Soon nobody will care that you use AI

Great. Thanks for having me, Michaelis.

Well, I didn't actually start said and done. I picked up said and done from the previous owners. So yeah, I mean a little bit of my background. So on my first few my career was started in marketing roles within overseas development and aid organizations, both here in the UK and in Southeast Asia. and then I came in at the time for a creative agency, the agency that I now run. at the time when we were doing a lot of brand work and campaign work. for not for profits. So really my beginning of my consultancy journey was the yeah, looking after brands, rebrands and and more of the creative side, and starting my career as yeah, as a marketer, copywriter and cutting my teeth on those kind of early client engagements and and and getting some of the early some of the early failures out the way and some successes before I ended up taking on. the business that is now said and done in twenty twenty.

Well well, it really just got to a point where it was so painfully obvious that we weren't taking our own medicine. You know, we were out there advising our clients on brand positioning, strategy, naming, messaging, differentiating themselves in the market, having something memorable about their brand. And there we were at the time we were called ABA, which was inherited from the previous owner by the initials of his name. It wasn't particularly memorable. Our position in the market was really broad. We were at that time, I guess, what you would call a full service agency. We did quite a lot of things for quite a lot of clients. and really it was just becoming too yeah, it was becoming too obvious that we weren't. it was time to take our own medicine. so and the hardest thing, Nicholas, and I'm sure your other guests will say this to you as well, the hardest thing is taking your own advice and your own medicine. It's very easy to dish out advice, strategy. you know, deliver your expertise for someone else. But actually taking that on board yourself, is very difficult. which is why often experts get in other experts to help them advise them on their on their own air of expertise. 'Cause yeah, it's difficult. It's hard to read the label from inside the jar, no matter how much of an expert you are. But yeah, so we decided to make that move though, a couple of years ago now, and switch from ABA to said and done, focusing on positioning messaging and thought leadership. rather than the whole sort of gambit and and really kind of move into more of a consultancy space whereas I think before we would have been more of a traditional brand marketing creative agency.

Yeah, and the I'll maybe I'll talk through a little bit about the process of niching of niching or niching as y as you say. 'cause I think that's quite I think there's a lot of misunderstandings around that. So I think often when our clients come to that, they go the first thing they they do is think, no, no, we can't do that because number one, we'll exclude s our our current client base and and they'll somehow be upset and offended. They really won't be. or they'll think to themselves, no, we can't do any niching because there's all this opportunity out there that will end up missing out on or having to say no to. but actually what tends to happen is the reverse is true. Actually by having a specific focus and being more relevant to a smaller audience, you get more opportunities. So it's kind of the myth that, well the world is our oyster and we could work for anyone and we could do any number of things. And then the reality is you don't do very much work for very many clients because they all look at you and go, you're not particularly relevant or I don't see you as an expert in in in the particular thing that I'm after. So Yeah, so we took the decision, you know, we kind of got together as a team and really analyzed this and and it took a bit of time, but in in the end we decided to do, you know, a a bit of a horizontal and a vertical niche. So, you know, the horizontal sorry, the vertical niche was really around expertise organizations, think tanks, research institutes, consulting firms, education businesses, leadership providers, those that are delivering human expertise in some way in the in the B2B space. and and that was based on quite a large range of our clients. Not all of them, but it captured a good number of them and it captured some of the the patterns and the the themes and the threads, the the challenges that a lot of them faced. And and then the other th the other you know, side of that was the horizontal piece, which is, you know, the service offering. And that was about saying, Do you know what, we might do a whole load of executional things, whether that's whatever websites, films, events, but actually really the core of it is positioning, messaging, thought leadership campaigns. So again, by just narrowing that those two things down, and then packaging that up in the way that we have yeah, we've definitely found that we've been attracting more of the right kind of businesses for the kind of

Yeah, I think one of the ones, the big ones really, is is probably around where the value is in the business. So I think it's really easy for I think it's really easy for entrepreneurs, founders, owners to have their head turned by the the latest shiny thing, right? So, you know, we we spent several years working with organizations that would come to us and say, We need purpose. Okay, well what do you mean by And why do you need purpose? And not always, but often what would happen, you know, once we dug under the surface is well, they were they saw the new shiny thing called purpose, and they felt that if they leave their brand leaned into that, that would be the answer. That would give them greater traction, greater market share, you know, allow them to charge premium price, whatever it was they were after. And right now, of course, it's AI. So now we're having organizations come to us going, our brand needs to be AI led, or we need to have an AI-led position, we need to lean into AI. Okay, well, what do you mean by AI? And what do you have? And actually, not always, but more often than not, when we come in, we find that the gold is somewhere else, right? So the real value that the business brings, or the thing that makes them meaningfully different to the competition, isn't necessarily the thing that they're chasing. Because often what's happening at that time, everyone else is wanting to be purpose-driven and just focused on sustainability, or everyone else is wanting to be AI enabled and focus on their new shiny tech stack. So really it's I think often the task is giving a perspective of the business that the the leadership doesn't necessarily have. Showing them, you know, holding up the mirror, really seeing the perspective of the clients, seeing it from the perspective of the competition, and and and and sometimes even from the staff. You know, we've had we've had projects where we've come in and a CEO or an executive team are very clear about the direction and we say, look, everything about what your staff is saying is actually the real gold is over here in terms of where you can position, the space you can really own, the value that you can create, package, present to the market. So I think a lot of the time it's the the biggest challenge is is around challenging the assumption that the client has at the start of an engagement. That they think they know what the answer is, they know the destination. And sometimes they do, but actually often other things come up and challenge that.

yes, I I agree to a large extent. I I think there's two things happening at the moment. So let me let me give you the brand strategist view of the AI wave at the moment. And and that really is I'm old enough to remember the late nineties, early two thousands when we had the dot com bubble, the digital boom, and everyone got really excited about digital and We had digital businesses and we're a dot com business and then in the sort of agency world you had, you know, what were kind of more traditional advertising agencies becoming digital agencies and selling digital transformation. And I feel like we're in a little bit of a similar stage right now with AI. Everyone is very excited about the technology and and w with right cause, but it will reach a point where that technology will normalize. And it will just become part of the way that we are doing business. so the challenge I think for let's talk about consulting firms or or or service businesses. You know, let's put the kind of product businesses aside. I think the challenge for service businesses is if they really go in hard with we're AI enabled, we have this amazing AI expertise, and they they put their claim, their credibility, their positioning around AI, I think they will Well, a couple of things will happen. Number one, they will soon find that that's a very crowded space, right? Because a lot of their peers are doing the same. And then the second thing will kind of happen. It will sort of normalize and people will be like, So what? What else have you got? And and maybe that's kind of t to your point around what this what this other leader was saying to you recently. We will reach a point where, you know, whether it's just through market saturation or an active push against it, which we are obviously seeing with

you know, amongst Gen Z and you know, and more creative communities going, no, no, no, the real value is in is in human judgment, human creativity, human expertise, and you will have consulting creative firms actively positioning themselves as the the anti AI, non AI option and and being able to win work and charge a premium because of that. So I think I think that's kind of why we're w y what I'm seeing from a s from a sort of taking a view back as a brand strategist, on a more personal level, I absolutely see the dangers of the expertise that we bring as individual human beings being diluted and devalued because of the tools. And that's not because the tools can't produce good outputs. Sometimes they can, sometimes they can't. And it isn't just about, well, we need a layer of human judgment and responsibility. Of course, we absolutely do. I'm kind of thinking more longer term, going, Well, actually what what happens when we have, you know, a generation of you know, maybe looking at you, Micholas, as being this next generation, you know, what are we what what happens when we have your generation coming through and being told, actually there's no point mastering a subject, a knowledge area, a craft, a skill, an area of expertise, because it can be done. better by the machines. So all you need to do is just need to be the the grand prompt creator and the supervisor. Actually we will you know we as humanity will will will miss out and lose out because of that. So that's my concern with an over reliance, if you like, on AI from the individual experts perspective, as well as kind of more of the stuff that I'm seeing in the market from a kind of brand strategy perspective.

Yeah, t talk to me about w how do you mean business use cases. what sort of thing have do you have in mind?

Sure. I think the the biggest impact that AI has had on how we do our work is around research, right? So, you know, a big part of a big part of the process is of getting to a point of clarity around an organization's brands, their positioning, their messaging, their thought leadership strategy is is the research piece. Now, I would still argue that the the deeper insights, the ones that really hit home are the ones that you get direct. from, you know, from people, from individuals, focus groups, surveys, etc. However, the desk based research has been to completely revolutionized by AI. So, you know, the The both yeah, both the extent of research we can do, the amount of time that it takes, the the the nooks and crannies and the corners that AI can find, that kind of conventional just, you know, search engine based research can't. I think that really does enhance what we can then the insights we can present to clients. And also the analysis, right? So when we do larger pieces of research with you know, hundreds or sometimes even thousands of surveys, contributions, data points, those y you absolutely need human judgment, but how to have a layer of AI analysis over that has also really allowed us to be, yeah, more focused and ensuring we're not missing something. So I think for me the biggest thing has definitely been on on the research side. I guess on the the more contentious side is really around ideation, content creation. that side and I think that's where we try and draw the line around it's always human human ideas and then they can potentially be sharpened by using LLMs or you know using LMs as as a sounding board of feedback. but I think we're always clear that the the the genesis of the idea, the original concept, the strategy needs to come from the human insight and then it's about using using AIs to test test it and go poke holes, poke holes in this and why might not might this not be right? And is there anything in the research and the insights that suggests that this wouldn't work? Rather than going, hey, let's throw in the research, throw in the insights, ask AI, take its answer, and then kind of present it as our own. So yeah, that's a bit about how we use it.

Yeah, it's it is it is crazy and I think it's particularly crazy in an environment where fundamentally people are still, you know, in a B to B context, people are still buying human expertise, right? You know, again, put the product put the platforms and the products aside. If you're in the service business, you're in the business of selling human expertise and presenting that as a solution to a client's problem. How can you be doing that when that expertise is then being whatever represented, you know, by an AI agent or, you know, if that if that expertise is being churned out, you know, purely by, you know, an L L with with no obvious, you know, it and and I think you're right, we are getting a lot of pushback against that, you know. I'm on LinkedIn, as I know you are, and there's a big pushback against AI generated posts, AI generated comments, you know, I know a number of of my peers who you actively block delete block anyone who does AI generated comments. and and I think it you know I think it undermines the credibility of expertise, you know, of the product that that that expert is selling. and and also I think we all we all we all suffer as a result because we end up then it it diminishes the trust that we have in, okay, is this is this this real person's ideas, is this their thinking? Is this their words? and I'm personally I don't know about you, I'm much more interested in following and engaging with people who are coming up with interesting eye thoughts and writing in a different way and you can see a personality behind that content rather than just something that feels very vanilla and generic and obvious.

I I I can I can make one, and maybe this is as much wishful thinking as a you know, an educated, informed prediction. I think we are going to reach a point and it's already happening, where the pushback against not just AI in terms of the you know, the technology and and necessarily the outputs, but the push pushback against the fact that we are outsourcing our humanity, our personality, the things that make us who we are to these machines. And I think we will have a resurgence of the superhuman, face to face, analogue, handwritten letters, you know, like you say, one to one conversations, things that are Things that can't be faked or can't be replicated or mimicked by AI, and things that maybe tap overtly into our creativity, our quirkiness, our weirdness. Cause I think the other thing that's happening, you know, as a result of AI, we're all kind of being sucked into this safe, samey, middle sort of whirlpool of convergence where all the You know, and we see it, right? You know, we yeah, I see it myself when I use some of the tools and we see it from some of the outputs. There's a there's an agreed I set of ideas, an agreed way of talking, communicating, and that if we all allow ourselves to get sucked into kind of the AI corporate speak, it strips out so much else, so much diversity and divergence from that. And I think we're gonna see people actively pulling themselves out of that whirlpool and it will be get more creative, quirky, interesting, unusual. And I'm you know, we're s I'm seeing little glimpses of that. but I think that's kind of what's gonna come next. And maybe that plays a little bit into the point you made earlier around. you know, we'll see consulting firms actively out there positioning themselves as non AI users and being able to to win on that basis.

Yeah, sure. So we're doing we're doing a piece of research on on memorability, on basically on being memorable, being unforgettable within the consulting and B2B service space and how brands are doing that and how they can win in this overcrowded, over converged space that we're a lot of those organizations are in. So we'll be doing that and releasing that soon. yeah, we're working with some interesting organizations and businesses looking at gosh, a number of things. looking at social impact and looking at future of AI and yeah, so other interesting sort of topics that are in our in our domain through our client work as well.

Yeah, so connect with me on LinkedIn, it's Dave Van with two Ns. and the company website is saidandone.co dot uk.

Thanks for having me.