This is why AI in marketing is so hard

really good to be here. Thanks for your time. Thanks for inviting me on, Mick.

so both Ben and myself, the two co-founders, both 25 years in agency land, had worked together for six years and been talking a lot about how potentially we wanted to do things slightly differently in the future, that there was an opportunity to build a different kind of consulting offer. and so after many, you know, after work conversations and and time spending, you know, chatting through the options, we we started to plot our exit and and how we'd start to build something new. So it was an opportunity to do something, whereas most agencies work for marketing teams, we wanted to create something that was very much at the right hand of the CMO. So helping the CMO through some very real challenges that they're often confronting and facing and looking to to solve over the the coming months and years.

I mean s many and varied, and there are as many different types of CMOs almost as there are CMOs themselves, because some come from a brand background or a performance background, some are great with the broad with the board, some are brilliant with the team. There there's there's often not one mould of a CMO. but fundamentally what we recognise is that for many of them they recognize that marketing needs to change the way that it happens. the business tends to look at marketing and think that marketing should be the ones who are soaring ahead with AI and using AI in all sorts of fantastic ways because that's where the innovation people live, that's where the creative people live. But honestly, for most marketing departments, AI is it's one of the toughest parts of the business to transform. If we look at where AI really works, which is, for example, in the in the tech department, in the coding, everything's very verifiable, everything's very predictable. It works through a number of sequences, and you can see how AI can come in and take over that. Whereas marketing is much more complicated, it's much more people focused, it's much more about handoffs and domain expertise and specialists and lots of different types of people working together in lots of different types of ways. And therefore it's not simple just to kind of drop AI into that environment and expect it to create value for the people who who are looking for it to wave a magic wand and solve all their problems.

I mean ultimately AI is the is it's it's general purpose technology. There is nothing it can't do, but that's not to say that it can do any of those things particularly well. And so often people, you know, so we'll distribute some copilot licenses to everybody on the team and expect them just to kind of pick up the the tools and start using it. And then we're surprised when all that's happening is people are rewriting emails or you know, or you know, or dropping themselves a to-do list on a morning or you know, you know, very kind of basic use cases because fundamentally Where AI works is when it has a very a very a very clear and a very kind of designed job to do, and how you can look at your workflows and think of how is it that AI can support what we're gonna do. we've got a framework that we use in committed citizens, which is which is own the thinking, don't outsource the thinking. So make sure that the thinking is yours, because if you give that up, you'll never get it back. And actually, cognitive surrender, which is the term that we use for many people, is the worst thing that you can do with AI, where you're effectively removing your ability to to to stay connected to the you know the decisions that need to be taken on a day-to-day basis. Still outsource the craft. So I built I vibe coded our Committee of Citizens website in a few weeks and a few a couple of hundred pounds worth of tokens. It looks like a professional website does everything that we need it to do. The bits that I would not leave to the robots were the the identity design we used a really great graphic designer for that. The photography was done by a really great photographer that we know so make sure that you outsource the craft and and and develop the you know the assets and the things that are going to make you stand out and make you feel unique and and you know quality to the world. And then automate the rest. Find the boring, you AI should be doing the stuff that we don't want to do, not the stuff that we do. I don't want AI to do all of the writing and and creative work in my life, leaving me to do the boring admin on the back. I want AI to do the admin so that I've got time to focus on the bit that I enjoy most, which might be writing or creating or doing something you know from a strategic point of view.

so when we started, if you think at we're in the AI consulting space, in the you know, in the in the area, the broader area in which we work, many organizations are either tech first, i.e., they are all about the platform. So that you know, the the goal is to to put the platform in place and train the people to use it and and that will be job done. And then there's lots of training organizations which are people first, which are let's, you know, let's just drive adoption, let's encourage people to do stuff. Because we are marketing focused, we only work in marketing, we're not a broad kind of consulting AI consulting offer. We are entirely for the marketing function. That enables us to be what we sort of call as function first. The only thing that we exist to do is to build a better marketing function. Because if we can't do that, then there's no point in us being anywhere. So function first is the important bit. Make sure that marketing is the ultimate beneficiary of the work that we do. People led. Because ultimately the only people who are going to transform anything, the only people who are going to make anything happen in the workplace is the people, is the teams who are coming together around the tools. And then AI propelled, which which is which is the opposite of AI as a replacement. AI is not coming in to steal your job, but it is here to make your job a more an enjoyable place to be, as much as a more effective place to be. I think we've seen you know, increasingly the the level of satisfaction in marketing teams is dropping like a stone. People are under pressure, feeling it and not necessarily enjoying it in large numbers of marketing departments all over the world. And what we think is that there's never been a better time to be a marketer as long as you understand the environment in which you work and you set it up in a way that supports you. So this idea that everyone should get a jetpack, everyone should have this kind of turb this superpower that enables them to do the best work of their career. That's the place that we come from and that's the the conversation that we that we seek to have with our clients so that we can, you know, if those people, some people are afraid, some people are skeptical, some people are super enthusiastic and you know and all in. But you have to understand that everybody comes from a different place and you need to support them to use and to to grow with the technology in a way that works.

So when we started at the very beginning, all those months ago now, we were having conversations with CMOs and we were talking much more about functional redesign. We were talking about the way that marketing needs to happen, needs to change. And and I and you could see in the eyes of the of the CMOs that we were speaking to that there was this fear that, well, it sounds like before I fix anything, I have to fix everything. It's you know, it became such a massive undertaking. It became this kind of this enormous sort of project that needed to be started and for many CMOs you know they're absolutely snowed under with the work that's got to get done day to day it's not you know so we have a very clear way of starting which is let's fix one thing first and let's not you know redesign the world boil the ocean as it's called you know and think that we can reinvent everything in your whole world in one foul swoop let's pick one thing And then let's fix that first. Now that could be a way a campaign runs, it could be a way that reporting is delivered. It could be a a bit of team alignment so that you know is everyone clear on what their you know their roles are, you know, how their roles are changing with the tools that have been provided, or it could be just using the tools that you've got in a better way than you've got now. If you start by fixing one thing first, you do two main things. One, you show the people, you know, that the teams who have got to do the work, they see that you know, this isn't just another talking shop, this isn't another you know, off off site day to talk about AI, where somebody comes in, tells them how to prompt better or does all the stuff that everybody's you know been been you know had rammed down their throats over over over the last couple of years. They actually see that I can see how this fits into my world. And then what it also does is it makes a business case for the board so they can go, okay, so that didn't seem to cost very much. That wasn't a massive undertaking and I can see there was some value that was extracted out of it. What else can we do? And so this idea of fix one thing first for a marketing leader is is often the most useful way to begin a conversation because it enables them to go, okay, well, this bit annoys me over here. If we can get stuck in there and fix that in six weeks, because we tend to work in six week cycles. So if you can show me in six weeks some value created out of a out of a single piece of work that the team does, then suddenly I've got some enthusiasm and I've hopefully got a motivated team who go, actually we could do with some more of that.

And it's it's also the consulting. Yeah. And it's also the consulting way as well. And and that's where we I think we well, hopefully we're different. Because we come from an agency background, not a consulting background. Consultants are great at going, okay, I'm gonna spend this the next nine months working out which way is up or where we are on the map, or what you know, so I'm gonna I'm gonna ca capture everything. And because we're an a you come from an agency Ben and I background, That I I think we are ha have a slightly better bias towards action. We go yeah actually it's important to get started because if we get started then we can point to things that are worth doing in the future and and have a much more productive conversation.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which as a start up is really tough because, you know, ultimately we have lots of people who know us from our agency days, but we're a new business and therefore building trust is, you know, we can't come in and say, Okay, give us three million quid. Like we can't do a McKinsey. I can't walk in and go, Give me three million quid and I'll help you transform the organization. I've got to come in and go, This is how we start with you. And actually it's not a it's not a massive risk. You're not you I've I've we've de risked it, hopefully, for the prospect.

I I mean I am I am absolutely not per one to to predict anything for two years out. I just don't think we can meaningfully do two year product predictions anymore. I think if you were to show my workflows the way that I work now to me two years ago, I I there's no way I would have envisaged that. And I think that's half the problem is is that it's almost like, well, if I just wait another six months then the tools will settle down or there will be you know, at the moment I'm You know, I'm I'm all in on Grokbot. I I Grockbot Grokbot does so much of the work for me on a day-to-day basis. It's the tool that I use, it's the harness I enjoy using. I have about twelve different Grokbots in my account doing different tasks for me on a regular basis. And you know, it's it seemed to be it was the first one where I thought this feels like an interface where I don't need to be a developer, I don't need to be a techie. I I can start using this in a way as I would work with the team. And that was a huge unlock for me. That was an amazing kind of step forward. But I still think we're working out what the what the what the you know the harness or the interface or the way that we talk to these and work with these tools is going to change just as much in the next six months as it's already changed in the last six months. And that's where I think it's important to say, no, no, just get started. Because you know, as long as you make sensible decisions about the architecture, working with your IT team or whatever, you know, y you know, the the principles will hopefully stay, the models will get vastly better, the harnesses were of will evolve and become more interesting in how we work. But it's just a case of you can't sit on the sidelines and wait for the finished version, because by the time you do that, you've probably not got an awful lot left to work with.

so as I say, Grokbot is my current daily driver. That's the the app that I use more than anything. In terms of meetings, I completely agree with you. We use granola, which has been an amazing tool for us. It's hooked into my Grokbot so they my my bots can all have access to my granola notes. I you know I've had to you know, there's going back to my point earlier about cognitive surrender, I think there is a real danger that, you know, that we end up running our lives on autopilot. Where we, you know, I don't need to remember anything. It's like when when I first I'm old enough to remember when sat navs first came out in cars, you know, and you know, before that I used to be able to read a map. I used to be able to get you know, I used to be able to find my way from A to B using a map. Now, you know, I've that that that ability has has long since left me because the sat nav does all of that for me. And I think, you know, i the same with meeting notes, there's a There's this danger that we rely on these tools to a point that we do surrender that cognitive ability. So it's great to have it as a resource. And I love the fact that I can say to Guernola, I met with some guy back in June, and he's he he was talking about some chap that he'd met who he thought you should introduce. Who was that? And it'll just scurry off and find it for me. And it's it's you know, it's it's like magic. but I think it's you know, it's it's it's working out how to bake it into your life wh while leaving plenty of opportunities for for it not to to you know to dominate and to take over. and I guess my my favorite use case is actually in Grokbot it's you know it's the it's the it's the reminding of the things that I said I would do in a meeting. It's just that, you know, on Thursday you said you would do this and and you've got you're seeing that person later on today. You you've got a couple of hours left. You might want to do that. That bit, you know, that's the bit that Just as someone who is, you know, I've always been a strategic, you know, I've always been a strategist. I haven't necessarily always been the most organized and and actually Grocbot is has has turned me into the version of me that I wanted to be much earlier in my career.

So we I mean there's a number of tools that we do use. I I've I used to use MANIS a lot, and may get back into them now again now that they've recently were going to join Meta then didn't you know, so MANUS is a good tool that we've used. But the main thing from my point of view is is being very clear on a you know, this you know, don't boil the ocean. We have a very specific list of target prospects that we want to work with. So we've You know, we've we've worked quite hard to define who are the organizations that we think we can help, where are the buying signals that we can find that okay, new CMO post or just raised a round of funding or whatever. Those are the signals. So we're very specific about the signals we want to pick up on on our prospects. And that then enables hopefully our outreach, you know, the conversations that we can have to be much more informed, much more intelligent and and hopefully much more memorable as a as a result. So it's It's you know it's very tempting to to you know to map every business in the world and and you know and create this enormous great database, but it's if you don't do anything with that, then it's you know it's a it's a it's a vanity project. It doesn't, you know, it doesn't contribute. So we have a much more compact list of prospects that we want to talk to and we work quite hard to get a a proper picture of how they are working and how we potentially could support them.

I I mean certainly from from Ben and I's perspective, we don't have massive scale ambitions. I think because of the nature of the work that we do, which is that if you're working at the right hand of the CMO, it is inherently not scalable in the classic Silicon Valley scalable way. Is that it relies on senior people building strong relationships with their clients and supporting them over a period of time. So you can scale it in certain ways, but there are certainly some ways that you can't just kind of duplicate yourself or create a bot version of yourself, a digital twin that does all the work for you. So I think it's from my point of view, it's more about supporting businesses to create a marketing function that they would not have been able to create without us. It's the client outcomes that motivate us more than the business kind of growth outcome. So I want to be able to tell great stories about the way that we helped businesses to transform and then start to, you know, to and then to enjoy their own growth story on the back of that. And I think that's the that's where we are at the moment. You know, who knows? I may get world domination delusions later on, but right now it's it's about it's about you know doing great work for great clients.

So you can obviously on our website there's our contact details. What what we do with prospects is we do something called a waypoint. A waypoint is literally it's a it's a it's a sort of structured 30-minute conversation where what we're trying to do is to identify the key problem that needs to be tackled first. So again, just be very clear about the fixed one thing first. So it's a structured, we work across now, you know, so team, it can be of course the processes, it can be the tech, it can be the data, which tend to be the four areas that constitute a marketing function. So it could be between the gaps in between. But it's it's a half an hour conversation where we talk through those four areas, we understand one key pain point, and that enables us to come back and go, okay, here's how we would tackle that. So I would suggest go onto our website, book your waypoint, get a 30-minute conversation with me and Ben, and and we'll we'll we'll chat through the the the problems that you're facing, the challenges that you're looking to solve and hopefully come up with some clever ideas to get started.

Thank you, Mick. It was really good to meet you. Thanks for your time. Speak soon.