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Transcript

4/13/26 #ContentChat: Bridging Content Strategy & Execution with AI · #ContentChat

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_02: Good afternoon, everyone.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_02: I'm Erica Hild and it's time for content chat.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_02: Today we're having a really fun conversation.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_02: It's one of those things that's an outcropping of an IRL conversation I was having with my guest, Maliha Khan.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_02: And we were just having so much fun talking about that messy middle of marketing and realizing how much interconnection we have with what we each do, that we said, oh my gosh, we totally have to have this be a full-fledged content chat.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_02: And so here you are.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_02: And thank you so much for accepting my invitation.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you for having me.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_02: It's my pleasure.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_02: So for folks who have not met you at the many marketing events that I know I've um attended with you, tell folks a little bit about who you are and what you do.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: Okie dokie.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: My name is Maliha.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: I'm the founder and CEO of Connect the Dots and Concept Studio.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, essentially, I help people bridge the gap between strategy and execution, what we're going to be talking a lot about today.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'll cut it short so we can get to it.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_02: I love it.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_02: Let's just start there then.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I think I've heard the messy middle because we certainly would talk about it a lot at any of the big uh companies I worked at where we've spent all the time putting together that brand strategy.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_02: And then people are like, well, why on earth is it?
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_02: Why is this so hard?
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_02: Why isn't it perfect?
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_02: So let's just dive in and you know, how do you define the messy middle and why is it something that we need to be thinking about?
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: So to me, the messy middle is what happens after we build out that beautiful strategy deck and everybody signs off on it.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: But then when it's time for execution to deliver results, things fall apart somewhere in the middle there.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: And that's when things start to drift, especially the meaning of things.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: Like what does the strategy mean anyway?
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, if you have like a kickoff meeting, typically what happens is everybody leaves aligned or so they think they do, and then the work moves through teams and tools and timelines, and people start interpreting things a little bit differently, and that's where all the gaps start to show up, right?
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_02: 100%.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I know I've gone through the exercises like of defining a brand voice, and then ended up where content that 100% was aligned to that brand voice was not getting approved by the person that was insistent on some of the attributes.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm gonna call out the attribute that I don't ever let anyone put in because of this, and that is irreverent.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_02: Irreverent is something that every single startup that wants to disrupt an industry, they want to have irreverent in there, yet nobody is willing to actually be irreverent.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_02: They're not willing to tweak sensibilities, they're not willing to, you know, unless it's something where they're also willing to go hire Ryan Reynolds, in general, they're just not willing to go there with Irreverent.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_02: The only irreverent brand I can think of that I've ever worked with was, you know, at the KPBS On Air magazine when I was in college, I was an intern there and the editor was irreverent.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_02: And his was definitely towards the sharp, snarky side of the stick and not just the unusual disrupting things.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, completely understand you.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_02: So it's like you think that you're aligned, but if all you have is that strategy document, you're not aligned.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_02: There's so many ways that things can go sideways.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and let's be honest, like a lot of our strategy decks collect dust, right?
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's like the biggest deal at the beginning of a project, and then as things start to take a turn, pivot, and um all this progress takes place, like nobody ever refers back to it.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so then it just starts collecting dust, and then teams are scratching their heads going, what are we doing here?
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_02: It's because we uh, you know, people forget the step of you know operationalizing the strategy, which is creating all of the support, be it guidelines, templates, defined workflows, messaging that supports the strategy and things like hiring the right resources.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_02: Like if you're trying to be an upscale bespoke brand, yet you're telling your content team that they can't hire any freelancers and that they need to use stock photography and Canva.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_02: Well, if you don't have a designer on your staff, you're probably not going to be able to, you know, actualize that strategy.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: No, you won't.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: And so we talk about that a lot in terms of like um translation is super, super important.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of times content strategies break down when things aren't translated correctly.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_02: What do you think are some of the really like most common areas where you see that people have a strategy that they're just not able to put into to play?
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_02: Like, what are some of the big stumbling blocks that you see over and over again?
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: I think I don't think anyone ever comes to the table with like a completely like wrong strategy, right?
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: Like at the end of the day, strategy is just like your best guess at how you think you need to kind of navigate.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: But I think the problem that we run into really is that either we're not clear about some of the decisions that were made within that strategy deck, okay.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, especially with creative teams, I'm sure you've seen this.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: Creative teams are like, we could do strategy, we do strategy.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of times then it's like, well, yeah, but this is a different type of strategy.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: We're talking messaging, we're talking content, and and a lot of times there are times where um, as controversial as I sound right now, creative teams don't really understand the full extent of that.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: But it's just a matter of having a conversation and saying, like, we made these decisions because of XYZ information.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: We've already like, you know, dotted our I's and crossed our T's on all of this.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so outside of all of this information, if you have an idea, feel free to bring it back to us.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: But really, there was a lot of thought and a lot of um caution and a lot of just um like holistic thinking that went into everything that is inside the strategy deck.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think when we're transparent and have that conversation with the entire team, that you're more than welcome to bring ideas to the table.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: Let us tell you everything that we've already like checked off, right?
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: And if there's a client involved, like this was a request from a client.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: We know this isn't the way that we would like to go about this, but it's a client request, and this is why we're gonna have to move forward with it.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: Whatever those reasons look like, I think it's really important to translate that for everybody else so we're not spinning our wheels and wasting time going back to ideas that have already been checked off.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: Because at the end of the day, I really believe that the team is trying to get to the same destination together.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody just has a different piece of the pie, if that makes sense.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_02: It totally does.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_02: And it's because your average person is going to sit through an hour meeting, maybe, or maybe it's just gonna be half an hour at a marketing all hands where they hear what the content strategy is, and then maybe they get a copy of the deck, maybe they don't even get a copy of the deck to take back with them.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_02: Told, you know, okay, so we're all aligned now, right?
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_02: When in reality, what your team needs at a minimum is a copy of that deck that is annotated with the footnotes that link out to the references that you can see.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_02: Here's the client um conversation transcript where we, you know, really heard this that you know caused us to realize this is a big pain point for this audience.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_02: Or here's a link out to the brand voice chart that maps to this.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_02: Here's a you know, a link out to our ebook template that we designed that we want you to use.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_02: It's like give people tools and have it all be in one place.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_02: Do not have eight different spreadsheets and several file services, uh, you know, where everyone has to go hunting because they're not going to.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: They're not.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you'd be you'd be in a good spot if like everybody walked into the kickoff meeting having like done homework prior to the kickoff meeting.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: But a lot of times when you walk into the kickoff, right, um, maybe some folks have read and gone through the deck, and other folks are just walking in there blind, trying to get that information right then and there, right?
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: And so um, yeah, and and everyone has their own reasons, like uh people were busy, they couldn't get to the deck, things like that.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: So I I really do think you're absolutely um right with if we build the deck with all the proper examples and information that we need, that just sets people up for success.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, hearkening back to something you um said just a couple minutes ago, having that transparency and letting people weigh in is so important versus just saying here it is and it is set in stone, and we won't deviate from it until the we hire a new CMO and they create a new strategy.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_02: It's you know, because there can be a huge disconnect between what management thinks is possible and how long management might think it takes to do a thing and what that actually looks like on the plate of the people doing the work.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_02: Because there's very rarely enough transparency into what the real workload looks like for the creative teams in particular, so they can get overloaded and bogged down, and then they're not going to be able to do their best work, which like the best ways that I've seen people navigate, um, making sure that we don't lose things in translation is having a pre-kickoff before the kickoff with department heads, okay, and saying we don't have everything nailed down yet, but we're just letting you know this project is coming.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: This is the ask, this is what we need to get done.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: And so can you kind of tell us how many hours your department's gonna need and who you think can get the job done from your team?
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: And then in the kickoff, you don't have those department heads, you have the person that's actually doing the job in the kickoff, and and they're already on board with it, they're already on board because guess what?
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: Their department head has had a conversation and said, Let me brief you on this, right?
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so they're already primed for this project, and so by the time they get to the kickoff and we have more information, right?
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: And we have this like great brief.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and a lot of times, like the brief totally dismisses the strategy, but the best case scenario is the strategy piece, there should be a section in the brief, yeah, that is specifically strategy, and like strategy should be um included when it's time to build out that brief, right?
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, like you don't leave them off.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: I've been in situations where, like, for example, agency side, like account team thought they could just handle the brief.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: Strategy didn't get a seat at the table, and then strategy is like, wait a minute, this is not at all matching with what the strategy deck looks like and what needs to happen.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: And so already you have a mistranslation issue, right?
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: At the start of the project, which is the worst thing possible.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: So I think just taking these little steps, as much as um, you know, like it may be time time consuming, it just sets you up for success down the road.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_02: So we've talked about a few of them, um, a few of the things that, you know, can kind of be indications that a content strategy is gonna struggle in execution.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_02: And and the big one being, you know, not having those pre-conversations to understand what the reality of bringing something to life is gonna look like, and you know, just having um, you know, making sure that you have lots of open lines of communication.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_02: But I'm wondering if there are any other um kind of warning signs that you've seen, like when you've maybe even brought in when some work's already in progress from our content strategy and trying to help them execute where you're like, ooh, I can see how this is gonna be a problem.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so I I think it's when the teams are asking the same questions over and over again, or um there have been situations where like you know, everybody might have access to the brief and was told go in and like put any questions that you might have, and and we'll go and get the right information, but then the questions don't get answered.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: Or um, or like the first internal review, you can tell that there's a disconnect when the work, you know, it checks the boxes, but it was like the team did not really understand how the strategy was supposed to uh get implemented, you know, into the work.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: And and what that normally results in is a lot of revisions, right?
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: And as a project manager back in the day, one of the things that I saw really break the process down was the feedback for revisions was not what the creative team needed.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: Instead of being very prescriptive on hey, this needs to change here, or this is a typo here, or this, you know, um, logo needs to be placed a little bit higher with some more white space or whatever that looks like, right?
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: Instead, we were starting to ask questions that go back to the discovery phase, frankly.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: Like it goes back to wait a minute, why are we doing this this way?
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like, well, go back to the strategy deck, like go back to the brief.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: There was a reason we don't need to be asking these questions now.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: If we are asking those questions, something got mistranslated.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, and so those are the normal like pitfalls or like warning signs, if you will, on where translation missed didn't get translated correctly.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: Totally.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_02: So with your content, you know, hat on, but also with your project management hat on, in addition to making sure you've got those right people and do the pre-kickoff meeting, what are some other ways to really, you know, make help those teams that are gonna be the ones actually bringing the strategy to life to support them and make it easier for that to actually happen?
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: So one of the things that I've seen on projects that seem to do a really great job at avoiding the messy modal is that the strategy team really takes a lead and says, hey, um, copy team, art team, would you like to set up like a quick 15, 20 minute pow-wow?
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: You can go ahead in detail and ask us like questions about anything within the strategy that you may need more clarity outside of what's been discussed and then the pre-kickoff or the kickoff, right?
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: And then it really the beautiful thing that comes from that is it really turns into this amazing collaborative process where it's like I'm supporting you, you're supporting me by making sure that execution uh gets nailed down.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: And those have been some of the best situations where um then what happens is like your copy and art team feel very comfortable to come back to strategy, right?
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: And now the door's been opened and now we can have this dialogue.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes having understood um strategy a little bit more deeply, your copy and art team and beyond that can come back to you with actually some really good tweaks, you know.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: Or there might be, for example, I used to work in pharma, and so in pharma, you would have to go back to the drawing board, not because you wanted to, but because legal was like, nope, this isn't gonna fly, this isn't gonna fly.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: And so what ended up happening is this beautiful relationship where everybody was brainstorming to solve the problem and get the job done.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's really what helps push us forward is that if everybody gets an opportunity to brainstorm and kind of work it out with you and feels comfortable enough to have the dialogue, that moves us along way more than you know, ending up with mistranslation and everybody interpreting the brief on their own, you know, everybody interpreting the strategy deck, no matter how many times we think there's no way this could get misinterpreted.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: There always is.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: There always is.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_02: Well, especially in scenarios when you have a really large organization with maybe multiple business units in centralized marketing, um, or partially centralized marketing handing down brand proclamations from on high without having talked to the people who are using them.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I initially I used to hate creative briefs because I had been given a creative brief to use that you know was for the B2C side of the business.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_02: B2B had no input into it.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_02: It wasn't the right stuff to be asking me.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_02: It wasn't, you know, relevant.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_02: And some of them like, do you really want me to just make up messaging points?
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_02: We haven't done our messaging yet.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know what the you know, the messages for this.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_02: This is a regulatory communication.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we have to send it.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_02: And I could tell you, I'm like, I'd frustrate them, but I was frustrated.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, don't make me use this irrelevant, you know, uh brief.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_02: And I eventually got them, you know, to create a brief that was relevant for the B2B side of things.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_02: But you know, initially I was just so I pushed back so hard.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_02: So like, why are you making me waste my time filling out this brief that is not going to be at all helpful?
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_02: No.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_02: Nope, not at all.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_02: That's why I'm such the um I'm the proponent of having channel-specific creative briefs.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_02: So that way, based upon what it is the person's trying to do, yeah, they have they're being asked the right questions.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_02: So they have all of those strategic things up at the top.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_02: They have their audiences, not every audience the company serves, but for their that channel that they're talking about for that one, you know, who are the people they're talking to for that channel?
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_02: What are the objectives for that channel?
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_02: And you're picking from those things so that way you're not just being given a blank slate and told, go create something.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_02: Because you're not going to create something good that way.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: Some of like the best um things that I would love to do in a meeting is not just talk about who we're building for, but who we're not building for, right?
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: And that's something that we leave out a lot, right?
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: We always talk about like who this is for, but I feel like you know, part of that transparency that I was kind of talking about is also saying, like, hey, we've already taken a look at who this is not for.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: These are those those folks.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: So keep this in mind when you are working on execution.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: And um, I think that also makes a big impact as well.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_02: Before we move on um to talk about AI, I did want to ask if you have any like specific frameworks or templates that you've used um for this kind of like forming stage of content strategy that's helped people kind of get going.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so I do have a framework.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, right now it's called my three E's until I figure out a better name for it.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_02: Three E's is good.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: I'm partially, of course you are.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but really it's built around a lot of times what I've seen is like we're gonna build the plane while we're flying it, and that approach never works.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so um, I think a really um easy way to kind of get out of the messy middle is to first stop and think about exclude, yeah, which is subtracting things.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of times when we're stuck, we're like, let's add this, add that, add this.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: And what ends up happening is you're all you're already stuck in the messy middle, and now you're adding more complication to it.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: No, the goal is really to remove things so it becomes clear on what you need to do, and then the second E is called establish.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: And so after we've started excluding things and subtracting things, we need to kind of establish what is the right step moving forward now that we can kind of see a little bit more clearly, and last but not least, evolve because after you exclude and after you establish, naturally you're going to need to evolve the problem the The problem or the project in this case, right, is going to shift.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of times it's because along the way we had, you know, maybe different pieces of information come to the surface, or, you know, like certain situations changed when we started subtracting things that we thought we originally needed.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so naturally with that, you're you're going to need to evolve and that should take you out of the messy middle.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_02: I love that.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and it's just so true.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_02: Like you've got to always look at the strategy as being a living document because you don't control the marketplace and you don't control your audience needs.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_02: So you have to be able to shift it.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_02: And some people use that as an excuse to not document their content strategy.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_02: And that's a pretty lame excuse because you're not going to be able to get everyone on the same page if you don't have something there.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_02: And if you're not creating it in Illustrator, it's not a big, you know, a big lift.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_02: Go and make some small tweaks and edits.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_02: We all can do that.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I mean, it could be a Canva file for all I care, right?
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: As long as it's documented somewhere.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_00: Because when it's not documented, and then like think about it right now, like how many people are changing jobs, right?
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: And so you're losing certain pieces with certain people because it wasn't documented.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so then where does that leave you?
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: As a brand, you can't stop and go, stop and go just because you have you know people coming and going.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_00: At the end of the day, you still have to show up as a brand.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_02: So that documentation is so critical, and it helps all of the teams because I know I've been in a situation where layoffs have impacted my boss, yeah, and where you know I've had to take on elements of their job.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_02: And of course, they thought that they were indispensable, and that one of the ways that they were indispensable was by documenting nothing.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_02: So that way they were the only one who knew where things were and how to be what have you, which then meant IT gave me what?
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_02: Access to all of their files and their email, a thing I did not want.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_02: Um to go in and try and you know and recover it and figure it out.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and I know not all organizations have the support for going in to create like risk um related materials, documentation for how all things you know happen.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_02: But if you can, in any situation, having those workflows across your organization defined, but especially critically within marketing, when you go forth and you actually define all of the how the things work, then you're not in that situation where if somebody wins the lottery and doesn't come to work ever again, that you have zero idea how to you know send out the email newsletter because that happens, it happens a lot, and it's silly.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yep, absolutely.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: The part that kills me the most is when ideal customer profiles haven't been built, and I'm just like beside myself, like how did we get here?
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_00: Because clearly you know who you're marketing to, but no one's taken the time to document it, and it would make it so much easier for others on the team, especially like departments that you don't pull in often.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, for example, agency side, like you pull you pull in QA and quality assessment, and you're like, they don't like they're only involved when it's a website project or it's like a mobile app, right?
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_00: They're they otherwise don't touch the brand at all.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: And so um, it's just making sure that we are really um putting our best foot forward with providing the right information so we avoid having a translation problem and avoid the messy model.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_02: And you can't be bringing AI into your marketing mix and try to be using AI as part of your workflows if you don't have any documentation, because then you're letting the AI decide.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_02: And the AI doesn't know your brand, doesn't know what you think is good, and is frankly going to just give you the most mediocre middle-of-the-road, you know, path forward, because that's literally what it's been trained to do.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the way that I like to explain to people, and I've been training a lot of people lately on um AI, especially with AI and marketing, and how do we build our brain voice guidelines along those um lines?
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the things that I say front and center is your output is only going to be as great as your input.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_00: If your input's not that great, don't expect the right results.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so a lot of times I'm just pointing to people and saying, you think you're being clear on the ask, but I think you need to sit with it for 10, 15 more minutes and kind of think about really what do you want?
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: Do you really want an email?
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_00: Or is do you would would you rather benefit from a report that you could, you know, um summarize why you need more funding and then take that report to leadership and make a case for it?
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_00: Like, is that email really gonna solve the problem, or is that just your band-aid solution?
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_02: And frankly, the AI can help you figure that out.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_02: That's what's so great.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_02: Is that it does have all of that information.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_02: So instead of you coming to it the way that people come to an agency and telling it, give me this thing that I want, tell it you have a problem you're trying to solve and have it brainstorm with you, or have it look at what you've put together and say, pick this apart as though you are the person I'm giving it to who is, you know, this role in this kind of a company.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_02: What would you, you know, expect to see here that's not here, or what would sway you?
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_02: It can tell you all these things and help you make your pitch better.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_00: So I actually uh teach a lot of people on um like the basics of prompting.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_00: And like the number one thing I'll say is hey, like strong prompts are gonna get you the best results, and weak prompts are frankly a waste of your time.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_00: And so I built a tool um called Prompt Coach uh on my website.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's free for like everybody to use.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_00: Essentially, it's kind of like a form that you're filling out with all sorts of information, like SEO keywords, brand voice, uh context, role, some of the normals that you need when you're prompting, right?
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um and then it uh like has you dial in on what is the ask and providing like audience and must avoid, must include.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_00: So there's all sorts of fields there, not they don't all have to be filled out, but what happens is uh it tells you when you have enough information for a good, like a great prompt.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_00: And it also cues you like, hey, you probably need to add some more information.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_00: Then at the bottom, you get the prompt, you copy it and you paste it into whatever learning model.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I cannot even tell you when every single time when people use the tool, they get like this amazing um output, and it really goes to show this is why we need to include as much information as we can when we're using with AI.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_00: And so now let's talk about strategy, right?
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_00: If you have a strategy that's broken or outdated, right, it's only gonna amplify that, it's only gonna make it worse, and so it that's why it's really important that we get really clear with what are we hoping to um you know end with and then use AI as a collaborative thinking partner and not so much a take over and do all the content for me, right?
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_02: Some sort of content content machine here because it's such a great content coach and it can help every single person on your team bring your brand to life in ways that you haven't even thought of and make you a stronger writer.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_02: I love having it tell me how I can tweak things to make it stronger.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean, anyone that's been following Andy, Crestadina knows the man has such amazing prompts that will literally allow you to gut check your strategy against a specific customer profile.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, we have we are just in a whole different time now, and I feel like we're able to use AI to really gut check us wherever needed.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_00: And and I think that's how we should be using AI.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_00: We should be using AI to help us maybe see things that we're not able to see or you know, understand things from a different angle, you know, and really use it as a thinking partner.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_00: One of my favorite things that I love to do is to ask, uh ask the tool, what whether it's Claude or Chat GPT or whatever that looks like, and just say, um, what are five questions I should be asking you, but I'm not asking you?
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_00: And it's amazing, like how they're just such great questions.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_00: They're like really high-level thinking questions.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_00: They're not like you know, use me for execution level questions.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_00: They're like use me to elevate your thinking.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what I think is really amazing for teams right now is that we can gut check things, we can run things through AI to see if the we should be thinking about it from a different angle, you know, and um add like a customer profile with that.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_00: And man, you're you'd be surprised the things that it will bring up for you.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_02: Totally.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_02: And if you tell it not to make things up and to instead ask you questions, if it needs more information, it will do that.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_02: So then you're not gonna get hallucinations, you're not gonna get things stolen from other people, you're going to get things, you're gonna get a response that is 100% relevant because it's asked for clarification where it was otherwise going to make assumptions.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_02: And just imagine if human beings did that.
• 32:31
  unknown: Yes.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_00: Boy, where would we where would we be?
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_02: Now, on the flip side of that, I think you know, where I'm seeing teams over-relying on AI and it makes me sad, is I'm seeing a lot of really generic um AI-generated social content.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I see it on LinkedIn.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_02: We call it broetry, um, even though sometimes it's ladies posting it too.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_02: It's you know, gender non-specific, this broetry.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but it's a very specific style with lots of brevity, many line breaks, very little content, absolutely nothing specific, um, nothing speaking anyone's experience, but it's just out there to make somebody feel like they sounded smart on the internet.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and then it's even worse on social because what we're seeing right now is there's so many people creating AI-generated images and video that they're not marking as such.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_02: And then people get really mad.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_02: Well, did you don't even notice it, which is actually really scary.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_00: But did you see what LinkedIn started doing?
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_00: LinkedIn now has like a little um icon, and if you like hover over it or click on it, it'll tell you if this is somebody's original content or if it's AI generated.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, that's a game changer.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_02: Facebook will never do that, and that's such a huge problem.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_00: Because they have meta AI, yeah, you know, and and they're they're not ever gonna do that.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_02: It's so terrible, it makes me really ragey every time I'm on the platform.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but I think going back to what you're saying, like everyone keeps talking about AI slop, AI slop, right?
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_00: Like, oh my gosh, we're seeing so much AI slop, but AI slop is not an AI issue, it's a human issue.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_00: Like I tell people in my trainings, I'm like, I'm sorry to break this to you, but it's a you problem.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_00: You're just not using it correctly.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think going back to how you're talking about generic content.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I have a tool that I developed that's the brand voice builder on my website, connectthedopots.com.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_00: And uh like essentially you can upload samples of your work.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_00: What I recommend to people is like give it your URL, give it like your social media pages, though a couple of times LinkedIn sometimes can be a little bit difficult, and Facebook, believe it or not, can be a little bit difficult for it to scrape recently.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_00: This was a recent change.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_00: And um, but go ahead and provide all of all of the URLs, and then I say upload like direct mail pieces if you have them, signage, like you know, PDFs of that, um, or like photos.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_00: Photos are great too, right?
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_00: Like screenshots of social media posts if if it comes back and says, like, hey, I can't scrape LinkedIn, which it probably will.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um, any type of examples that you can provide it on how your brand shows up.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_00: And if you ask it to produce brand voice guidelines for you, I'm telling you it will blow your mind away.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so either people fall into two different camps.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_00: The first camp is like your brand is showing up as five different personalities.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not really sure what to tell you.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_00: And then the second camp is where most people end up in, where it will actually give you like a four-page document that is your brand voice guidelines.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_00: And in in my trainings, one of the things that we talk about is that how to take that brand voice guideline now.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_00: And either you can build a custom GPT and use that for your content creation purposes, or if you, you know, um need to just start a chat on like blog content, right?
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_00: And you just want to keep it going, you can just attach it as an example and say, here are my brand voice guidelines.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_00: And then it gets even better because the brand voice guidelines are so in detail that they'll say, write like this, but don't write like this.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_00: Use this vocab, but avoid this vocab.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_00: And those guidelines come in handy when you're setting up a brand kit on Canva, right?
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_00: Because now Canva's changed it to where before your brand voice used to be one paragraph that you plopped in there.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_00: Now you can actually add guidelines and say, do this, but don't do this, because of Canva AI kind of using your brand kit to generate writing, you know, um designs and things like that.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_00: And so I really think right now it's critical for every brand to develop their brand voice guidelines if they have not already, regardless of how you decide to do that, using this custom GPT or your own process.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_00: And then making sure that when we're using AI to produce content, we're providing those guidelines, right?
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_00: In some way, shape, or form to avoid running into like the same type of copy.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you've noticed, but a lot of times if you're working on like some sort of a description or social media post, the first sentence will say most people blah blah blah, if you use AI.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_02: Or in these uncertain times or in today's digital landscape.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_00: Or like Delve and Impact and Soul.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_00: The one time it told me that my brand had a lot of heart and soul.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_00: I said, I don't even know what this means.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_00: Like, explain.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_02: Like hollow notes.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_02: I have hollow notes.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_02: I'm either eating pop music.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_02: I don't think so.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, I need you to like explain why you're using the word soul for you know, like I just don't think that matches my brand.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think that's why it's really important for us to have those brand voice guidelines in place.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_02: And it'll make it easier for you to train and onboard humans to your team, too.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_02: It's not just that we're doing these things for AI.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_02: You're going to be working with freelancers, you're gonna be working with agencies, you're gonna have new hires.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_02: Having things documented means they're gonna have a much better onboarding experience because it's actually really lame to be brought on board in any kind of a marketing situation and to ask for onboarding tools, to ask for brand guidelines and and you know, to understand what good looks like, and the person on the other side of the desk just blink at you.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_02: That's like not good.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_02: No one likes that.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_00: No, nobody likes that.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_02: So I think a big thread through everything we've talking about today really is about AI works only with collaboration with the humans that are going to be using it for their purposes.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_02: So by giving that context and providing the documentation, the strategy, et cetera, around it, and then collaborating with the AI on various activities.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so I'd love to hear a little bit more because I don't think people talk enough about the human-centered um AI when it comes to you know content marketing in particular.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_02: Everyone is so excited about agentic um stuff, which frankly is really I'm not.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not either.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not I'm not gonna give the AI all of my passwords and say have fun.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_00: No, we've been talking about that at home a lot about like do we clear out the old laptop and let Cloud Cowork do its thing and see what's possible.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I'm just not there yet.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_00: And and what's funny is a lot of other content strategists that I know are like on the same boat.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_00: They're like, no, I would not want um to give all access over.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_00: And the only reason why Claude Cowork is even on my um radar is I really do think it could help small businesses a lot, which people aren't talking about too much.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_00: They're talking about how it helps enterprises.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I I definitely do see that.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_00: And the only reason I'm even considering playing around with it right now is because it asks permission, unlike some of the other uh tools out there that just have a mind of their own, frankly, and take over.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_00: So um, yeah, I I'm all about, you know, we keep hearing things about like how in two years most content is gonna be AI generated and um like human-produced content is is gonna be less than, and but it's gonna have more value because a human created it, all these different, you know, um predictions, and only time will tell which ones are true and which ones aren't.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_00: But I think in the meantime, what I encourage people to do is one lock in your brand voice guidelines and make sure that when you're using it to generate content, you're keeping the customer as the main focus and not brand objectives and not because a lot, how many times do we have all these brand brand um objectives and things that may have come from us from like come to us from higher ups and things like that?
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_00: But then at the end of the day, you're like, this is so out of character, like this will not drive the needle forward for customers.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_00: So, okay, but we've been told we have to do this, so I guess we have to do this.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_00: So I think a lot of times it's just about um, you know, uh giving AI the right information, first of all, brain voice guidelines.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_00: Second, if you have any data, AI is wonderful at you know, uh catching on to patterns and and probability.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so any data to back it up will help really make sure that your result your results aren't just any mediocre results that anybody could have gotten, but they're really customized and tailored specifically for your situation.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_02: And what's you know, to just play on that, that's also how it can be both true that humans are still gonna have a really big role in creating content for their audiences, and the statement that most content will be created by AI because a human is gonna be able to now create, let's say, um, you're gonna create an ebook and you're gonna create it for one specific audience using you know um illustrative language and examples and customer testimonials that are applicable to that one specific audience and their needs, and then you might be handing that off to the AI and say, all right, I created this in a modular manner.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_02: Now go ahead and create a version for this other audience, et cetera, et cetera.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_02: So then we're actually will be creating content that is more tailored.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, the AI is create creating the content, but they're doing so with a human piece of content that they're deriving what they're doing from, with those human insights about the audience and what matters to them as context that they're using to create the content.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I really can't see us losing sight of that.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: That.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: Like I, you know, as much as I'm hearing about like AI generated content, I think what we need to kind of go a little bit deeper and and talk about it and say, like, is it AI generated with human collaboration?
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_00: I could see that happening, right?
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, if that's what we're saying here, but I I really don't want to picture a world where humans don't drive, and um then we just have all of this AI content.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I can't tell you how many times now I scroll past posts where I can tell it's an AI-generated image.
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, I was actually very proud when I saw that um LinkedIn icon because it was my own original content on my Samsung phone and it said that, like, you know, uh like upload it from Samsung, and I was like, whoa, okay, great.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I'm sure people think that the girl that's going around teaching everybody on AI usage is probably generating all of her content using AI, but yeah, that's not the case.
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_00: I I really think it's a collaborative, um, collaborative effort, and it should be.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_02: And what's nice too is in a way, some of the tools at least are helping make it easier because when they're downloading images, yeah, sometimes they're outing themselves in the file um in the file naming convention.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_02: And you would be surprised.
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you would be surprised how frequently people who've passed things off as being 100% their own creative work do not notice that they have embedded images that clearly say that they're created by whichever image generator it was.
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_02: And you're like, hmm.
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_02: And then you know, it they don't understand like how much that causes people to no longer trust you because you're a good liar pants.
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and then like I know some people that may have used AI to generate a blog post, for example, and then they'll download it from Chat GPT, and they don't realize that within the file descriptions and details it says chat GPT.
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so I'm like, how many students are getting busted that way?
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_00: That's what I want to know.
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_02: Like, or people will copy and paste the whole thing, including the would you like me to, where it gives you, you know, helpful additional things you could explore.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, or the weird formatting.
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_02: You know, there's so many actual ways that you can tell um that something was not original.
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_02: But at the end of the day, it only matters that it's not original if it doesn't reflect the human experience.
• 46:46
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_02: Because I know Joe Pelitzi, um, our uh mutual friend, he would tell you he doesn't care if something is AI generated or not.
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_02: He cares if it makes him feel something.
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_02: And if it isn't, doesn't have the human aspect in there somewhere, he can feel anything because AI doesn't feel anything.
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_02: No, it doesn't have life-lived experiences.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_02: So that's where you, the human, you have to sub, you know, you have to be that collaborator and be leading with those experiences.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_00: 100% agree.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_02: So we don't have a ton more time today.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_02: We have a little over 10 minutes.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but I would like to talk a little bit about um operationalizing strategy across content teams, because I think this is the holy grail that everyone's after.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_02: This is where people want to get.
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_02: And it is so hard for people to do it.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_02: And that's partially because of resources, because every team has its own budget and they have their own allotment of seats for whatever the tools are, and people get really cagey um about all of these things.
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_02: So I'd love to hear if you have any um, you know, strategies that have worked for realistically getting you know strategy operationalized across a larger organization.
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um what specifically within that?
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_02: How you get people to have like consistency with day-to-day output across the organization?
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_02: So, for example, um, everybody has to create emails, right?
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_02: Oh.
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_02: So, but the emails that your customer service team, your sales team, and your marketing team send out frequently all are completely different, even though they absolutely should all feel like they're coming from the same company.
• 48:41
  SPEAKER_02: So, like, how would you get those three groups on board so that way you don't have some that use formal language where it's you know your title and your full name, and on second use it's your last name versus other ones that are like, hey Bob, how's it going?
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_02: And like just the whole mess.
• 49:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so that's a systems issue in my mind, right?
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_00: Because uh it's like we know in terms of messaging what things resonate the most and which don't.
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I feel like once we've kind of mapped out what all of that messaging looks like per content pillar, all the rest of the systems need to follow.
• 49:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, um, it can't be optional, like it it just has to be that way, otherwise, again, we run into the same problem with brand voice, right?
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and take a look at some of the best brands and some of the best communication that lands in your inbox and how um most of the times those companies are the ones that sound the same.
• 49:46
  SPEAKER_00: And so, regardless of which email address at that company that email is coming from, you know a hundred percent that yes, this is that same brand voice, and so I think we run that risk of decompartmentalizing, like just showing up again as five different people, as you know, um as the one person that got that result in one of my trainings.
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, oh, we should talk after this.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_00: You don't want that, right?
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_00: You don't want to show up as five different people, and then think about what that does to your ideal customer profile, too.
• 50:23
  SPEAKER_00: It then there's all these segments because certain people heard you a certain way, saw you a different way, right?
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so now that's kind of the expectation versus like the other 80% that saw you and heard you as uh the way that they should have, right?
• 50:45
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think it just lands you in the messy middle again.
• 50:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so my best advice on on kind of upper operationalizing this is really just making sure that the leadership is on board and all of the right departments are on board to make sure that essentially the customer experience is what we want it to be, right?
• 51:11
  SPEAKER_02: You know, um, I've only seen this twice, I want to say.
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it can really help if you do have um the requirement that all of your salespeople and all of your customer service leaders have to get messaging certified.
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_02: So that means that they have to train on the messaging and they have to be able to sit with the CEO and the head of brand and be able to give, you know, whatever the brand brand story is and what the pitch is, and that they have to know that messaging back and forth.
• 51:47
  SPEAKER_02: And it is hard, and people are resistant to it, but you know how consistent everything is when you require that of folks, when they know that they are going to be quizzed on it, that there's gonna be a grade and that their grade needs to be passing, or they're gonna have to keep on doing it, and nobody wants to do that.
• 52:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and like I think one of the most important things for, for example, sales teams is having like a positioning statement internally, right?
• 52:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's a nice way of making sure that people don't have to flip through like this massive.
• 52:25
  SPEAKER_00: Well, in our situation, they could be multiple decks, right?
• 52:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so, um, and but I absolutely agree with what you're saying is normally whenever the strategy shifted or messaging shifted, there was like an all hands that needed to happen to make sure that from now on we are not saying this and that this is the new way forward, and all of your departments need to kind of think about what that looks like for you, and then you can talk amongst yourselves to figure out what you need to do about it.
• 52:57
  SPEAKER_00: But um, but I definitely think like sales and marketing hand in hand, right?
• 53:03
  SPEAKER_00: That that relationship just has to exist.
• 53:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I think that's one of the first places where things break down, too.
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like is when marketing wants to go about it a different way, and sales is not quite understanding how that impacts the way they're talking to customers.
• 53:23
  SPEAKER_00: But I think every department that has to do with maintaining or building the customer experience is like the first priority at who needs to have maybe like a deeper look at what's shifted and why, um, and a follow-up if that's needed, but absolutely need to make sure that everyone is on the same page, otherwise, you run the risk of having multiple brand personalities.
• 53:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 53:53
  SPEAKER_02: Because just because marketing owned the creation of that content strategy doesn't mean that's the only place it should be used.
• 54:00
  SPEAKER_02: Because you can't have multiple competing content strategies across your organization.
• 54:06
  SPEAKER_02: Because if you do, you're just gonna have lots of rework, you're gonna overwork your executive um folks who you're looking to for approval, you're going to overwork all of those subject matter experts who need to give input.
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_02: And you're not going to end up in a good place.
• 54:23
  SPEAKER_02: You're going to end up with five different personalities that you're putting out there.
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_02: And so then you're never going to understand what messaging is landing with people because if they're getting five completely different messages, there's no way of knowing which one brought them to you at all.
• 54:39
  SPEAKER_00: No, and that just muddies the water so much because uh we talk a lot about testing, testing, testing, trial and error.
• 54:49
  SPEAKER_00: But it's like what you're saying, how do you know what's broken if you have so many subsegments of a customer profile and each one is seeing a different brand voice carried out?
• 55:02
  SPEAKER_00: That is that's a nightmare.
• 55:05
  SPEAKER_00: That's what that is.
• 55:07
  SPEAKER_02: And that's when you go back to letting the AI guess what you should do because you know your data is a mess, yeah, and everything's so fragmented.
• 55:16
  SPEAKER_02: But there's so many better opportunities that can await you, better ways to put the AI AI to use.
• 55:23
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 55:25
  SPEAKER_02: So um, as we close up, I'd love to hear if you have kind of like maybe two practical things that marketers can do today to kind of, if they're feeling stuck in that messy middle right now, to start to extricate themselves.
• 55:37
  SPEAKER_00: I think first thing is first, you have to figure out what are the things that you can reasonably subtract.
• 55:45
  SPEAKER_00: If you can't make a list of five things, start with one thing.
• 55:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the more we'll we're able to clear off a very messy desk, the the more we're like able to kind of see through to what we really should be able to see.
• 56:03
  SPEAKER_00: And um, it all starts with subtraction, right?
• 56:06
  SPEAKER_00: Excluding um things that aren't making sense.
• 56:09
  SPEAKER_00: And then I think the your next step after that is really focusing on establishing what should be in place, what good really should look like, what success looks like, and you know, charting that path forward with like, okay, now that we're done with this, we need to kind of focus on just establishing what good is supposed to look like and then move towards it.
• 56:38
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, with anything, there's always going to be pivots, there's always going to be road bumps, there's always going to be new information surfacing, direction changing.
• 56:50
  SPEAKER_00: But I think anytime we feel like we're in the messy middle, keep in mind that this is a loop with the three E's.
• 56:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's not like a one and done.
• 57:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's that every time you feel like translation is off.
• 57:05
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, we need to go back to the three E's.
• 57:07
  SPEAKER_00: What do we exclude?
• 57:08
  SPEAKER_00: What do we establish?
• 57:09
  SPEAKER_00: And then evolve going forward.
• 57:12
  SPEAKER_02: I love that.
• 57:13
  SPEAKER_02: So folks want to get more of this kind of advice and um access to the tools that you mentioned, where can they go to find them?
• 57:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 57:22
  SPEAKER_00: So uh they can go to my website, connectthedots.com.
• 57:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's spelt k-a-n-e-c-t.
• 57:28
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, it's a playoff my last name.
• 57:31
  SPEAKER_00: So uh just FYI on that.
• 57:34
  SPEAKER_00: And um follow me on LinkedIn as well.
• 57:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I am regularly posting all sorts of little tidbits and snippets, and um, that should be a great place to go.
• 57:46
  SPEAKER_02: I love it.
• 57:46
  SPEAKER_02: Well, thank you so much for continuing our conversation uh with uh today's content chat.
• 57:52
  SPEAKER_02: I think you've definitely given people a lot of food for thought and some really concrete places to get started because I think a lot of people are feeling trapped in the messy middle right now.
• 58:03
  unknown: Yeah.
• 58:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean, that just like one of the things that I'll say is it's not just relevant for marketing.
• 58:10
  SPEAKER_00: Like everything we talked about obviously, um, it talks about how to bridge the gap between strategy and execution, but the term the messy middle can apply to life as well.
• 58:21
  SPEAKER_00: Like I've been in the messy middle a few times now.
• 58:24
  SPEAKER_00: So um there's a way out of the tunnel.
• 58:29
  SPEAKER_02: 100%.
• 58:30
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that's amazing uh advice.
• 58:33
  SPEAKER_02: So thank you again.
• 58:34
  SPEAKER_00: All right, everybody having me.
• 58:36
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you, and um, we'll be seeing all of these resources in the recap and hope to have you on again in the future.
• 58:44
  SPEAKER_02: Awesome.
• 58:44
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks.
• 58:46
  SPEAKER_02: Bye, everybody.
• 58:49
  SPEAKER_02: No, because I