know, because this is a podcast.

00;22;44;03 - 00;22;48;23
Alison
I love it. We're going to create a CMA Connect podcast theme song on the spot.

00;22;48;25 - 00;23;11;22
Dave
Okay. So this is Suno, this is a fun tool. This is something that, I'm not sure how many of the listeners would have, will have explored before and basically what this is, is a library of created songs and it's it's amazing. So what I'm going to do is I'm just going to hit create. What type of music do you want the theme song to be?

00;23;11;24 - 00;23;22;06
Alison
It definitely needs to be energetic. It needs to be, feel more future-focused, trying to think of specific genres that would deliver on that.

00;23;22;08 - 00;23;45;04
Dave
I mean, we could start off with a pop song. What do you think about doing a pop song? Sure. An energetic pop song about the CMA podcasts. We have two different pop songs here. So we have Tune into the CMA, Tune into CMA. So I'll start with this one first.

00;23;45;06 - 00;23;57;07
AI Song
New stories every week. Fresh voices with a tweak. Tune in. Don't miss the beat. CMA. Bringing heat.

00;23;57;09 - 00;24;20;07
Dave
So that's that's the first one. So the interesting thing is what it does is it writes the copy, the words of the song and then creates different beats. So I'm going to play the second one now and it's got the exact same lyrics, but it'll be a little bit different.

00;24;20;09 - 00;24;35;18
AI Song
New stories every week. Fresh voices with a tweak. Tune in. Don't miss the beat. CMA. Bringing heat. Laughs and tears all day long. Conversations where we belong. Grab your headphones, come along...

00;24;35;18 - 00;24;37;08
Alison
So which one do you prefer?

00;24;38;22 - 00;24;40;29
Dave
I like this one better, to be honest.

00;24;41;01 - 00;24;54;07
Alison
Right now the lyrics are fairly generic and given the prompt we've served it, that makes perfect sense. If we were to elaborate more on what we were asking for, am I right in assuming that the lyrics will become more relevant and stronger as well?

00;24;54;10 - 00;25;01;01
Dave
Absolutely. The better you prompt, the better and more relevant it'll be. So here's gritty, intense, hard rap.

00;25;01;04 - 00;25;14;19
AI Song
Tune in, CMA dropping' bombs on the regular. Facts so sharp, sharper than the predator. Mic in hand, splitting' truth like a prophet. Expose the lies, real talk, no profit...

Alison
I kinda like this one too.

00;25;14;21 - 00;25;26;13
Dave
When you think about it from a marketer's perspective, how many hours would this have taken? How many, how much investment in time, effort, people? It's just, it would be crazy.

00;25;26;15 - 00;25;36;02
Alison
So we're just getting started, right? When you think about how much the tools have evolved, how many new tools have emerged on the scene, and it's changing daily?

00;25;36;05 - 00;25;51;20
Dave
Absolutely. It's it's, and it's not just like we talk about the large language models because that's what everybody tends to focus on. But there are all these other tools that are just absolutely mind blowing. So yeah, it's it's a fun journey to be on like, this is this is exciting and fun.

00;25;51;22 - 00;26;01;29
Alison
So as marketers are embracing Gen AI, what skills are becoming more critical and what should marketers keep in mind as they're navigating this rapidly evolving landscape?

00;26;02;02 - 00;26;24;01
Dave
Well, you know, really, as much as we were talking about these tools, people are still important. You know, people matter. You still have to have the soft skills to be able to communicate with people and understand. So all those fundamentals that you learned aren't going away, but marketers who use it are going to have a significant advantage to those who don't.

00;26;24;01 - 00;26;44;22
Dave
And so, for example, if you said to me, you know what Dave, come up with a creative concept for, for, you know, an ad for the CMA podcast, and I could come up with a complete marketing plan, a complete copywriting. I could write you your landing pages, your copy for all of your, communications, your Twitter, or your X posts, or your LinkedIn posts.

00;26;44;29 - 00;27;05;22
Dave
I could generate images for it. I could create a song for it, and I could do all that, probably before lunch. If you're going up against me, you've got to be skilled in this, right? And I am by no means the best at this. I am a learning person who is just trying to use this as much as possible, but you got to know what's there to be able to do it.

00;27;05;22 - 00;27;31;02
Dave
So it's it's important for you to, to use these tools and, and be open and curious and be willing to fail. You know, you need to really, you need to to really not get great results and then accept the fact that, okay, that result was bad, but it wasn't because of the machine, it was because I'm not good enough yet at prompting the machine, at entering the information, at giving the resources.

00;27;31;04 - 00;28;00;09
Dave
So I always look at it as, how can I get better? Because what I found is, in my experience, the better I get, amazingly, the better the machine seems to get. You know, it's just it's just it's amazing how how advanced it gets, you know, so you can use these tools to help you prepare for meetings. So for example, if you download a transcript of this podcast, you could then say, okay, give me the summary points that Dave said I should watch out about security concerns.

00;28;00;16 - 00;28;26;20
Dave
What are enterprise companies doing about those security concerns? How can I, as a small, medium-sized business marketer use these tools? And what should I tell my CEO or CMO, CTO or whatever? What should I tell the C-suite about this tool? And how can I then persuade them to use these tools. So you can even like brainstorm. You can you can just bounce ideas off this off the machine.

00;28;26;22 - 00;28;48;25
Dave
And it's really interesting to see the results that you can get. And, you know, I mean, like any intern, they'll have great ideas. And you'll use 1 or 2 of them, but you'll still get two more ideas than you didn't have before. So it's it's really, really important. So you, as you said earlier, being curious, it's 90% of the battle in this case.

00;28;48;25 - 00;28;56;18
Dave
So and then, don't just know about it, do it. Actually use the tools. That's that's the most important thing.

00;28;56;23 - 00;29;19;12
Alison
Well they also highlighted, and a willingness to fail. Like this is not going to be perfect. This is not going to be like inserted into no matter how good your prompts are, make the request and then just serve up the finished product. It still does need human engagement. It needs human review. Humans will make any output from the tools even stronger, and you have to be willing to fail.

00;29;19;15 - 00;29;38;11
Dave
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And if you're yeah. If you're not, if you're not at the highest level of your profession, if you're a junior marketer or something, you can you can use this to up up-skill, to do what the people above are doing. Ask, you know, ask the people above you for feedback on whatever you're giving. And then take that feedback.

00;29;38;11 - 00;29;59;04
Dave
Incorporate it into whatever you're doing, your workflow, your processes. Because I've found AI works really well, like it's a machine. So the more structured data like, like lists you can put in, the more information that kind of has a hierarchy like, you know, headings, subheadings, all that kind of stuff, it will react well to things that are well-structured.

00;29;59;06 - 00;30;17;16
Dave
If you're just kind of, write me a pirate shanty, then it comes up with all kinds of stuff, right? But if you were like, okay, write it. And you know, with these, this many verses with this type of information about these things, make sure you hit on this, this and this. It just gets better and better. People aren't going away.

00;30;17;16 - 00;30;27;24
Dave
This is just going to make people better, smarter, faster, more skilled. And you know, it's, you go from riding a tricycle to driving a Ferrari. It's, you go a lot faster.

00;30;27;28 - 00;30;53;00
Alison
Absolutely. So, Dave, this has been a wonderful conversation. You've given us such great advice and very practical ways that we can start engaging with the tools if we're already engaging, which I hope most of our listeners are, how to build on the early learning that we each have. Now, separate from Gen AI, you have a amazing career. You've built businesses, you've been entrepreneurial.

00;30;53;03 - 00;31;05;29
Alison
So to close off our discussion, I'd love to have you share one piece of advice for marketers who are looking to stay ahead in their careers and what they need to do to continue to evolve with the industry.

00;31;06;01 - 00;31;30;23
Dave
So the biggest learning I've had, in that side of things, has really come down to how I approach things. And really it's kind of a framework that I've taken to adopt, which is, you know, that doesn't work for me, changed to how do I. So let me give you an example. Twitter, X, is a tool that I never really understood.

00;31;31;00 - 00;31;52;01
Dave
You know, it's the noise problem. There's so much stuff there. It's all about politics whatever. And so my thought was, it doesn't work for me. It's not going to ever work for me. Instead, I had to change my mind to how do I use this tool to accomplish what I want? So I went in, I deleted everybody I was following, and I just, so this is a kind of a dual purpose.

00;31;52;01 - 00;32;13;03
Dave
I just started following people who are the thought leaders in AI. So Twitter is, now my feed is now all the latest developments in AI, all the amazing things that are happening, changing it to a "how do I". Because whenever I start to think that way, I realize that the problem's with me, not necessarily the platform, not necessarily the tool.

00;32;13;06 - 00;32;22;16
Dave
So how do I learn how to do this thing better? And and then that's just really the best piece of advice I can give. So hopefully that's helpful.

00;32;22;16 - 00;32;26;26
Alison
I love that reframing. It's great professional advice. It's also great personal advice. Thank you.

00;32;26;26 - 00;32;38;26
Dave
Absolutely. No, you're welcome. Thank you very much for having me. This has been a lot of fun. And it's it's been really you know, I'm grateful for everything the CMA does. You guys are amazing. So I'm happy to be able to contribute a little bit.

00;32;38;29 - 00;32;51;17
Alison
You're  one of our many amazing members. And I really appreciate all that you give back to the community as well, because we're only as strong as the the level of engaged members that we have. And you definitely are high on that list. So, Dave, thank you for everything.

00;32;51;19 - 00;32;57;12
Dave
Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

00;32;57;14 - 00;33;10;02
Presenter
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