Latest / Expertly Said / Maria Elena Cruz Lopez on the Work Behind a Winning Value Proposition
Transcript
- Kristen Sweeney: My guest today is Maria Cruz Lopez, Director of Digital Marketing at Harvard Business School. Maria has over a decade of experience building and scaling data-driven digital marketing strategies. In her current role, Maria helped shape the vision and overall strategy for the digital experience of Harvard Business School's audiences, including students, alumni, and the business community. This includes continual review of information architecture and technology to ensure dynamic and satisfying user experience across all HBS web and mobile properties, and collaborating with marketers across the school to better leverage digital engagement and marketing initiatives and better analyze the efficacy of digital marketing. Before joining Harvard Business School, led a marketing team focused on increasing enrollment in online courses and sharing MIT's knowledge with the world. She also has experience in book publishing. Originally from Mexico, Maria enjoys running and skiing and lives in Cambridge with her husband and their two bilingual and bicultural kids. Maria, welcome to the show. Maria: Thank you, Cristen. Hi. Kristen Sweeney: Hi, it's so nice to see you. for our listeners, Maria and I did have a chance to work together previously. having a bit of a reunion chat before we went live here. So we heard a little bit of the kind of contours of your career trajectory, but I'd like to get into the origin story. How did you get started in publishing? Was writing something you always wanted to do? Tell me where that kind of affinity began. Maria: Yeah, I think that as many digital marketers today, my career started trying to write and become a writer or a journalist. The way it happened is I got a scholarship for a master's degree in publishing. And I was like, well, that is very close to literature and writing. My bachelor's degree had been in literature back in Mexico. So I came to New York and did my master's in book publishing. was an amazing experience. I hope one day I can go back to New York City and just continue living there. Kristen Sweeney: Hahaha Maria: My first job, and I still think it was probably I could have stayed it forever. It was in book publishing at Scholastic. I used to read Latin American and Spanish books to sell them to the US market. And it was perfect. Then, I moved to Boston and I continued my career in book publishing, also bilingual book publishing, with the editor, the translator of Dr. Suess to Spanish. She's a fascinating woman. She still translates many, many books that have a lot of rhyme. Like Rosie Riviere, Engineer, she translates them to Spanish Kristen Sweeney: Wow. Maria: and it was an amazing job. Unfortunately, that was 2008. So she had this small book publishing company where she wrote the books and I created the website and we used to sell to like the Spanish market and to educational schools and especially schools with bilingual programs. But that company closed in 2008. So in 2008, I was out of a job with this like career in book publishing in a year where like so book publishers were closing left and right. So while I was out of a job, I did my certification in digital marketing through Google Analytics and Google AdWords. I remember like I spent a lot of time studying. It was not easy. I don't know right now and I'm like a little bit removed of that certification. But I, you know, studied a lot, got my certification and started applying to digital marketing jobs. Having had the experience. a little bit of marketing within the last two jobs that I had. And I really liked it. And my first job in digital marketing was for, I don't know if she's social Brown, but it's like at Ali Brown used to be sort of like an entrepreneurship guru who used to have very defined marketing strategy. And the way I fit in is I was gonna start doing Google Ads, back then Facebook Ads didn't even exist. So was Google Ads and Kristen Sweeney: Wow, yeah. Maria: writing her social media. She used to post four times a day on Twitter. I would write, during the week I would write Twitter and Facebook posts. And she would review them all on Friday and then she would publish it. But she would review and edit with a very, very specific tone and she was very true to her tone. to make sure that whatever gets published gets published with her approval and it is in her voice. And that really gave me lot of practice of writing and being succinct. And she had such a calendar, a good strategy behind it. And I still remember it was like one post was a personal post that sometimes I didn't even get to write, but if she was in the supermarket, she would like, I just found out about this new company that's doing this interesting thing. And she would write it. So one personal, one quote that was inspiring to women and I have this big book that said inspiring quotes for women. Kristen Sweeney: Nice. Maria: And those ones were very popular. One quote about a news article that was about entrepreneurship for women and one selling posts. So one post about pushing our newsletter or newsletter subscription or whatever new product. Those were the four posts a day. And I don't know if people realize that we followed these very structured types of content. And looking back, I don't think they did. I think that it just all came. It was so reviewed and so well managed that it just came pretty organically. Kristen Sweeney: Yeah. Maria: So that was fun. And then I jumped into... corporate world. I got a, that gave me sort of like the digital experience marketing of running ads and putting campaigns together and budgets. That was able to then give me my next job, which was at Elsevier Publishing, managing or helping manage their e-commerce site. And that was also super fun. I stayed there for about five years. And then finally I moved into higher ed. at MIT and at Harvard Business School. Kristen Sweeney: Yeah. Yeah. I want to ask you about that transition in just a second. when you were talking about, was it Ali Brown you said? Maria: Mm-hmm. Kristen Sweeney: So a lot of my, I'm also fairly self-trained. My degree is in musical theater and my master's in musical theater too. And a lot of my education came from the online business world because I was teaching yoga and I was like trying to launch a coaching program and It's always struck me as so interesting that in many, many cases, there's like the folks who maybe aren't the biggest businesses and a lot of solopreneurs, they had digital lockdown so early. And then you'd come into these companies with much larger revenue, much more mature, sophisticated businesses, to some extent. And... They're just kind of like messy. It's messy. It's very messy. And I still find it to be true today. So it's really interesting to me. It sounds like that sort of online business experience gave you like that insight into like, here's what a really well structured. specific foundation could look like. And maybe part of it is, I'm sure part of it's like facility with digital tools and those folks were adopting it quite early, but also maybe there's just like one vision, right? It's just kind of a singular vision. It's not teams that have to work together and where that can really like leave room for multiple interpretations. But yeah, I... found the same and it sounds like that gave you a vision and this is going to tie into our one big idea of like what it means to be really crisp and clear with what you're trying to say, what you're trying to execute on. Maria: Yeah, having those foundations, I agree. they have those foundations locked down and they are very good. These very small online entrepreneurs are very good about repeating the process, understanding their own product. And I think part of it, you're totally right. It's because they have, sometimes it's a team of one, sometimes it's a team of two, and they're able to implement new things fast and they Kristen Sweeney: Mm-hmm. Maria: are, their understanding of their own product is very good. So, and I think Kristen Sweeney: Yeah. Yeah. Maria: they say that with AI, more of these probably will facilitate more like the, you know, the AI based unicorns or like the, we're waiting for the first unicorn that is made of one person, you know, because it's all AI Kristen Sweeney: Right, right. Maria: agents. So it's interesting what like, what life that will take. Kristen Sweeney: Yeah, for sure. Tell me what the transition was like from corporate into academia. What was surprising? What were you able to bring over with you? Maria: Yeah, so the way this happened is that when we were publishing or marketing these big science books, we realized that there was a book, and this is when that I, know, I, and my career since I started the Google analytics has very linked to how do we track data and then how do we make decisions based on that. So what happened was that there was this book, published by Elsevier, I wanna say, I'm pretty sure it was a computer science book, that suddenly from seemingly nowhere, or seemingly nowhere because the data was there, but like we didn't know it, started coming up in the charts of Amazon as like, wow, this book is selling and it's, and we were trying to figure out why, and then I forget how this happened, but we figured out that it was because, There was back then it was called a MOOC, a Massive Online Open Course that was using that book. was, it must have been 2012 or 2013. And it was one of the first MOOCs that happened where a university took their content and their course and put it online. And this content or course was based in this, around, you know, the teachings of this faculty member that had published this book. So, so many people were taking that course that they were buying. their book online and we're like, wow. And then my job was then trying to figure out, okay, what other books are out there where we can place our books and we can give them a discount so that our online store. And it was really hard, but with Google Analytics, we were trying to find these books. And eventually I saw a position to manage these kinds of courses at MIT. And I was like, wow, it's like such a fascinating. very new kind of industry or kind of marketplace, very linked to making education available to the world for free. And that's how I got very interested in going to hire it and making these courses more available to the world for free. And then eventually the way that transitioned is In order to fund these courses, universities also had to sell courses. It's very, very expensive to put together these courses and to maintain them and to have them open and freely available. So many universities needed to then fund those projects with courses that were for sale. And all of these universities, Harvard, MIT, still have, I would say, most of the courses they build are available for free. And the marketing teams are a little bit more focused on the ones that produce revenue so that they can fund all the free courses that they have. Kristen Sweeney: Mm-hmm. Yeah. What surprised you when you made that jump over? Maria: Many things. The thing is the unit that I was attached to very much ran like a business and like corporate with very specific goals. So I think what surprised me was how influential universities are, or at least some universities are in the world. Kristen Sweeney: Sure. Maria: And what was very hard with Elsevier, which was like brand recognition and like Are you promoting the book or are you promoting the author? Like, how can we sell this specific book in a university like MIT and Harvard? It's like you have the brand and you have an audience that is expecting so much that is about what is the best thing that the market wants that the university has and how can you put that together to push an initiative or a product? or a course and yeah, so working with brands with a lot of recognition, was like, wow, that's a treat, it's new for me and it has its own challenges, but it has a lot of benefits too. Kristen Sweeney: Yeah, there's a lot of stewardship that has to happen, right? A lot of consideration in that way. I am an alum of the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses program. And I remember at my graduation, we were at a summit and there was a communications exec up there. At one point I asked a question and it was related to, you know, they, so it's interesting there because they are. obviously a massive organization, but they try to make everything very applicable to small business when they can because they Maria: Mm-hmm. Kristen Sweeney: sponsor this program. So I asked something about how they're getting visibility or something else. And I mean, his answer was like, we don't really have to worry about that. I was like, yeah, that's fair. All right. I'm kind of locked in my own mentality. Maria: Yeah, and you know, because I've been working also now many years in higher ed. It is interesting that in a sense, yes, the brand is very, people recognize the brand, but when you go down to your pushing specific products or initiatives, you still need to do the foundational Kristen Sweeney: Yeah. Maria: make it work. Cause you have a big following, and universities put so much out there to the world, are you able to get that audience that is interested in your specific online course or in your specific project or your specific initiative? So yeah, it Kristen Sweeney: Yeah. Maria: is a double-edged sword, I guess. Kristen Sweeney: for sure. You've been in higher ed for quite a while, and we've seen a lot of changes in that landscape. Perhaps in some ways organizations like MIT and Harvard are on some level insulated from some of the financial challenges we've seen in higher ed more broadly, with a lot of schools closing their doors. But of course, they also, speaking of double-edged sword, have these higher profiles, which has put them in the news. And then we have layered on top of that all of the changes we've seen with marketing, digital marketing, AI. feel free to take this in any direction that makes sense for you. But what are kind of the challenges of being a higher-ed marketer today? Maria: think that when things get difficult because of the context of where universities live right now, it makes marketers prioritize better what is really like, is the most, how can marketers help their institutions the most? Is it gonna be brand? Is it gonna be? product, it going to be a way to step back for a little while? It's taking direction of what the university, the strategy of the university long-term is. And also when resources are caught, it makes you prioritize better. So I think it makes teams think through exactly where they want to put their limited resources into and what is more important and how can you work more efficiently. Kristen Sweeney: Yeah. Maria: I, while it is challenging, I think it's pushing marketing teams to be a lot more focused on what's gonna drive their goals. Kristen Sweeney: Yeah. Are there areas that you are excited about or see kind of more potential in going forward, whether that's like specific channels or different tactics? Maria: Absolutely. think very interesting thing that everyone should be aware of, of course, is brand visibility in AI and in chat GPT and in Gemini and where we have, where Google Analytics used to be the king and like you would get almost all the information you wanted to get and Google search results rankings were so important. That is still important. And I would say for, for probably most channels are still one of the most important channels. But we have now people getting their answers or the recommendations from chatbots. So how is your brand mentioned in these LLMs is going to be very important for people to understand and how can they rank higher there. And unfortunately, the data is really hard because Google Analytics is, you can see ChatGPT as a source, but you don't see What are people asking? So there are tools out there now where you can sort of like get an understanding of how your brand is being mentioned in LLMs, but it's also something that you can do yourself. You can think about the personas that you're targeting and prompt chat GPT questions that your personas are asking about your brand or your product and see how many times your brand is mentioned. Kristen Sweeney: Yeah, it's interesting. My kids are very far away from college age, but, you know, I still remember when I was applying to colleges and it was, was, had like a just literal plastic bin full of brochures. And, frankly, I was totally overwhelmed by the process and applied to only two schools because I just kind of couldn't deal. So I can very much imagine that with the capabilities of LLMs today, that there's probably a lot of help me understand what schools would be best for me or what programs would be best for my needs as a post-graduate or things like, and again, I'm just kind of, there are many other searches, I'm sure, but when I think about what I just see in terms of applications, it is like that enormous amount of information. You don't quite know how to parse it. Everything looks good in a brochure. How do I really understand? which institutions might be best for me when I have hundreds or thousands to choose from. So that makes a lot of sense. Things are moving in that direction. I want to make sure we have time to move into our one big idea. So in the one big idea, we're going to get into the nitty gritty details of one insight, experience, or aspect of your work that's had a meaningful impact on how you communicate. And Maria, we want to talk today about value propositions and I think even more broadly kind of that foundational work. And maybe this is going to be a little bit surprising to some of our listeners because we've kind of positioned you in the digital marketing context and that maybe sometimes feels quite removed from foundational messaging and value props. It can feel very data-driven, testing, experimenting, agility, right? Where kind of core messaging is this much deeper, more. more stable, less visible work in a way. So can you frame up for us why this is the topic you wanted to talk about and why it matters to you maybe as a digital marketer? Maria: Yeah, so I started my career pretty much writing value propositions for books, right? And always, this was for scholastic book clubs where the catalog has like three lines that you have to write Kristen Sweeney: Uh-huh. Maria: in a way that children would read and want to make them buy that book or choose that book. So you have to get a good understanding of what the book was and a good understanding of what kids in that case wanted to see. and then you have to write it. And that really stuck with me throughout my career, even today, when I'm a little bit more removed from writing value props, when I get the chance, it is such like a treat to work on because one, I love it, but also it makes you, it forces you to understand what is behind a value prop. And truly there's a lot of work behind it. And if different marketing processes, and product processor are working correctly, then you should be able to write a very crisp and winning value prop. So what is behind a value proposition is understanding the market. So there's market research that went hopefully even before the product was finalized to understand what problem you're solving, understanding your product, which is the solution. and then making sure that you are attaching all the benefits of your product to that solution and in a way that the market understands. So I remember having seven templates to write marketing value propositions. And again, this goes back to probably these blog posts that I read was from one of our online gurus. know, online Kristen Sweeney: yeah. Maria: gurus were like, you know, but One simple one is your product is X for Y. like DoorDash is super for food. Turo is Airbnb for cars. Like those are so people understand when I say my product is Airbnb for cars. It's like, okay, I understand that. I understand that I'm gonna go rent someone else's car and drive it. And there's other templates, right? Like for people that suffer from X, this is Y, this is the solution. And there are these templates, can just Google them, but the way you end up or once you're ready to write it, if there is enough work behind it of having a great product that aligns with the market that is solving a problem, then writing it should be just like the last thing you do and in a sense, the easiest thing. and you're just polishing it and then you can test different aspects of it, you should be able to then rewrite it in different templates if you wanted to experiment a little. Kristen Sweeney: Yeah, it's so important. And I love that you called out that it's not purely a marketing exercise and certainly not a pure copywriting exercise that does have a role, certainly. But as you said, it needs to be informed by market research and ideally language from prospects themselves when you can bring that back into it. Because we've all been on the other end of something that was clearly like. It was for the person who wrote it and not for the person who was supposed to read it or use it. This work I find people like to skip it or they sometimes do skip it. And I think it is because it is, you know, it's cross-functional. It doesn't produce results. It can be quite a bit of time and resources into things that are not yet visible until you translate that value prop into campaigns, until you publish content, until you externalize it. In your experience, What is a team that's sort of willing to invest? Like what qualities do they have? A team that's like able to commit to doing this work across product, market research, all the different pieces. Maria: You mean sort of like what roles, what skills do they need to have or what processes or all of that? Kristen Sweeney: I would say even more broadly, what qualities of the team or kind of culture that Len is sort of willing to do this work versus wanting to kind of jump to, can we just test some ads? Maria: Yeah, I agree. I think an understanding of to make something successful. And sometimes so many, reason I'm starting with that is because many times when a product fails, it's the marketing campaign that failed. And that is, it could be, could be, it's sometimes it's, it's marketers are blamed for things that are not marketing, right? The marketing putting the last effort to put that makes sense out of like a little bit of a messy process. So I think the qualities behind is having the understanding that a good marketing campaign absolutely needs to have a great product behind it. And in order to get that great product, there needs to be an understanding of the problem that that product is solving and the audience that that problem is attached to. So there is. all that work behind and I think marketing people need to be able to ask those questions from product and from the people leading the research or the initiative. Okay, what is your product doing? Like what is it solving? Who is the target audience? And then yes, marketers they need to, I think asking the correct questions is a very, very good skill to have. Or, know, if you don't have and proving that with data, right? If there is some confusion about, especially like naming some initiative or naming some product, that's when marketing can actually do a lot of research and bring that clarity to make sure that a product is aligned to a market, is aligned to the problem that it's trying to solve. Kristen Sweeney: Yeah, Maria: there's a lot of curiosity and a lot of like being able to ask the questions, you know, that will all the back work that needs to be happening. before you write a value prop. Kristen Sweeney: Absolutely. I would add one thing that I've seen, which is to borrow an editorial phrase of kill your darlings. So the idea that you have to make trade-offs, I think that's what makes effective foundations that lead to good value props, that lead to great campaigns, is being willing to say not only who are we for, but being willing to define and stick to. That means we're not for these people, and we're okay with that. Maria: Yeah. Kristen Sweeney: And we're not trying Maria: Yes. Kristen Sweeney: to also sort of please them backdoor, reach them too, because it just dilutes the messaging and things get messy. And you lose that clarity. Maria: I completely agree. Yes. Kristen Sweeney: So let's talk about kind of the downstream impacts of having a strong clear value prop or not. I know one of the things that I found and it's why several years ago we actually kind of moved upstream and started offering messaging services is because I'd worked with organizations and we were building and leading their content programs, but we'd find that the content assets we were creating were being used, I call them comment wars, to work through. very key things about the company's point of view on something. And it was like, this blog, this white paper, this social media post is not the place to figure out what your perspective is or who you're really trying to talk to. And so we kind of up backing up and saying, if you don't have that part in place, it's really difficult for us to do that downstream work. So what do you see on the, you know, maybe. digital campaign side, web experience, everything that's kind of in your scope today that is easier or harder, I guess, depending on the strength of the value props. Maria: Yeah, I think you're totally right, especially when you're managing a website or when you're redoing a website. If the organization or the way you're presenting do not have a good clear organization, it's so hard to put it out to the external world. So that connection between what is our internal, the complexity of an internal organization and this happens, it's very common with higher ed, right? Where organizations are very complex inside, but the world doesn't... doesn't know, you know, for the world MIT is one MIT and Harvard is one Harvard and like no matter, they don't know how complex the organization is behind. So trying to simplify the complexity to the world is very hard. And sometimes, you know, in an ideal world, the outside organization should match the inside organization, but that's rarely the case, I think, especially with brands that have been on for a long time. So I think it is then becomes part of the marketers job to say, this is internally all we have, but the market is this is what they're going to see. And this is what you don't need to put outside. We don't have to replicate the complexity, the internal complexity. We just have to match what the world needs and what is more relevant. And that is OK that your external site will not match necessarily your org inside, right? I think it's, I think marketers need to walk the line. It's like being the voice of the customer while understanding that inside the internal organization might be different or maybe not all the messages will get out, but the messages that people wanna hear are the ones that are gonna get out. Kristen Sweeney: Yeah, absolutely. And I think part of what I think about when I think about a higher ed setting is just tons of stakeholder management, right? Like, is every single faculty member a stakeholder? In some sense, yes. Should every single faculty member be part of the website review committee? I hope not. So of, and again, then you are, I think, dealing with things that go well beyond, well, who makes sense to put on the committee for the website? This is like the politics of the institution and needing to kind of navigate that and work within it, but also recognize that it's maybe not the responsibility of the website project to fully change manage how the organization operates from a people's side. Yeah. Maria: I think often, and especially in a higher ed environment, data helps a lot when you say, it is okay if internally we wanna name things this way, but externally, this is what we're seeing in Google Analytics, right? And I find that a lot of people in higher ed are very receptive to data and to market data and to understanding, to seeing how the world is actually. Googling things or how they're coming to our website or the importance to have a good structure so that LLMs can read the schema of the website in a way that will long-term bring up our visibility in AI. Kristen Sweeney: Yeah. Tell me a little bit more before we wrap here about how a strong value proposition makes the rest of the work. Is it better, faster, easier? How does that flow downstream? Maria: Absolutely, I think after you have a strong value prop, everything else can be easier because you have what the audience says should be in the value prop, what the problem is being solved, and what the solution is, right? Those are sort of the three basic elements. So if you have the solution, then you can go dive deeper into why the solution and how is the solution helping you. You can even dive into the problem. It's like create a lot more sympathy for the problem or storytelling about the problem. And from then I can think about many different experiments that you can run. But truly like having that creep and have everyone understand how the work that was done behind writing a value prop makes everything just connect together and sets up the marketing team for success. Although people will say it was a great product and it's true, But when things go right, Kristen Sweeney: Yes and. Both and. Both and. Maria: it's never the marketing team. But it's fine. That's the world we live in. But yeah, I think it's just everyone will win with a good value prop. Kristen Sweeney: And while you're running experiments and testing, which is critical, it's not the kind of experimentation that's like, are we this? Are we that? It's still the Maria: is right. Kristen Sweeney: brand awareness level messages still come through, which I think is very valuable, especially right now there's lot of just, again, a lot of change happening. what's working where, where should budget be allocated, what kind of creative is working best, a lot of considerations around that. But you don't want the need to be agile in that way to make it look like you don't have an identity anymore. Maria: And that work of if this or that should happen before the product is launched. Like there's definitely space to experiment that way, but not once the product is ready and done and ready to ship. Well, those Kristen Sweeney: Right, right, right. Maria: are like early and marketing can get involved in it and especially small teams marketing does that too. And then it's even better for the marketing team because then they'd in there for the journey of the product. I guess in big corporations, this would be more on the product and research side. But in small teams, it's great to pull in marketing teams right at the beginning when the product is being created so that they can define these questions with data of like, is it this, is it audience, is it really for these two audiences, is it really this just for one? And then they're getting involved much earlier in the process. Kristen Sweeney: Love that. Thank you for this conversation. I want to transition us to the last word. This is our lightning round segment. So every guest gets these same five questions. Just go with your gut on these answers. Are you ready, Maria? Maria: I'm Bridie. Kristen Sweeney: one. What's your favorite word to say out loud? Maria: Nostalgia. Kristen Sweeney: what a nice word. Yeah. Maria: love it. I love the meaning behind it. I love the sound of it. Sounds better in Spanish, but I love it. I feel like it's very hard to define what it is. But you people understanding. Kristen Sweeney: Yeah, it's a feeling. Maria: It's a feeling. It's something that is sad in the moment, but happy when it happened. And you're sad for the happiness that is no there. It's a very poetic word, I guess. Kristen Sweeney: Love it. Question two, what's a word you might know from reading but you are not sure how to pronounce it? Maria: This is ca- chaos? Chaos? See I cannot even- chaos? Chaos, chaos. It's chaos, right? Yes! So hard for Kristen Sweeney: Chaos, chaos, yeah. Maria: me to pronounce. Because in Spanish we don't have that- there's this vowel that I cannot- or also Kristen Sweeney: That diphthong, yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. Maria: any Massachusetts town that you think pronounce- pronounced. Barnstable Kristen Sweeney: Fair. Maria: is barnstable. Plymouth should be pli- no. Plymouth is Plymouth, not Plymouth. Don't get me started with Massachusetts sounds. It's impossible. Kristen Sweeney: Yes, 100 % agree. What's one phrase or saying you wish could be retired for good aside from every Massachusetts town name? Maria: Just get it done. Kristen Sweeney: say more. Maria: Because I like, just do it. I like the Nike, just do it. I like it, because it's like, just do it. You, like, as a person, put it on yourself to do it. But just get it done, it's like someone telling someone else to get it done, and the hard part is like, well, you don't know how to get it done, how hard it is. So when someone tells someone else just get it done, I don't like that. I wish that didn't happen. Kristen Sweeney: I often say that if you are gonna put the word just, like can you just, you're already wildly about to minimize whatever's happening and show that you don't understand it. Maria: No. Agreed. Kristen Sweeney: Question four, what's a communication practice or principle that's non-negotiable for you? Maria: Being transparent and explaining the context of any new tasks or situation. I think over explaining in many, not in the marketing world to the external audiences, but internally when you're managing a team, there's no such thing I think as over explaining or sharing more context is better than not and being very transparent. Kristen Sweeney: Yes, all about context, agree. And what's the last thing you read, heard, or watched that really stuck with you? Maria: Yes, I rewatching all the Spider-Man series and because my daughter is now finally an age where she can watch these like movies that I loved. with great power comes great responsibility. I know that's from originally I think from Winston Churchill, but in an age of AI, I feel like that is I use AI all the time and I'm a big advocate. think marketing teams need to learn to use it. And you said responsibly, like it does still hallucinate a lot. I'm sure Chai GPT can write amazing value propositions, but I think going through the exercise of writing it yourself gives you all of the important information or all the important practice that you need to do to ask the right questions. Even prompting is amazing if you can prompt and prompt Chai GPT better and better, but not letting AI just make the decisions for you, I would say. Use tool Kristen Sweeney: Nice. Maria: to arrive to a decision for sure, sounding board, but use it responsibly, so, cause it's a great power. Kristen Sweeney: Yeah, and you and your daughter are going to be ready for the Spider-Man movie this summer. Yeah, nice. Awesome. Maria: Yes, we need to catch up. are now in the amazing Spider-Man series. Kristen Sweeney: Okay, okay, you got some work to do. Maria, thank you so much for joining me today. If our listeners want to learn more about you, where can they go to find you? Maria: At LinkedIn, I use my Gmail, marialena.cruz.gmail.com and I'm in LinkedIn. Kristen Sweeney: Awesome. Thank you so much. Wonderful conversation. Really appreciate you being here. Maria: Thank you, Kristen. Thank you.