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Transcript

Five Hidden Threats B2B CMOs Can’t Ignore · Sales Pipeline Radio

• 0:16
  Matt Heinz: All right.
• 0:16
  Welcome back.
• 0:17
  We are live here at Forrester, B2B Summit, live on the show the marketplace floor.
• 0:23
  I'm already losing my train of thought here, Karen.
• 0:25
  This will be maybe the loosest session we've done, 'cause
• 0:28
  I'm getting a little cheeky.
• 0:29
  Perfect.
• 0:30
  But just really appreciate just Forrester making this possible.
• 0:33
  We've got, I think we're up to about 20 of these recordings.
• 0:35
  But between analysts like yourself, between some ROI award winners, a lot of
• 0:39
  go-to-market leaders walking the halls who have opinions about what's working,
• 0:44
  what's not working, best practices, cautionary tales, dumpster fires.
• 0:48
  But what better place Karen, than to get together as a group of B2B,
• 0:51
  go to market leaders and just really have those honest conversations.
• 0:54
  Right.
• 0:55
  And just talk about what's working and not, and admit that like,
• 0:57
  this isn't always a success story.
• 0:59
  This isn't always a linear path, but we're all kind of learning together.
• 1:03
  Karen Tran: Absolutely.
• 1:03
  No I mean it's been an incredible experience for me.
• 1:06
  I know I am an analyst and it's our event, but, you know, hearing from
• 1:11
  the practitioners, their experience, what's resonating with them, what
• 1:15
  they are challenged by day to day in their business, and how they can come
• 1:20
  together here to share those experiences.
• 1:22
  So it's been very energizing.
• 1:25
  Matt Heinz: Well, I would imagine as an analyst, I mean, it's one thing to be
• 1:27
  able to get insights when you do a survey and you sort of even talk to someone on
• 1:30
  the phone or Zoom, but it's more of a sort of sensory experience when you can
• 1:34
  see someone like you can see them sigh.
• 1:36
  You can see them tense up when they talk about something that is hard.
• 1:39
  And that's part of this, right?
• 1:40
  Like, and until robots sell the robots, we're still humans with lizard
• 1:44
  brains trying to make this stuff work.
• 1:45
  And I think the more we can accept our fallibility, right and more accept
• 1:50
  those true elements of being human to do this as buyers and sellers.
• 1:55
  I think we'll be better off.
• 1:57
  Karen Tran: I totally agree.
• 1:58
  I just completed facilitating a round table on social media and it
• 2:01
  was really wonderful to see people.
• 2:04
  Be vulnerable with one another in that sharing.
• 2:08
  And you're right, it's a nuanced experience.
• 2:10
  Human to human.
• 2:11
  Yeah.
• 2:12
  You know, sharing what's successful, sharing what's challenging, and then
• 2:15
  coming together to have new ideas and what we can do better to be more successful.
• 2:22
  Matt Heinz: Well, kudos to Forrester for, I think really amping up the interactive
• 2:26
  nature of this conference, right?
• 2:27
  I mean, there's so many times you come to an event like this
• 2:29
  and you're spoken to, right?
• 2:31
  Like great insights, good content, but it's someone that presents someone in
• 2:33
  a PowerPoint deck, and that's kind of it between the round table discussions,
• 2:37
  the birds of feather at meals.
• 2:39
  The analyst led discussions, which are like bringing the expertise
• 2:42
  but making it interactive.
• 2:44
  I think people get a lot more out of that and you end up with marketers
• 2:47
  here that may be sort of more naturally introverted that are not
• 2:50
  gonna walk up to a stranger and say like, what are your Pipeline problems?
• 2:53
  But a facilitated conversation, people up and then you can continue that
• 2:56
  discussion even after that session's over.
• 2:59
  Karen Tran: No, it's been really gratifying to see the connections
• 3:02
  that have been made here.
• 3:03
  Yeah.
• 3:03
  I just, like I said, left this round table and there was two people and they had
• 3:07
  this loose connection earlier in their careers and then reunited by chance at
• 3:13
  this round table and through sharing.
• 3:15
  And then they're like we're gonna continue with this connection and
• 3:18
  help each other professionally.
• 3:20
  So loving that.
• 3:23
  Matt Heinz: I love it.
• 3:23
  I love it.
• 3:23
  Well, I appreciate the diversity of topics.
• 3:26
  We've been able to hear from Forrester analysts over the last
• 3:29
  couple days, and a couple folks that have been able to join us here.
• 3:32
  Today I wanna talk a little bit about deep fakes.
• 3:34
  Mm-hmm.
• 3:34
  So right before here, we recorded something on AI agents, which
• 3:37
  probably scares some marketers.
• 3:38
  Now we're gonna go to deep fakes which might scare the rest of them.
• 3:41
  And maybe that should or shouldn't scare people, but I think let's start
• 3:43
  from the beginning because when I think about deep fakes we got so
• 3:46
  much to worry about in marketing.
• 3:48
  What do you mean?
• 3:49
  What is a deep fake in 2025?
• 3:51
  Karen Tran: Sure.
• 3:51
  Yeah.
• 3:52
  A deep fake is an AI generated, you know it's taking somebody's
• 3:57
  likeness, their voice likeness.
• 3:58
  Their visual likeness and creating a version of them that isn't real.
• 4:03
  Yeah.
• 4:04
  So that's generally what a deepfake means.
• 4:07
  And DeepFakes aren't new, right?
• 4:09
  They've been around for a long time.
• 4:11
  Right.
• 4:11
  We're used to seeing DeepFakes of politicians, DeepFakes of celebrities
• 4:16
  to the point where, you know, sometimes we know what's real and what's not.
• 4:20
  Yeah.
• 4:21
  But we're not accustomed to seeing deep fakes in business.
• 4:25
  Because why would businesses be targeted by a deepfake?
• 4:28
  Right.
• 4:28
  You know, the other point too is that DeepFakes used to be.
• 4:32
  Expensive to create.
• 4:34
  Mm-hmm.
• 4:35
  They used to be difficult to create.
• 4:36
  And in the last couple of years with the advancements of ai, they
• 4:41
  are inexpensive, sometimes free.
• 4:43
  Yeah.
• 4:43
  To create and easy to create.
• 4:46
  And just about anyone can create a deep fake.
• 4:50
  And part of this research came out, it came out of a couple of different
• 4:53
  areas that I. I am from Baltimore.
• 4:55
  I live in the Baltimore area, and we had a situation where a principal
• 5:00
  was deep faked by a disgruntled employee, an athletic director.
• 5:05
  And I'm not sure what he was disgruntled about, but he made a deep fake of the
• 5:09
  principal saying anti-Semitic things.
• 5:12
  And it took some time for them to disprove that it wasn't the principal.
• 5:15
  Right.
• 5:16
  So we've got disgruntled employee situation that can cause all kinds of
• 5:20
  problems that was in a school district.
• 5:22
  But as we looked more deeply into the research, we found other
• 5:26
  incidences I believe it was in Hong Kong, where an employee was
• 5:32
  tricked in a video conference.
• 5:35
  With people who he thought were his, you know, team members convinced
• 5:41
  him to send millions of dollars, I think it was $25 million.
• 5:46
  Right?
• 5:46
  My goodness.
• 5:47
  Why are those funds somewhere?
• 5:49
  And really all of those individuals on a live video conference were deep faked.
• 5:55
  Wow.
• 5:55
  Right.
• 5:56
  Matt Heinz: That's incredible.
• 5:56
  Right?
• 5:57
  It's terrifying.
• 5:57
  It is.
• 5:58
  Karen Tran: It really is.
• 5:59
  Yeah.
• 5:59
  So that is the danger to business.
• 6:01
  If there's money to be had, there will be criminals out
• 6:04
  there that are trying to get it.
• 6:07
  Matt Heinz: Now there are vendors on the show floor here who are
• 6:10
  actually selling deep fakes, right?
• 6:12
  Mm-hmm.
• 6:12
  That are sort of shaking the concept of, for instance, an AI BDR, and
• 6:16
  saying, I don't just need someone to pretend they're writing something.
• 6:19
  I can have you interact on a zoom call with someone that is not a real person.
• 6:23
  It looks and acts like a, BDR.
• 6:24
  So, there are cases where it can be used for good.
• 6:28
  What are some ways to be able to differentiate the two?
• 6:31
  Karen Tran: Right.
• 6:31
  And that's something we talk about in our research, right.
• 6:34
  We are calling it a positive deepfake.
• 6:36
  Mm-hmm.
• 6:36
  And again, positive DeepFakes aren't new either, but with the advancements
• 6:40
  of ai, everybody's jumping on board.
• 6:43
  They're not calling them deep fakes.
• 6:45
  Yeah.
• 6:45
  Right.
• 6:45
  They're calling them something else.
• 6:47
  Yeah.
• 6:47
  And they can be a very positive use case for them.
• 6:52
  And it really comes into question of ethics and transparency.
• 6:57
  Mm-hmm.
• 6:58
  How are you letting people know that they're not dealing with a human?
• 7:02
  Yeah.
• 7:03
  And is there an ethical question there?
• 7:05
  Of course there is.
• 7:07
  And, where's that point of.
• 7:09
  You know, robot and human, if you will.
• 7:11
  AI and human.
• 7:12
  Yeah.
• 7:12
  Where's that line?
• 7:14
  And in some conversations that we had internally and when I was doing this
• 7:18
  research, one of our analysts actually had this experience where he was engaged
• 7:23
  with the chat bot and he said to the chat bot, I would like to talk to an agent.
• 7:27
  Right.
• 7:27
  So this was six months ago or something.
• 7:29
  And when he said, agent.
• 7:31
  He meant a person.
• 7:32
  Oh.
• 7:32
  Because that's how we are used to speaking.
• 7:35
  Yeah.
• 7:35
  Yeah.
• 7:35
  And so, his case was escalated and he's engaging with an agent and at
• 7:40
  one point he says, are you a human?
• 7:43
  And.
• 7:44
  It wouldn't respond.
• 7:45
  Matt Heinz: It wouldn't respond.
• 7:46
  It wouldn't respond.
• 7:46
  Karen Tran: And that's when he realized, oh, I'm not dealing with a human.
• 7:49
  I thought I was dealing with a human.
• 7:52
  But it's actually AI and it won't tell me that it's ai.
• 7:56
  We also have had some clients that you know and.
• 8:00
  I work with marketers.
• 8:01
  Marketers tend to be positive people, right?
• 8:03
  We're always solution oriented.
• 8:05
  We're innovators, we're creative.
• 8:07
  And so one of our clients was saying, we've gotten this AI to be
• 8:11
  so good that you can't tell it's ai.
• 8:14
  It seems like it's human.
• 8:16
  Our test case people thought it was human and they celebrated that and we said,
• 8:21
  well, yeah, that's great, but what does that mean if you're tricking people?
• 8:25
  Yes.
• 8:25
  You know?
• 8:26
  Have you thought through the ethics?
• 8:27
  Have you thought through the transparency?
• 8:29
  Do you have governance in place to make sure that you're not giving
• 8:33
  people a false experience that could hurt your brand, right?
• 8:37
  Could injure your reputation?
• 8:39
  Matt Heinz: I worry about what this means for trust.
• 8:41
  Karen Tran: Absolutely.
• 8:42
  Matt Heinz: You know, like in the moment I can say, well, you know, I'm
• 8:44
  able to chat with someone and I'm able to have a conversation on a website
• 8:47
  that I otherwise wouldn't have had, or I'm able to more efficiently engage
• 8:51
  with early stage website visitors or hand raisers where it's more efficient
• 8:55
  to have a sales rep engage later.
• 8:57
  But if in the moment that helps you, but it feels like a bait and switch even when
• 9:02
  you realize, you thought you were talking to someone that you weren't talking to.
• 9:05
  And there's a variety of ways that can feel, just kind of icky.
• 9:10
  Karen Tran: Yeah.
• 9:11
  And I personally remember those feelings in the early days of chatbots when I've
• 9:15
  interacted with chatbots that put a salesperson's picture and a name there and
• 9:20
  misrepresented it, and it was very obvious that you were just chatting with a bot.
• 9:25
  Yeah.
• 9:25
  And I was like, why are they misrepresenting this as if I'm talking to.
• 9:29
  Steve, I actually know Steve, right?
• 9:31
  Yeah.
• 9:31
  He might be a rep that I've been dealing with.
• 9:33
  Yeah.
• 9:33
  And now, this is not Steve.
• 9:35
  Yeah.
• 9:35
  And so yes, it really makes me question the company and the brand,
• 9:39
  and there's a lack of authenticity.
• 9:41
  I think that there will be a turning point at some point where p eople will expect
• 9:48
  that they aren't dealing with the human.
• 9:50
  Mm-hmm.
• 9:50
  But we aren't there yet.
• 9:51
  Matt Heinz: No.
• 9:51
  Karen Tran: So, until we're there, I think it's really important as a
• 9:54
  company, to know what your standards are and to know again, you know.
• 10:00
  Are you being transparent?
• 10:01
  What are the ethical questions you need to be asking yourself?
• 10:04
  Matt Heinz: Some of these are sort of known unknowns, right?
• 10:07
  Like we have a question that we can enumerate, but we don't know the answer.
• 10:11
  I worry about the unknown unknowns.
• 10:12
  Right?
• 10:13
  And so like your session is really focused on like the hidden threats that
• 10:16
  CMOs really shouldn't and can't ignore.
• 10:18
  What are some other hidden threats that CMOs just might not even be thinking about
• 10:21
  given their current frame of reference?
• 10:23
  Karen Tran: Right.
• 10:23
  Yeah, those are great questions.
• 10:24
  It's so funny.
• 10:25
  One of the things I say is like.
• 10:27
  I'm not a criminal, so I'm not, so I don't think like a criminal.
• 10:33
  Yeah.
• 10:33
  And it's sometimes hard for me to even come up with the scenarios Yeah.
• 10:38
  That you need to be thinking about.
• 10:39
  Yeah.
• 10:39
  You know?
• 10:40
  So what are some of the things that we have seen?
• 10:43
  In terms of malicious attacks?
• 10:46
  Mm-hmm.
• 10:46
  Leveraging DeepFakes.
• 10:47
  There's the one that I just described and that's happening.
• 10:51
  In many cases, it's being thwarted.
• 10:53
  How's it being thwarted?
• 10:55
  Where somebody's trying to manipulate a person into taking an action
• 10:59
  to release funds, for instance.
• 11:01
  Yep.
• 11:02
  So that's a scenario that can be mitigated with deep fake detection technology.
• 11:09
  Oftentimes that's owned by the CISO or the technology team.
• 11:13
  Where marketers have to be aware is there's also the case.
• 11:18
  Externally outside of your organization where executives can be targeted.
• 11:25
  Women in particular are targeted in a very pornographic way with
• 11:30
  the advent of deep fake technology.
• 11:33
  It's really an awful thing.
• 11:34
  But there's everything from deep fakes can be created to make
• 11:38
  executives be put into compromising situations or the appearance of such.
• 11:43
  Yep.
• 11:44
  Or malicious actors can make deep fakes of executives saying things that
• 11:49
  aren't true about the organization in an attempt sometimes to tank the stock
• 11:54
  price to make the company look bad.
• 11:56
  And so.
• 11:57
  Marketers and communication executives have to be prepared to
• 12:01
  respond to that extremely quickly.
• 12:06
  Because once that truth gets out there, right, and I'm saying that truth.
• 12:10
  Yeah,
• 12:10
  Matt Heinz: yeah,
• 12:11
  Karen Tran: yeah.
• 12:11
  There's that line between truth and believability.
• 12:14
  Matt Heinz: Correct.
• 12:14
  Karen Tran: That has to be.
• 12:16
  Addressed very quickly.
• 12:18
  And even more, people think that they're not gonna be targeted.
• 12:21
  Executives think that they won't be targeted.
• 12:23
  I'm not famous enough.
• 12:24
  Mm. Nobody knows me.
• 12:25
  I'm a regular guy.
• 12:26
  Even if I'm a woman, even if you're a CEO you're not Warren Buffet, you're not Bill
• 12:32
  Gates, you don't have a celebrity status.
• 12:34
  I won't be targeted.
• 12:35
  Or you work for a mid-size or small company.
• 12:38
  Yeah.
• 12:39
  And it was something that I saw in the early days of cybersecurity,
• 12:43
  I used to work for a payment processing software company.
• 12:47
  And so we talked a lot about compliance and security in the SMB market.
• 12:51
  Those businesses were the ones that were most targeted and they
• 12:54
  oftentimes denied the threat.
• 12:57
  Everybody is at risk.
• 12:59
  But if it's outside of your organization, somebody makes a video and says
• 13:03
  something really negative, you have to be prepared to counter that immediately.
• 13:07
  Yeah.
• 13:07
  Matt Heinz: It sounds like at minimum.
• 13:09
  This is a component of a crisis communication preparedness plan that
• 13:12
  CMOs need to be aware of, need to start thinking through and have some
• 13:16
  of those scenarios in mind so they can respond quickly and mitigate that.
• 13:20
  Karen Tran: Yes, a hundred percent.
• 13:21
  And when we were doing the research we reach out to CMOs and corporate
• 13:25
  communication executives to talk about these topics and interview them.
• 13:29
  And so many people said, oh, we can't be interviewed.
• 13:33
  This isn't even on our radar.
• 13:34
  And then even speaking with some agencies and communication firms saying none
• 13:39
  of our clients are talking about this.
• 13:41
  And they really should.
• 13:43
  And we interviewed lots of people.
• 13:44
  So we definitely did have some executives say, no, this is on our radar.
• 13:50
  This is something we're considering.
• 13:51
  This is something that we are looking at.
• 13:54
  Matt Heinz: Yeah.
• 13:54
  Karen Tran: There's even the question of if it does happen to you and
• 13:57
  you thwart it, you know, how do you educate your employees mm-hmm.
• 14:02
  On this issue.
• 14:03
  And how do you help them to mitigate the risk of a deep fake Yeah.
• 14:08
  And I was gonna say it's very similar to phishing schemes, right?
• 14:12
  Exactly.
• 14:12
  Matt Heinz: Yeah.
• 14:13
  I was literally about to mention that like, even in our company we
• 14:16
  have a security channel in Slack where people will share examples of
• 14:19
  things they're getting just to remind people to stay vigilant, right.
• 14:22
  People get creative, things come in different formats.
• 14:25
  Literally just this morning got an email from someone I know that said,
• 14:28
  oh, here's an RFP for a project, right?
• 14:30
  Mm-hmm.
• 14:31
  The link looked a little weird, so we sent it off to our IT group
• 14:34
  and said I'm not clicking this.
• 14:35
  Can you confirm this is okay?
• 14:36
  Yes.
• 14:36
  And about an hour later we got an email from that person saying I've
• 14:39
  been hacked, that it's not real.
• 14:40
  Don't click on it.
• 14:41
  And that's about as close as I've come to being like, that sounds like a real thing.
• 14:44
  I'm gonna do it.
• 14:45
  And so, really glad we didn't.
• 14:47
  But just being vigilant and recognizing examples of what's
• 14:50
  happening in and outside your company.
• 14:52
  Just to be prepared.
• 14:54
  Karen Tran: Yes completely.
• 14:55
  There's a story where there was an attempt within Ferrari deep faking an
• 15:00
  executive trying to get funds moved.
• 15:03
  I believe the YouTube CEO was recently deep faked and a video was sent to
• 15:08
  their key influencers and creators on their platform asking them to
• 15:13
  click a link to take an action.
• 15:15
  So it was a deep fake phishing attempt.
• 15:17
  So it's really becoming an issue.
• 15:21
  I think at the time of the research I was doing that our report
• 15:24
  published, I think it was one in 10 executives, said that they had
• 15:28
  an attempt of a deep fake on them.
• 15:30
  I think that stat keeps increasing from different sources.
• 15:34
  Wow.
• 15:34
  I think it's like four in 10.
• 15:35
  I've seen 75% of executives say.
• 15:39
  And so it's really becoming a prevalent problem.
• 15:41
  And again, what is the role of marketing?
• 15:44
  What is the role of the CMO or the corporate communications
• 15:48
  executive in this.
• 15:49
  Yep.
• 15:49
  I think it's really necessary to be partnering with your CISO, your
• 15:53
  CTO, your CIO to understand, do we have deep fake detection technology?
• 15:59
  Mm-hmm.
• 16:00
  And what are we doing on the tech side, and then what can we do on the marketing
• 16:04
  side in terms of monitoring to see what's happening out there with our reputation.
• 16:10
  So having a multi-pronged approach.
• 16:13
  Yeah.
• 16:13
  To monitoring and threat detection and threat mitigation is really important.
• 16:18
  And then this response strategy, right?
• 16:20
  Right.
• 16:20
  'cause if you're completely caught off guard, right.
• 16:23
  Your tech team might be like, oh yeah, we're doing all these things but then if
• 16:27
  something happens, do you know what to do?
• 16:29
  Right.
• 16:30
  Do you have the communications in place?
• 16:32
  Do you have authentic video of your executives?
• 16:35
  Mm-hmm.
• 16:35
  So that you can compare and say, no, this is actually an authentic video, and we
• 16:40
  have the ability to show you why this other one is AI generated and why it's
• 16:45
  not an authentic video or audio clip.
• 16:48
  Matt Heinz: Well, thank you for your focus on this because I think
• 16:50
  this is something that not a lot of people are thinking about today.
• 16:52
  And to even just have some examples of what's happening, examples of
• 16:55
  what you might start to see give some people some scenario planning, right?
• 16:59
  And to do some crisis communication planning and to
• 17:00
  help teams be more vigilant.
• 17:01
  So thank you so much for being here.
• 17:03
  I know you're super busy.
• 17:04
  We're getting to the end of a long day.
• 17:05
  But thank you so much Karen for being here on Sales Pipeline Radio.
• 17:08
  Karen Tran: Thank you, Matt.
• 17:09
  My pleasure.