27 of 30 AI ideas belong in the bin

I'm I'm delighted to be with you. Thank you for taking the time. you you you're you're coming from a part of the world that I I I have not been to, but very much would like to.

Yeah, so I I I went to the University of Colorado. I stayed in Colorado for many years and then decided to come back to the East Coast where I was living, where I had grown up. And I had the opportunity in approximately nineteen ninety-four or so to join a firm that was part of the WPP group, which is a London based large holding company. for advertising, marketing services, research, et cetera. And I was fortunate enough to grow to to land there at a time when WPP was finishing its buyout of of the founders, and a well-established firm called OnSpot Grossman in Portugal was then kind of quite small, but had a very good reputation. And I my job was was was to be a consultant, but pri primarily try to drive new business development to get clients. So when I got there, we were doing about three and a half million dollars a year in revenue. Eight years later when I left, we were doing $33 million a year in revenue. And you know, a lot a lar a large part of that was really getting into the network of WPP. getting referrals, getting new clients. And it was a time in the United States, in particular, where there was a lot of change going on in the economy. And in brand consulting work, and many of the consultants in the world thrive when there's a change event. So I happened to hit it when private equity was becoming more prominent and needed to be more outward-facing. when healthcare institutions were merging, particularly hospitals. So whenever there's a change event in consolidation, that is good for for our business. And perhaps the the most important client that I won, we won as a firm, was when Nations Bank merged with Bank of America. A very large event, a very public event. And the CEO of of Nations Bank at that time, Hugh McCall, was our client. And that really kind of put us on the map where we did global research, created a new identity. Positioned the new enterprise and really kind of for the first time focused on internal branding and the communications related to trying to stabilize a an employee force that you know was was nervous, right, when mergers happen. Employees get nervous, and of course, the first thing a p an employee does says, How is this affecting me? Am I gonna have my job? etc. So that's a little bit of my background. I I I like this business because and and and still like it some 30 years later, because it's both strategic, you know, the kind of the left side of the brain, and and creative, the right side of the brain. So I I used to like to say to to people that we we need whole brain thinkers in this in this world and in this business. And you know, I've been around long enough to kind of live through a PC revolution, a mobile revolution, and other technological advances, and now living through and with AI, which is a a a very big game changer in in many aspects of of the economy in the world and particularly in in the in the creative consulting and in and marketing services.

yeah. Yeah, it's it it's it's a great Yeah, no, it's a great question. and I always tell people, you know, because a lot of people like you who who who will get out of school say, Well, I'm gonna go into business right away for myself and and and you know, be an entrepreneur. And I often will say, you know, if you have an opportunity to work for someone else for a period of time, it's great because you'll learn. disciplines and processes, and you'll learn what you like and don't like about being in a larger organization. And and for me, that was what happened when I was within WPP. It was terrific because they had, you know, financial disciplines, processes, structures, and and and and frankly, you know, obviously some some bureaucracy as well. But for the most part, If if we made our numbers, we had freedom to kind of pursue what we wanted to do. And and that's what I did. I you know, and I talk about this a lot with younger people. You know, from the time I graduated college, I never stopped learning. I was a as as Warren Buffett says, you know, you need to be a learning machine throughout your career. Don't try to be the smartest guy in the room, be the best learner in the room, and you'll always have something to do and something to say. So as I was building a career within what became Enterprise IG and WPP, I was also doing my own kind of self-education of of trying to read, you know, a book a week, periodicals, articles. Things like that. Now that might be a little bit, might sound a little bit crazy or obsessive, but I enjoyed it. I I I I always felt that if I was reading a book, I was having a conversation, a quiet conversation with the author, and I never read a book being greedy. I always felt if I could get one or two. New ideas that help me look at the world, better serve a client, change a perspective, then it would be worth it. So that that is that is all to say that you know a job is never a job. A job is the the deal to do some work and transfer money from the employer to employee, but the employee really should be serving themselves by learning and experiencing as much as they can. And I always had the philosophy, you know, if the you know, show up early, go home a little bit later, Never say no to a job, never say no to when someone asks you to do something. And you know, life and learning is a cumulative thing and it adds up. So now, now that I'm older, I have all of these experiences to call upon. And that's really the big difference between, you know, someone in the middle or later part of their career and someone starting out. you just lack the experience and then you would say, yes, but I can't get experience and get into un until I get a job. So it it's it's a little bit of a of a conundrum, but you know, if you work at it, it'll it it tends to work out.

Well, you know, first first of all, when you're a knowledge worker, you know, and you're a you're a consultant, what you're what you're selling is less your specific intellect and more your approach to solving a problem. So I think it's important to bring a set of beliefs and values. That only can be done by a human, a sense of empathy and understanding. And combining that with the power of AI, which which for someone like me, I can have a conversation with AI, or I can query and ask it. And I I can probably do the work. I'm not being immodest of probably. Myself with three other juniors, right? Because the juniors really don't have all that experience. So now when I work with junior people, I'm trying to impart my perspective A and B the importance of the right type of question, whether that question is to AI or whether that question is to a consultant. That is what you're what you're trying to uncover, particularly when you consult a senior leadership in a company. Senior leadership is really looking for two things. One, can you tell me something that I don't already know? Right? Because a person, a man or woman high in an organization wants to be gathering information. So tell me something that I don't already know. Or secondly, tell me something that I do know in a different way that gives me a different perspective so that I can use it in my everyday work. Right? Because we're hit we're humans, we accumulate knowledge, but there's you know, we're we're still we can only absorb so much. So Being having that understanding in approaching the inquiry of someone just like you're doing right now, you you have a kind of an outline of what you want to say, excuse me, but you're gonna react to what I say, and you're not gonna be a slave and constrained by by your by your script, by your interview script. So yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean the the the fact of the matter is whether it's a smaller company or a larger company, for for my work to be good, I have to have a good client. And what does a good client mean? A good client means you have a sponsor. In in a small company, that'll usually be the founder, the CEO, et cetera. In a larger company, hopefully that is a decision maker, like a CEO or a board, that is endorsing what you're doing and saying to the rest of the company, or the organ the not-for-profit organization, or the hospital, et cetera, that this is important work. So Please be open and honest and engage with this consultant because they're helping, they're trying to help us find our voice, be clear about who we are, what we do, and how we do it, so that not only we can compete, but those who are going to come as a customer or as a patient, those that we serve. really understand the value and the quality that we're going to bring to them. So whether it's a product, whether it's a service, whether it's a combination of the two, you know, I always say to people, I'm in the brand consulting business, but I'm really in the understanding business. I'm really in the business of helping people tell a very quick and clear narrative about who they are, how they're different. And what they do. And we've all experienced companies and products that aren't good at that, where you kind of have a you'll see an ad or read a position paper or see an interview with a CEO, and for the life of you, you can't figure out what is it, what it is that they really do. So particularly like what you're interested in, and in digital and all the different mediums available. You know, there's there's just a lot of ways of delivering a message, but if that message, if that content, if you will, if that script, if that writing, whatever we want to call it, isn't clear, concise, and resonant, then you're just putting you're putting static and noise through multiple channels. And it it it it's still gonna come out messy. It's still gonna the old expression with with computers, it used to be, you know, data garbage in, garbage out, information garbage in, garbage out. And it's true with digital with digital medium, you know, clickbait, rage stuff. It garbage, garbage. Good content, people wanna watch the YouTube, they wanna watch the interview. They have large followings and things like that. And you know, we're in a world now to you know to what you want to do. It is more visual, it is more video and and motion and verbal, but it's still dependent on on quality, right? On a qu I what I what I normally say to someone is look, if the script is bad. It doesn't matter who the star of the movie is or who the director is. If the script is bad, no one's gonna save it. And if the script or the subject matter is confusing, if the story is muddled, no one's gonna save it. Whether it's on a YouTube channel or TikTok or Instagram or X, doesn't really matter. So our job today in the world of AI is less about the generation of content and more about the selection and curation of content, of organizing what is good, what is bad. Because AI, as a colleague says, you can't shake hands with AI. There's there's there's no relationship and AI is scraping things that are already there retrospective and the work that I'm doing with clients is something about the future so it's prospective. So my job is to sit in the middle and ask the right questions and curate things so as to create a bridge from what was to what will be and make sure that that bridge doesn't have a lot of speed bumps over it that to cause to cause the the vehicle going over it to to crash as it were. So

you you you can create, you can, you know, by the time you've had your first cup of coffee, you could iterate 30 or 40 ideas. It doesn't mean that they're good, right? It it means that they've generated it, and your job or my job, or the job of a consultant, is to understand their client well enough, their client's competition well enough, their client's market well enough. And their clients' goals well enough to say, you know what? Of that 30, 27 we're throwing away. But three have some merit. Why don't we talk about and dig in on those three and see if they're directionally correct and see what we can do to make them come alive? And out of that three, maybe we can get to the to the direction that we want to go. Right. And the and and the thing about this the thing about AI and consulting and the creative process is you know don't fall in love with your idea or an idea too quickly or too early. Try to suspend belief. Try not to have thin skin. And try to say, all right, let me let me take this, and I like it, but I'm a I'm an N of one, right? I'm a sample of one. Let me go and road test this a little bit. And if people that I trust are highly critical of it, I should be listening to them, not trying to defend my idea. So suspend belief, have thick skin, test, fix. Test again, fix, and that's the iterative process. And for me, that iterative process might be even after all the years in this business, that iterative process might go six, seven, eight turns, maybe ten, because because you you you know when it's right. It's like a musician knows. They can they're when they're in the mixing board and they're recording something, their ears are different than my ears. So my ears when it comes to the idea of giving a brand voice are more sensitive than other people's just because I've been doing it for a while. So I hope this is helpful. If it's not, please t please tell me.

No, you're yeah, right. Thank God, or I wouldn't have a business. But here but here's the thing. whenever I'm talking to a new client or potential client, first of all, I try to do some homework on my own, right? I'm not gonna walk into a preliminary interview. Not knowing as much as I can know by doing desk research, by querying AI, by perhaps maybe I know someone at a company or an adjacent company. So I want to do my homework. And then some people will say, Well, gee, you're not getting paid for that. And I say, Well, that's true. But if I hope to get paid by a client, I better earn that, right? I I better earn it. That's the that's the first step. The second step. Is when you are talking to a potential client, be open and as generous as you can be with your knowledge and information, because some people will say, Well, you're giving stuff away. And I would answer them to say, if I am talking to a potential client and I have solved their problem in an initial interview, then they don't need me. But Nine times out of ten, or nine and a half times out of ten, the client or potential client is appreciative of someone being open because at the end of the day, there's they're going to be looking at firms or individuals that are probably on paper quite similar. maybe their portfolios are pretty close. So what does that end up doing? That ends up making the chemistry, the human element, right? Do do I think I can work with this person? If things go bad, is this person going to run away or are they going to be supportive? Are they going to be patient or impatient? Are they going to rush me or be or or be understanding that what our process is internally? So in that in that early interview process, you're really trying to understand what the contact person's going to be like and what is that company gonna be like. Because if that content per that contact person and what we were talking about earlier, if that person isn't good and on board, it it'll make I don't care how talented you are, it be it becomes a very difficult engagement. So, you know, peep people still matter in this world. People definitely still matter. In their perspective and their goals and their objectives, their fears. I mean. I'm I'm often brought in after one or two other people have failed in the in in in the work. And now I've got a client who's quite concerned about, you know, hopefully three's a charm and we've got to make it work. So I understand when there's that psychology, and I try to be, you know, extra attentive and extra supportive. And I've just been fortunate enough that the way my brain works, the more complex the the messier the project or produ the idea or or the messier the engagement. the more I enjoy it and the and the better I can I can do with it. But that's, you know, some people can't do that. You know, manage that that that tension of not knowing you know, as as as there's an expression, you know, you want to eat the sausage, you don't want to see it being made, right? Because food fo food processes can be kind of un unappealing and in in in indul the appetite. Yeah.

Well they they I mean they can go to infiniagroup dot com INFINIA G R O U P dot com. They could call me or text text me via WhatsApp, which is at six four six two nine eight three two. or they can send me an email at R Capello, C A P P E L L O at Infinia Group dot com. I'd be happy to help give counsel advice. at at this point in my life, in my career, I I really enjoy educating and to whatever degree I can share what I know with others to help them get started. I'm happy to do it.

Th thank you for having me. You're doing a a great job and continue continue following your interests and I'm sure everything will work out really well.