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SBP 226: The Barber's Brief - The AI Efficiency Trap: When Doing More With Less Backfires · Sleeping Barber - A Marketing Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_03: Welcome to the Sleeping Barber Podcast.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome back to the Sleeping Barber Podcast, where we have a segment that we'd like to call the Barber's Brief.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_01: In this segment, we'd like to cover items that caught our attention over the last couple weeks, things that are potentially overhype or just generally what's the what's happening in the news.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, we also like to celebrate Greg Creative with out of the week.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_02: Mark, good morning.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_02: How are you?
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_02: Good morning, Vasilios.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_02: How's it going?
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_02: A lot of S's in there.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of S's.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_02: Super.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, quite a few things in the news out there this last couple weeks.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_02: Well, since we last recorded.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_02: There was one that I found called, well, it was a CMO survey, but this I'm calling this news story, the efficiency spiral.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_02: So there's this interesting person I met in Cannes, Rebecca Dijkman, and she runs this FutureWorks Initiative initiative.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_02: She worked with Tom Roach on this uh CMO survey this year, and they were looking at AI growth in the bottom line.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_02: So it's a it's a relatively small sampling of CMOs they surveyed, but I think the findings are really interesting.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_02: I'm exploring a lot of the stuff with the marketing association I'm running, and I'm doing a lot of this stuff with clients right now, anyway.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_02: Just using AI and looking at growth and how we're look using thinking about AI.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_02: The findings that they came up with are probably familiar to a lot of us, but a little uncomfortable, I'd say.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_02: So in their survey, most CMOs are funding AI by cannibalizing their own budgets.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, there's a definite cost there.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_02: So they're banking savings wherever they can and then sending the money back to the CFO or whoever runs the financing.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_02: And so they're not reinvesting necessarily in marketing.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_02: And so they're they're you know, they're proving that marketing can run on less, which then justifies the next round of cuts.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_02: And it's kind of this efficiency spiral that, you know, it's the snake eating its own tail idea.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_02: Then they found that smaller companies they surveyed are lapping the enterprise ones.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_02: So the scale actually for large-scale companies have become a liability in that they can't agree on how to use the tools.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, there's obviously a lot of good reasons around governance to put things in there.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_02: But meanwhile, there's so much happening in AI, and there's this talent gap that's growing between the big and small companies, and most of the big companies don't really have plans to hire for it.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_02: And so they're naming this problem in that there's a talent gap, but there's not really a hiring component going on to replace it.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_02: And then organizations are pulling ahead.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, the ones that are pulling ahead are doing something a little bit different different.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_02: They're framing AI as a revenue play, not as a cost savings tool.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_02: So they're securing new budget instead of just robbing existing budget lines.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_02: And then they're hiring strategic architects, not just upskilling what they have.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_02: And so it's interesting because there's somebody that made this comment to me that this is the most sophisticated tool we've ever had.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_02: And if you think about it only as a thing to save money, you don't have it shows a lack of imagination.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_02: So I know you've been playing around with AI.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_02: And I think this you probably have thought about this.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_02: What does it look like if we actually used AI as a tool to grow and drive revenue as opposed to one that's just going to save money?
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: That's honestly, it's a great question.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_01: The the one thing I don't want to say I want to counter with.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: I wonder, though, if AI has been positioned more as a cost savings tool, or sorry, many organizations probably see that more as a cost savings, as a byproduct of the environment we're operating in.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: Like I think, you know, economies have I don't want to use the term collapse, but they're not at they're not in full growth mode that they once were, I don't know, I want to say maybe well, pre-COVID.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I think we after COVID, things kind of went in a in a different direction for many.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_01: So I think what's happened is as people are trying to find true growth and try to get back to being in the black, they saw AI as a way to get their potential a little bit quicker.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's where what what basically what you're saying is where some organizers have become a little bit more obsessed with what are the efficiencies, cost savings side of these tools that we can introduce into our current ecosystem instead of thinking about what parts of my business could usually use an accelerator with an AI tool behind it.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_01: So I I do try to think about the latter where it's like, is there a problem that we're actually we talked about this a couple of weeks ago?
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_01: Remember, there was this one article that talked about, you know, what are the five questions that you need to ask about AI?
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: And the one is like, well, if this tool didn't exist today, what would change in my business?
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I think we have to use that lens, that framing of it, to say where can we actually benefit by leveraging this?
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_01: And it could be, you know, I'm thinking about it from a data architecture perspective.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_01: Is there a way I can use AI to bring all my data, my uh, my data together in one space?
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: And that helps me query the data, helps me do a lot more than things that I haven't been able to do.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_01: So it's just, I think it just depends.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_01: I think the framing is you're bang on on that.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: We probably should be thinking about more long term, but I do have I am empathetic to those organizations that are probably still trying to uh get some sort of uh profitability once again.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: They're seeing it as a way to get there as well.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, that's fair.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: All right, what do you got?
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_01: What did I have?
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_01: Well, marketing has the loneliest seat at the table, but it's only it's the only one with a panoramic view.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: So this was a thought leadership piece that I caught at Marketing Week.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: And it obviously caught my attention.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: I think the title did that in and of itself.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: But that that title, the the second part of it is actually really what's important, the the idea of the panoramic view.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the article goes on to argue the marketing leaders often feel isolated because they are seeing the business from a fundamentally different vantage point.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_01: You know, finance sees the numbers, operations see the delivery, sales see the immediate pipeline, products see the roadmap.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_01: Marketing is expected to try to connect all of that, right?
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_01: Now, think about the customer, the culture, the competition, technology, distribution, brand, demand, and increasingly these structural changes that may not show up in the quarter's trading report, but will reshape the business over the next several years.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_01: So the author goes on to explain that you know, use AI as an example, marketing sees discovery changing, customer journeys collapsing, and the competitive map being redrawn.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_01: The rest of the organization asks whether it will affect, say, things like the more immediate, like in the in the short term, like the Christmas campaign, or how can we leverage it in those moments of time.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's where that gap or this idea of loneliness really starts coming from.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: And honestly, I think the article is making an important argument about how maybe underappreciated marketing still is, or its role in an organization.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_01: Too many businesses continue to view marketing as a collection of tasks.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you have campaigns, you have content, media, communications, etc.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: But at its best, marketing is an integrated discipline.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: We often, you and I, talk about marketing as the four Ps.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_01: How many organizations have actually given marketing access to all four Ps?
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's becoming, you know, it's almost going by way of the dodo bird, really.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: But if we think about it as an integrated discipline, it's one of the very few functions that require that is required to understand how the entire business comes together in the mind and experience of, at the end of the day, the customer.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_01: So that panoramic view is valuable, but it also creates responsibility.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: So because seeing the change is not enough, marketing has to find ways of translating that, create that coherence around it and hold that line long enough for the rest of the organization to catch up.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, I at the end of the day, I know I've felt this.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um I don't want to speak for you, but I would assume that you've probably felt this at moments uh in your career as well.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_01: But do you think organizations genuinely recognize the market capital and marketing, I think as you like to call call it, as an integrated commercial function?
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_01: No, I don't.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_01: There it is.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: You heard it here first.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_02: Next.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_02: I'm with you.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_02: I'm with you.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_02: I don't I really struggle with this because I like I I don't read a lot of articles about finance or product development.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_02: Uh well, I do read more articles about product development, but like distribution, logistics, that kind of stuff.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_02: You know, like manufacturing more so on the than product development.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_02: Like I don't read a lot of that kind of stuff.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_02: So I don't know if the other industries or or or business functions talk about themselves the same way that marketers do.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_02: But I feel like this is a common thing that marketers talk a lot about, which is that we see the whole picture, we have the whole picture.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_02: You know, we're we're the voice of the customer.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't disagree with that, but I don't think the rest of the business sees it that way.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_02: I think what we what we do, if you think about our functional discipline, is that we're trying to shape and nudge behavior and and especially future behavior of purchasing decisions.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_02: And that's uh really complex.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_02: It's not the same thing as as like doing your debits and credits.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it's not this it doesn't have the same somewhat predictability of uh putting product on in a container and shipping it and it will be here by this date.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_02: It like there's it's not to say those things aren't important and they're not complex, they are, but it's it's a different there's a different kind of predictability that comes with the other parts of the business, I think.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely that we don't have in the marketing department.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_02: And so I think to me that's that's more where the loneliness I think comes from from marketing.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_02: That's a fair push.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_02: And it's not so much that and I don't know that everybody else thinks that thinks the same way.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_02: Like I think everybody is somewhat lonely in their own disciplines.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_02: Discipline.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_02: Who gets who gets logistics?
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_02: Like I I I appreciate it.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_02: I don't get it the same way that somebody in logistics would get it.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_02: But I do I do think the loneliness is real in marking, but I I I my suspicion is it's more because of the lack of predictability in what we do.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_01: That's well positioned, well put.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_01: What did I say?
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_02: I just blanked out.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, no, I I think there's a lot of valid points there.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_01: I think rooting it in the fact that there is a lot of unpredictable elements of marketing, um, and why there's always this swirl in conversation around how to measure it, what's right, what's wrong, what you should be following, should be you should you be listening to like the tech giants, or should you be following someone else?
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: Like at the end of the day, because of that constant spin, I think, like you said, and how you position it so elegantly, it's it's that unpredictability uh doesn't allow for us to maybe maybe have that same uh what's the right word internally?
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_01: Uh not gravitas, I don't I don't I don't want like that.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_01: But anyways, confidence confidence, authority, authority, yeah.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_01: There you go.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_02: So I mean I think that's part of the reason why everybody thinks they're a marketer too, and they know how marketing works, right?
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_02: Because there isn't that predictability of it, or the or the general accounting principles, generally accepted accounting principles that apply just to the trained marketers.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_02: It's a good it's an interesting comment for sure.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_02: New story three.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_02: What did you linked everything you do to financial outcomes, B.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_02: Also from Marketing Week, they they put up this piece featuring Helen Edwards, founder of Passion Brand, columnist, and a professor at the London Business School.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_02: There's a few things I think are are worth calling out.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_02: The first one, she argues that marketers should be honest when they can manage with less budget.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_02: Like as we talked about with David uh Louie a few a few months or a couple months ago now, I guess.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_02: Like when you save money, like a CEO appreciates it.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_02: It's really good.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, because there's there's like the entire business is constantly in the battle.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_02: And and then so when you really need something, it's not that you should give it away.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_02: But when you don't really need something, I think that earns you some credibility in the boardroom.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_02: So taking the whole business view rather than being a siloed marketing view is probably what's going to help you build the influence.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_01: I agree.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_02: And it might be a little uncomfortable, but I do think it's helpful.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_02: The second thing is that marketing keeps gravitating towards communications because that's where we have the most control.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_02: So, as you just mentioned, the four Ps is true.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_02: That is the four Ps of marketing, but if you want to drive the growth agenda, and we've talked about this a little bit before, you have to be part of the leadership team and not just the execution layer.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_02: So she calls out that thinking about the four Ps and forcing yourself out of some of the regular conversations around what advertising actually just advertising and focus on some of those other conversations.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_02: And which I think will also help careers and help you develop your career.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_02: The advice she had for the next generation of CMOs is that to link everything you do to the financial outcome, not the brand health scores, not necessarily awareness.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_02: And I know we're talking about awareness and a sharp cut at some point in the very near future.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_02: But thinking about it in terms of the money, because that's really the big thing that marketing really needs to stand a ground on as a strategic function.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_02: You know, if we're if we're and I know the Capero study we talked about a long time ago, that I think it's 2023, future of marketing departments, showed that at that point, like within the marketing role in at least Sweden, and I seem to believe it's true in in Canada and North America, but in most cases, it we do live in the communication silo, like specifically the promotion part of the four Ps.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_02: So whose job is it to pull them out?
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_02: It's our job.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_01: Like I'm honestly, yeah.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_01: Honestly, it's that's our that's our job.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_01: If you want to get closer to the business, you have to start making those bridges.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_01: You can't expect everybody to come around and let's let's pull you together, little marketing.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_01: Come on, here's like the business and all uh and everything.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_01: Like we we have to go there and be part of those more difficult conversations that may put us on on our heels a little bit, but there's no one else's responsibility but our own.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_01: I really I really believe that at my my core.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_02: I'm with you.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_02: I like I think that's the only way forward.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_01: Like we have to build that courage to go out there and and start sitting in those conversations and be uncomfortable in those conversations because we won't have all the answers.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that's the part that's the hardest, is that it's forcing it, it will feel really uncomfortable.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it'll be you'll be a fish out of water, for sure.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_01: You'll just feel like that's my that's my sound effect of a also weirdly similar to like uh a turkey call.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's fair too.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: All right, next one.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, last one.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: AI search protections risk being shredded, as German court says, answers are Google's own content.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_01: So this one I was like, I had to do a double take here because we there's a lot of conversation on like who actually owns the content that gets queried by a lot of these search engines, and we're gonna pick on Google here for a little bit.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, this story isn't really about like a new AI model or another billion-dollar investment.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's coming down to the idea of accountability.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_01: So a German court has ruled that Google's AI overviews are Google's own content, not simply search results.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_01: So now that might sound like a legal technicality, but this is, I think this is one of the biggest shifts that we've seen in search.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: So for the last 25 years, Google largely has been treated as a map.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: It pointed you to the information that it created by someone else.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_01: Now, with AI overviews, Google isn't just pointing you somewhere, it's actually reading that map, interpreting it, and creating um, and creating something new outside of that.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: So the court essentially said if it's your answer, it's your responsibility, which we know now can actually go in two different directions.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_01: So at the same time, the UK's competition and markets authority is requiring greater transparency around how AI-generated search results are ranked and presented.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_01: Regulators aren't waiting decades to react this time.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_01: They're moving while the technology is still evolving.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_01: So I think this is fascinating because it changes how we think about AI search.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_01: We're no longer optimizing for a search engine that's indexing information.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_01: We're optimizing for an answer engine that makes decisions on our behalf.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that changes everything, not just for Google, but for marketers, like on for all marketers.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_01: Because if AI becomes accountable for the answers it gives, trust suddenly becomes a competitive advantage, not just for brands, but for the platforms themselves.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_01: So I think we can agree, like we're witnessing like the biggest change in search, and I'm using air quotes for that.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_01: But how do you think that this now, like who's responsible for the AI overviews?
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_01: How should those things be governed?
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_01: I know it's a it's a difficult question to answer, but I just feel like we haven't seen the last of this.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_02: No, for sure not.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I don't know.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, that's such a it's such an interesting thing because when I you first said that Google is they they it's their own content.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_02: And and I I was like, well, yeah, duh.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_02: But but then there's a whole bunch of implications because it wasn't their own content when it was just SERPs.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_02: It was a summary that was provided by the whoever published the article or the page or whatever the thing was, that Google was indexing, and like you said, it was a map.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_02: Now Google owns that, and then it was like, oh man, that creates a whole bunch of new profit opportunities for Google.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_02: That they own that stuff.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_02: But then on the flip side, there's also like the responsibility part that you mentioned that you mentioned, which is like really interesting.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_02: Because now they're accountable not for the search results, they're accountable for how it's presented.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_02: Interpreting.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, how how they're interpreting and synthesizing the information from all that, which is yeah, I don't know, man.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_02: Like this is I know holy, yeah.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, the one thing that I do know just in my own behavior, I use the the AI overview way more than I ever had before.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_02: Like I'm clicking on a lot less stuff.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm kind of using the AI overview, like I read that because that's my summary, and then and then I'll read some of the links that they reference, but then I go down through the first page, I rarely ever still go to the second page of a search result page.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_02: But I'm kind of looking for references that can contradict and challenge some of the things because I'm not 100% sure if it's accurate.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_02: The AI overview.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_02: So I know that my behavior is changing, but I think I mean Google is a big company.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_02: They they built themselves on search.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_02: They're gonna find a way to make money off this.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_02: In a major way.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_02: But it's interesting now that it's no longer just their their ads that are that they're responsible for.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_02: They're actually in the the platform they're responsible for.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_02: They're actually responsible for the content now.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_01: Which probably introduces more risk too, by the way.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I think this is where it becomes kind of a double-edged sword.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_01: So, okay, here you go, Google.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_01: You own that AI overviews, that's your content.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_01: No one can challenge that.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_01: But at the same time, if it's not true and it proves that you're misguiding or misinforming consumers, that's responsibility is squarely on your shoulders, which shouldn't which should then which will likely introduce a whole leather of risk management that we've probably never seen before.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, which kind of brings up that whole two audience challenge that we heard David Tiltman talk about a while back, which is there's the audience of real people and then the audience of AI.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_02: Agents.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_02: Agents that are scraping this information.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I don't I don't know.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_01: I mean is it too early to have a real deep conversation about this mark?
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_02: People are yeah, people are people.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_02: Like they're gonna keep just using the tools, but like the legal implication.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_02: I don't I'm not a lawyer, obviously, so I don't know what the full legal implications of that ruling are, but I think it is a moment in time, probably.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_01: I like again, I think it's putting the pressure back on these big tech giants to be like, okay, you can own this, but now like you're squarely responsible what it puts out.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_01: So does that mean we're gonna get the best answers?
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_01: Or we guess.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_02: Totally.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_02: Like the trust part.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_02: I know there's a whole bunch of questions around trust in AI and the results that you're getting.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_02: And there's even questions that we've been discussing, you and I, but also other places like who owns the output of AI?
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_02: Like in the case of the famous, I think it was Deloitte, producing an AI slop report that somebody paid for.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_02: Um, they were accountable.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_02: So interesting that the big the big machine here of Google is also gonna be accountable now.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_02: Watch the space.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_01: Holy, yeah.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_01: That's a good one.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's time for out of the week with Markley.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_02: There you go.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_02: I so this one we saw this at Cannes.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_02: We did Expedition Impossible by Columbia.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_02: And so for anyone that hasn't seen it, it's freaking hilarious.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_02: I just think it's so funny.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_02: It's so good.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_02: I wanted to share this one because this out of the week won the Dan Wyden Titanium Award in Cannes, which is the highest honor that the festival gives out.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_02: So Columbia Sportswear, for anyone who hasn't seen it, I'll give a little brief overview.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_02: So they challenged flat earthers to prove that the world wasn't round.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_01: I can't believe those things are still a thing.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_01: My goodness.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_02: I was laughing.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_02: I think I told you this before, but there was somebody I'd seen that was I I knew them perfectly, but they had shared this article that, or it was a tweet.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_02: Flat earthers were were all around the world.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_02: It's like around you realize what you just retweeted, right?
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_02: Anyway, so they put this challenge out and they said, find the edge of the earth, send a photo.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_02: And then this this is the CEO on the ad.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_02: He's like, they land over all the entire assets of the company, all of it.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_02: And then they ran an open letter in the New York Times.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_02: They released a full inventory of everything that you'd win.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_02: They showed up everywhere flat earthers appeared.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_02: And they looked at the message, they took the message to Wall Street, tempting anyone eager enough to take over the company.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_02: So they earned 80 million people in the from um all impressions, 10 million organic views, 250 pieces of earned media.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_02: Thousands of flat earthers felt genuinely annoyed.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_02: There's the case study, they're like, Are you fucking kidding me?
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_02: I got it.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna go get the edge of the earth picture.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_02: It was so funny.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_02: Uh it's brilliant because it's really not what you do, it's kind of the way you do it, I would say, that really makes a difference here.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, lesser brands would run a PR stunt on this that dies in 48 hours.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_02: And I think they really what I love about this is the commitment to this.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, they committed publicly, they answered letters from Flat Earthers Weekly.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_02: The campaign is, in a sense, is still running, and it's an extension of their engineered for whatever platform.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_02: So it's really like the total conviction that that traces back to something really specific, which kind of made me think about that David Auker um interview we had.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_02: Um, he handed their agency, Adam and Eve TD TPWA, a book written by his grandmother, which is the company's co-founder, Gert Boyle, and said, Reconnect us with our our roots.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_02: And the creative platform that came out of it is the engineered for whatever platform.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_02: So it's not a tagline, it's the organizing idea around the business.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_02: And that conversation we had with David Acker was about the origin stories being such an interesting opportunity for brands.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_02: And so I think it's just so interesting seeing that come to life in this format.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_02: And I think this is really what kind of separates this campaign.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_02: It's not, like I said, it's not that they did it, it's the showmanship.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_02: You know, if you can steal an idea from System One, it's the showmanship of it.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_02: It's not a spectacle for its own sake of a spectacle.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_02: It's actually conviction behind it.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that's what made it work.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_01: Dude, like this is such a great example of, you know, and by the way, it's probably low budget.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_01: Like this is not like fancy camera work.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_01: It's no, not at all.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_01: Just following the CEO around the office saying, hey, you get access to this, this.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_01: I like to think the point where it's like, don't worry, it's all yours.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_01: There's no paperwork.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_01: The the legal guy comes in.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, actually, there is there is a little bit of paperwork.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_02: He's like, you can have this and this and this.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_02: He's like, actually, that one's rented.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, well, maybe not that, but this.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's really good.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_01: It was just to be honest with you, it's almost showing us a different side of Columbia as well.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_01: A little personality, a little, I don't know.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's like if you think about a lot of the historical ads that we've seen from like the likes of Columbia, Arctaryx, like all of these outdoor brands are always like thrashing the elements, being out there, and you know, showing our the products in use.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_01: This was a complete I don't know, spin on that.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_01: Complete it was less about the product.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, hey, if you do this, you get this.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 27:41
  unknown: Yeah.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_01: So I thought it was really clever.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_02: It was, yeah, it was a way to like challenge people to get outside, which is ultimately where their product fits so well.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_02: It was such a well-done execution, I thought.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my goodness.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_01: That's such a great one.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_01: Such a great one.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_01: And we talked about showmanship even our last uh what's it called?
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_01: Sharp cut uh not sharp cuts, our barber's brief with with Uber as well.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_01: I think we followed it up really, really well there, Mark.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_01: Congrats.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's funny for me, like the showmanship thing, just a note on that.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_02: Like I know that came up in the system one report, and and it's the one thing that I had the most challenge with and understanding.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_02: And I think it's something that is now uh now that I've had some a few weeks to think about it some more, it's like the thing.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_02: I think it is the thing.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_02: Like it's the it's the dramatized dramaticization, dramatization.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_02: Well dramatization.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_02: Dramatization here of uh, you know, like a specific uh insight that I think is the is the showmanship part of it.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_02: I think that's something that makes great ads great.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I I can't I completely agree with that.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_02: Great find though.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_02: And that V wraps up our Barbara's brief for today.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_02: That's right.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks for keeping us in your ears.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_02: Not just you, V, but uh you, dear listener.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, stay sharp, everybody.