Latest / The Prompt / Ep. 563 | How AI is rewriting marketing, data, and the human side of sales

Transcript

Ep. 563 | How AI is rewriting marketing, data, and the human side of sales · The Prompt

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This is on base, your one stop shop for solving your most
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pressing B to B go to market challenges.
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Each week host Chris Moody and Paul Gibson talk to sales and
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marketing leaders to get you in depth insights and creative
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strategies to set your revenue teams up for success.
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Hello everyone, and welcome back to the latest in the
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award-winning on Base podcast series.
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I'm your host, Paul Gibson, and we always look for different hot
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topics to discuss. So I'm really excited today.
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I'm talking with Fiona Shepherd. You may well know her as founder
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and CEO of April 6th and also now a key figure within the
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Market Bridge organization. You're with us today to talk
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about a great topic. I think marketing's next move,
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the change imperative for 2026. So Fiona, it sounds like a great
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topic. I'm excited to get into this
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review. So thanks very much for coming
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on the show. That's wonderful.
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I feel very honoured. Thank you very much.
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I feel very special to be here. Thank you.
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Excellent. Thank you.
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And and as we always do, before we get into the topic, it'd be
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really good. Fair enough.
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If you don't mind, just start with a simple question.
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Just take us through your journey to where you are today
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and and what you're currently doing.
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Yeah, no, of course, absolutely. And you know, I have to start by
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saying I feel incredibly lucky every day because because my
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career journey has been just one exciting, challenging, very
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important part of my life. And you know, and luck has
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played a big part in that and some astonishing people have
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played a big part in that. What's probably also worth
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mentioning is I can't remember much before I started April 6th,
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because that was 25 years ago, which is I was obviously really,
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really young man. And so 25 years in one place has
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is kind of meant that that's all I can remember.
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But I know I did a bit of client side before that and those sorts
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of things in marketing. But but it has been a 25 year
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journey with April 6. And the reason I feel lucky is
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that every year has been a different year.
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And I think that's astonishing, right?
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If you could honestly say that no year was the same, then
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you're a very lucky person. And I think it's it's changed in
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so many ways. You know, that has been
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embracing new services. If I'm really honest, I actually
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started in the world of printed direct marketing, if anybody
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remembers that. And so we've gone full circle
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really. So I was very targeted,
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insightful direct mail to about 25 million people at a time.
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So, so having started right in direct marketing, all of those
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trends in services, I've been lucky to be able to embrace,
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move forward almost always with brand and demand at the centre.
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But but you know, the journey has taken me through so many
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changes in services and then I think locations.
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I have been, you know, on this joyous path with all these
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talented people having started in London and and then ending up
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with four or five offices here. But equally opening in America
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12 or 13 years ago, which is now an extraordinary successful
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agency. Then going to another continent
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and China and Singapore and then Germany here.
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So, so the challenges have been about services, but they've also
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been about locations and, and exploring working in different
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parts of the world. China was definitely a learning
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for me. And I think you know that that
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all builds you as a leader, as a person, as a business person.
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And the innovation changes when you think about over that 25
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years have been extraordinary. So I'd say I'm lucky.
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I think I'm built to create change.
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I love change, so maybe that's why every year is different.
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I start it and go, heck, I want it.
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I want to do something new this year.
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What will it be? I'm probably very wearing to
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work with and I'm really lucky to have had lots of the same
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people by my side for most of those 25 years, which is
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incredible. And that's kind of why you talk
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to being part of Market Bridge now that that is part of that
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change, that kind of next generation, that next iteration,
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where is the market going? How is the market changing?
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So that's a really exciting time really.
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So, so yeah, it's been an incredible career and now
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building market bridge in EMEA, which is which is a very
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exciting job to be taking on. Yeah, it's a, it's an exciting
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journey and, and, and it sounds like a lot of fun and that's the
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key to it, right? You obviously enjoy it and
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you've obviously always enjoyed it.
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So that that. You know, I think I, I enjoy the
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change and the change is not just in where you are, it's in
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what you're selling, but I also think we have incredibly
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talented people in the B2B space.
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And it's just inspirational to be around clients.
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How lucky are we that we work with people that inspire us and
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make us want to take a bold step forward that that, you know, and
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I think that's been a big part of why I've loved this career so
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much. Yeah, absolutely.
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And we might touch on that a bit during our session today, but B
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to B always used to look at B to C and say, how do we copy them?
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And now, And now we've grown up and realized actually we need to
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do things differently, but we can also do things that are
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really clever. So yeah, it's nice to see.
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Well. Yeah, I think we found our
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value. I think we suddenly realized
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that actually we are and and it's one of my, one of my pet
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things really we are, we are not a cost center.
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We're a profit center. Marketing is is a profit centre.
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It drives revenue, reputation, brand.
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It is not a cost to a business. It is the very centre and core
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of how a business operates. And I think we finally found our
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voice, which is never a bad thing.
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It's a good thing. Yeah, absolutely.
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I remember doing a talk a while ago, and it's waste not
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resources because the marketing teams that are heart of every
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business, when numbers seem to be getting under pressure, it's
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all right, let's cut this, cut that.
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They shouldn't be cutting resources or headcount.
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Yeah. Well, and I think now
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particularly in fairly turbulent economic times, nobody's saying
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this is an easy time. You still feel that trend
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towards cutting costs and then marketing is one of the first
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costs to be cut. But you know, it's at the very
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lifeblood of an organization and kind of it's because it's always
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seen as a cost. It's cut rather than actually
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reinvesting. And there's so much research
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that says the more you invest in marketing in some of these
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tricky times, that or, or in times of change, which we are in
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again, that then the more you get in return.
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So, so I'm always on that hobby horse of actually we're a key
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part of we're a profit centre for the organization.
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Yeah. Absolutely, fully agree with
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that. So looking back, was there
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anything in particular that inspired you to focus on like
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the priorities for marketing leaders as we approach 2026 and
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I think what you call the change imperative?
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Yeah. No, I think, yeah, I mean, I
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think at the end of the day, you see the whole world pivoting.
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Everything is changing, right? It does feel a little like the
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world is upside down. And you know, I was reading
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something a couple of nights ago and it was doing the comparison
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to, you know, this is like the industrial revolution and then
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the introduction of the web. I'd like to point out I wasn't
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here for the industrial revolution.
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I probably did just touch the beginning of the web.
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But ultimately there, there is this seismic change happening in
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our sector and I think it takes bravery now to kind of move
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forward and embrace it. And you know, there was some
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other research that was in a presentation I sat in a couple
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of days ago that was showing the difference in organisations
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performance if they've adopted AI.
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So, so actually in terms of performance, there is a gap
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occurring between those that are brave and embrace this new world
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and those that don't are kind of falling behind already.
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And that's in a matter of years and months, right?
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That's terrifying levels of change.
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And I think this change imperative is here that there is
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a need now to say it's OK, let's embrace it.
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Let's face it full on. And I know as an organization
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you have been leading at the front of kind of agentic AI and
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AI adoption. And I think there are still
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occasionally people that say, hey, it won't change everything
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too much. But but in reality everything is
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going to be different. And we've already worked out
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that I find that exciting, which is, which is slightly probably,
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probably worrying, but I think it's exciting that things are
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going to change that much. But I understand at every level
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of an organization that causes some level of, of restlessness
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and concern. And it is our responsibility to
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help organizations move forward through that.
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And I think one of the reasons that that I think, you know,
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being part of Market Bridge is important to me is that is that
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they focus on growth. So they reinvent growth.
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And I think we're at a point where all of these changes are
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about reinventing growth. They are about reinventing how
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we go to market. The way that people use your
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product will never be the same again.
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And that's extraordinary, right? I think it's exciting.
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Some people say it's scary. I think it probably should be
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both. But that's where this kind of
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imperative comes from, this need to say yes, but we actually now
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do need to make a a real shift. So let's be pragmatic about how
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we do that as business leaders. So I'm not as down in the
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granular. So, so you know, there are some
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really technical people doing some really technical things.
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I'm kind of trying to help customers and businesses and our
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business kind of embrace it and move on to that next step.
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And, and that's where I see the imperative.
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You can take it all the way down to how do we structure our data
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so we can make the most of this. You can get very granular on it.
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You know, I'm kind of a little evangelical about let's make
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that move full stop. And let's, let's do that
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together and let's, you know, have running a big agency and
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having done so for so long, what is the partnership between US
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and the client now? And then with platforms like
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yours, how are we all going to work together?
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Because we all need each other to take a step on this scale.
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We need to become a collaboration.
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And I think that's what I'm striving to do is make sure we
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have that collaboration. Because if you make this, this
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kind of technology change, it's not, it's so much more than
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that. It's about transforming your
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business. And then you layer on top about
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the fact that none of our buyers buy in the same way anymore.
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So it didn't just change how we do something and how we deliver
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a service or how we how we make something creative.
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It actually means that the people we're trying to talk to
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are doing things entirely differently too.
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And you go, wow. So what is the consistent thing
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here? And they're not everything is
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being rewritten and, and sometimes that sounds
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dramatical, though. I was actually listening to the
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godfather of AI talking about what a terrible thing he'd
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created. And I'm now terrified as well.
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I've managed to scare myself a little bit.
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But, but actually it sometimes when you go, what if everything
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is up for grabs? What if we're reinventing and
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we're changing and we're making decisions about the
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organisations and the businesses we want to be going forward and
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how are we going to do that? That's when I think you can
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truly put the word change imperative on this and say this
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is the moment in time when we have to do things differently
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and if we don't, the buyer is going somewhere different
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anyway. And I know you're leading with
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those sorts of solutions to help people to stay ahead of that
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intent and that changed behaviour, but that is scary for
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people, right? I think it's fun to rewrite the
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rules, but it's also scary in the same rare.
11:13
Absolutely. And all of these new, new
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fangled things that come along, it's always a little bit scary.
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I think if, if people can can enhance and understand that a
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lot of this stuff that's coming out, all these agentic AI things
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are coming up. They take away all of the, the
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manual time consuming, boring tasks that you have to do that
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take you away from what you want to do, which is marketing,
11:34
sales, that sort of stuff. And it allows you to have the
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time to do that. I think that's when people can
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start getting excited about it. I don't have to fill out a form.
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I don't have to build a spreadsheet.
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I don't have to explore all the data.
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AI can do all that for me. And then it's how do I use my
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creative mindset to to utilise that insight so.
11:53
Yeah, it is not about making humans irrelevant.
11:56
It never, it never was. It was about making humans more
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valuable because they could add the value to to the mundane
12:04
tasks being done by the machines.
12:06
So, so I think it is transformational and it does
12:10
mean a change for everybody, but it means we can do more of what
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we want to do. And that's not a bad thing,
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that's a good thing. But there are risks, like all
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things, you know, we are trusting a machine to do all of
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that mundane stuff, which is lovely with Agentic.
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We're kind of trusting it to do more of that and to connect it
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and to start within boundaries, making decisions and moving it.
12:35
So taking on tasks rather than just a singular task.
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And that starts to get bring up all new sorts of topics around,
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you know, how safe is that? And how does the human
12:46
intervention play into that? Where do we make sure the human
12:50
is? And I, I think the, the key
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point is the human is still in control, right?
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How does the human stay in control?
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I think that's a thread across everything AI, but how does, how
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does the human stay in control of that and how do we make sure
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we're compliant and we're behaving ethically in that
13:05
environment? So I think there were just lots
13:07
of checks and balances. And I think that's what makes it
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exciting in the same way. And I think, you know, you're
13:13
helping, you know, your organization is a part of this,
13:15
but we've spent our whole life. I I was part of inventing the
13:19
first ever funnel and all that sort of thing and, and, and the
13:22
waterfall and all those sorts of things.
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And I think we now look at a world where it's not about the
13:27
next version of the waterfall or the funnel, but that is a
13:30
customer LED flatter experience. So therefore we have to rewrite
13:35
it and potentially it's not a funnel, right?
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It's not shaped like a funnel. It's kind of customer LED.
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Therefore, even if I watch my own personal buying habits, they
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are entirely changed. And so the impacts of that are
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are significant. They're significant in your
13:53
martech, they're significant in your creating demand.
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There's significant in new converting demand.
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So all of those things are affected by that and that, you
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know, that's here. It's not a case of do we want it
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or don't we? I don't.
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I think we might have gone past the point of being able to
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decide whether this was the way we were going or not going.
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Yeah, Unless you know something I don't.
14:16
I. Can't possibly comment no, no, I
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definitely think that that it's here to stay.
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It's and it's an interesting point actually, maybe we can dig
14:24
into this a little bit more because AI is obviously top of
14:26
mind and it's it's the centrepiece of most
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conversations we have and this one here today in your mind, you
14:33
know, based on your experience, how do you see gentic AI
14:36
reshaping marketing? You know it always at
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automation. Is it autonomy?
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Is it a combination of everything?
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It's all of those things. And I think, you know, it's
14:45
really early adopters that are that are kind of mapping this
14:48
into their organization now. And I think you've got to be
14:51
really sensible and make sure that when you you're either
14:54
deploying the agentic solutions that are built into some of that
14:57
text stack you have already and in which case they're well
15:01
thought through, they're well managed.
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You've just got to make sure that you've put your guardrails
15:05
on it and that you know how your managing that process as it's
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happening so that you're keeping some safety on it.
15:11
So I think that matters in that way.
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I think when you start to think about your own organization and
15:16
look inwards and say, now how do I want to embed a gentic in in
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tasks that are unique to my organization?
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That's got to be done really carefully.
15:25
And you know, I was really, I was sadly enough listening to a
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podcast last night on EU regulation around AI, because
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it's beginning to become a problem because ultimately the
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EU regulations kicked in this year.
15:36
And in theory, a lot of the new updated versions or new tools
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will will not be allowed to be used in Europe because they're
15:44
just not secure enough. And the problem in that is it's
15:47
going to hold those businesses back in Europe if we can't.
15:50
And you know, from a workforce perspective, all sorts of
15:52
things. So, so there are lots of
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implications that a business has to consider.
15:57
And when it's when it's considering how to use a genetic
16:01
in its organization, it's got to make sure that use case can can
16:05
be managed by a human. So, so the tasks, the mundane
16:09
tasks are being done and automated agentically, but that
16:12
there is human checks and balances on that.
16:15
I think, you know, as you're building them into your own
16:18
business and, and they haven't had all of that rigor put into
16:20
them by the kind of solution, you need to make sure that
16:23
you've got your guardrails, that you know how and when you're
16:26
going to spot it. If there's any hallucination or,
16:30
or if there's any potential threat from a security
16:34
perspective. You know, there, there were lots
16:35
of new threats coming into play now, which are sending, you
16:39
know, invites or, or whatever into, into and entering
16:43
organisations through the AI tools.
16:45
And you kind of go, wow, that does take a little bit more
16:48
thought now. So I think a gentic is, and I
16:50
saw some Microsoft work which is, which talks about the AI we
16:53
have now, which is AI plus human, which is you and I using
16:56
it to make our day a bit easier, to be able to find things
17:00
easier, to look smarter, all those sorts of that's why I'm
17:04
using it anyway when I can. You know, we're all using it
17:06
like that. Then you get your AI
17:08
hussagentic. So you've got some tasks being
17:11
done by the agentic solution and the human is overseeing that and
17:16
you're putting in some measures that allow them to know how to
17:19
spot if it's not doing behaving the way you expect it to, even
17:24
maybe to modify and and kind of kind of improve that as you move
17:28
forward. And then the next phase of that,
17:31
which is human managing multiple agents.
17:33
So you end up with this human plus a SIM based tool.
17:37
You've got your agents and they are kind of doing a lot of the
17:41
tasks. And I think you started here, I
17:43
think it's where you started at all, which was, you know,
17:45
they're doing the tasks that that human doesn't necessarily
17:48
need to do. They're not adding the value.
17:51
They're potentially not able to do it as well as the agentic
17:54
solution can because of the speed and the width of, of of
17:58
its ability to work. And then you get to this point
18:01
somewhere, I'd like to say years ahead, but I think the speed
18:04
we're going, it might not be years ahead where, you know,
18:07
you're employing people to manage a number of agents and
18:10
those agents are undertaking the majority of the tasks that
18:14
either are mundane or that require a lot of repetitive data
18:20
analysis to get to a point or that or actually kind of, you
18:24
know, analysing and acting on that data in one.
18:27
So you know, the workforce of the future might be quite
18:30
different and an organization will undoubtedly have a lot of
18:36
it's day-to-day work done by agents.
18:38
I can't see a way that doesn't happen unless you.
18:40
What do you think? Well, I did say a couple of
18:42
things. I think 1.
18:43
I think I've heard several conversations I've had where
18:47
people are saying AI agents will be built in technology to build
18:52
how to buy from AI agents in other technologies.
18:56
The middle man, you don't need salespeople anymore.
18:58
I'm not sure it'll ever get there.
18:59
But I think that the other one that I hear quite a lot is AI
19:03
driving people to do things without any insight.
19:07
So it's like a brilliant example.
19:09
I was talking to a sales leader yesterday that they've started
19:12
ignoring the, the intent signals they were getting from a
19:15
particular platform because it was saying go after that
19:19
company. No insight on the reasoning
19:22
behind it, nothing to do with buying to are they engaging with
19:24
the brand, whether I it's just go after it.
19:27
And so of course, SDRS and sales people got excited and they
19:30
started going after it. And at least 50% of the time it
19:33
was just wild goose chasers. It wasn't relevant.
19:36
And so I termed it AI without the why AI can't be great.
19:40
If you don't understand why AI is telling you to do it as a
19:43
salesperson, how do you know what messaging?
19:46
How do you know when to engage? And so I think that's something
19:49
that, you know, AI fantastic, let's all use it and adopt it,
19:52
but don't just blindly believe this black box signal without
19:57
having the insight behind it. So I think there's some
19:59
interesting stuff out there, but as long as they don't go.
20:02
Well, let's just use technology to buy from other technology and
20:05
cut out the middleman, because otherwise I'll be looking for a
20:07
new job. But.
20:09
Yeah, now I, I think that plays well there, doesn't it into into
20:12
the thing that starts to build now, which is the lack of trust
20:15
in it in in that ultimately you go through a whole cycle, don't
20:18
you? When there's a change on this
20:19
scale and it's a a societal change, it literally is going to
20:24
change how people buy things at home and interact at home and
20:28
book their next holiday, whatever.
20:30
It's going to change all of society AI in that way.
20:33
I think it is scary. People start to look for some
20:37
sort of human confirmation that it's OK.
20:41
And I think that's really exciting because I think you
20:43
then get to a point where it needs the human to be kind of
20:48
real. The other change that I think is
20:50
happening is that this, how long have we talked about the
20:53
alignment of sales and marketing?
20:55
Just forever and ever and ever. And we've said these two things
20:58
have to be seen as one, they have to work as one.
21:01
In some ways, the kind of creation of the growth officer
21:04
on the board was a sort of the first real step towards saying
21:08
these two things should work in harmony.
21:11
But AI and the use of AI and a gentic AI is going to mean they
21:15
have to work totally In Sync. Going back to the the example
21:20
you just gave, right? They have to be working hand in
21:23
hand. You probably possibly, I mean,
21:27
you're talking about, you know, the death of the salesman there
21:29
that that very famous book we all studied at school.
21:31
When you're talking about death of a salesman, they probably
21:33
need to restructure their organization to make sure
21:38
they've got the right people able to deliver the right part
21:41
of this new hybrid human and AI answer.
21:44
And again, one of the reasons that the Market Bridge solution
21:47
for me was the right place to be the Market Bridge platform is
21:49
that they do the whole go to market consulting,
21:52
organizational change, all of those sorts of things.
21:55
And I think you really probably need to think about transforming
21:58
your entire organization. And that is going to mean you
22:01
need to rethink how sales and marketing are aligned, how they
22:05
work together in harmony, hand in hand to actually make the
22:10
most of of the efficiencies and the productivity and the
22:14
advantage this brings. Because you're right, actually
22:17
that isn't the death of sales. It's the reinvention of sales
22:20
because there is so much of that sales relationship that the AI
22:24
can't do so much of it. You're sparkling personality,
22:29
all of those things, the trust that your clients have having
22:33
you as an organization that cannot be replaced.
22:36
And I think it will probably pivot to become exponentially
22:40
more important because they know that everything they're being
22:43
fed is being fed them by the machine and that they're kind of
22:48
like going on a journey hand in hand.
22:50
You know what, what was the figure I saw yesterday?
22:51
Something like 78% of the buying decision is done independent of
22:56
a vendor anymore. They're doing all of that and
22:58
they know they're doing it with AI because it's some ridiculous
23:01
amount. Like over 50% of people stop at
23:03
the agentic AI point now. So when the, when the AI tells
23:07
them in the search, when, when they get to the generative AI
23:10
answer, they stop and they read down that answer and then they
23:13
go off and make a decision. So, so, so much of what they're
23:17
doing is outside of our traditional funnel that actually
23:22
in many ways you need to rewrite that funnel entirely and say
23:25
what? What is an MQL anymore?
23:26
I don't know. I don't know anymore what is an
23:29
SQL? Surely, surely that can't be
23:32
true. That can't be true.
23:34
And so everything is going to need to be rewritten and
23:37
potentially your organization is going to restructure.
23:40
And the way you align those two, they are jointly using the
23:45
advantages of product. You know, solutions like yours
23:48
are sales and marketing solutions.
23:49
They always have been, absolutely, but they
23:51
predominantly live in marketing. But mostly they should be shared
23:55
across all of that, I think. Yeah.
23:56
And it's interesting because we because we are obviously seen
23:59
primarily as a a marketing platform ourselves.
24:03
But when you look at our data, we've got more sales people
24:05
using US than marketers and. The real, the really the.
24:09
Really interesting thing is that you speak to a sales leader and
24:12
say, well, why am I interested in this stuff?
24:14
Well, you told us your close rates are down.
24:16
You told us that taking you longer to close deals and your
24:18
churn rates are going up. That is quite simply because the
24:21
stuff that's going into your pipeline isn't the stuff that
24:24
your sales team can close. So if we can help you align with
24:27
marketing, so you're all going after accounts that you know
24:31
your business can and wants to sell to, guess what, your close
24:34
rates will go up, your average order value will go up.
24:37
And more importantly, they're good, valuable customers.
24:39
So your renewal rates will go up.
24:41
So of course, it's relevant to sales.
24:42
And I think once you have that discussion, people start to
24:45
understand it, understand it a bit more.
24:47
Yeah, it's getting so much smarter at you know and and then
24:50
we go to buyer groups and we go to all of those fundamental
24:53
changes in the way that we we see intent and use intent and
24:58
and manage intent and you kind of go that is a very relevant
25:01
sales and marketing conversation.
25:03
It is important. What is the point as you say, I
25:06
think the example you go, you gave earlier talks exactly to
25:08
this. What is the point if that is not
25:10
actionable insight, if there isn't something that makes sales
25:15
more able to convert at that point more able, And you know,
25:18
as all clients are running all their intense andagenetic tools,
25:22
a lot of people are going to be in the same place at the same
25:25
time if they all know what's right.
25:27
So you've got to have an edge. And that edge comes from how
25:31
you're using that insight. That edge comes from how you
25:34
show up creatively, how you show up from a brand perspective.
25:38
You've got an even shorter. We used to have all that time
25:41
when they had 7 touches before they became a, a marketing
25:45
qualified or a sales qualified lead.
25:47
And you'd had all this time to tell people your perspective on
25:51
things, to talk, you know, to, to coach people into your points
25:55
of differentiation. You potentially are coming in,
25:57
in the last 15 or 20% of the sale now, right?
26:01
That's you're past that point of let me kind of educate you.
26:06
So you've got to do 2 things. One is you've got to go and
26:09
educate somewhere else. Make sure that you are in that
26:13
80% of the search that's happening outside of of the
26:17
traditional funnel. Make sure you're there and that
26:19
means you've got to look at generative AI and that's blowing
26:23
everybody's mind, right? We've got a number of Geo
26:25
solutions going in now, but but ultimately clients are watching
26:30
their inbound disappear off the edge of a Cliff, right?
26:33
It's just going because nobody is getting to the paid search
26:37
bit anymore. And in fact, I watched myself do
26:40
it the other day, which is really ridiculous.
26:42
I wanted to find something out and I got so obsessed with the
26:45
generative answer that I didn't go anywhere else.
26:48
And I thought quite do do that too.
26:49
I get to the generative answer and it tells me what I need to
26:52
know and then it tells me some other interesting things.
26:54
And then I kind of get a bit wrapped up in that and then I
26:57
look at the citation to make sure I'm not doing anything
27:00
wrong and, and all of that sort of thing.
27:02
And you kind of go, wow, that is organisations have got to really
27:05
make sure they're thinking about buyer interaction in an entirely
27:08
different way that they are thinking about how do I get into
27:11
that GNAI, that independent search.
27:15
And that's, you know, the content for that is
27:17
predominantly Reddit and YouTube.
27:20
And you know, you go, I didn't get many briefs for that in the
27:22
last 25 years. Can you get me on Reddit,
27:25
please? And it's also about kind of
27:27
third party authentication and trusted sources.
27:30
We know the Jenna AI is in the search of truth, allegedly.
27:35
So it is searching for things it feels are trustworthy and
27:39
confident in. So now you get the resurgence of
27:43
the gardeners and the foresters and all that sort of thing
27:45
because because actually they're trusted.
27:48
And so people, the AI will go listen to some of those more
27:51
trusted resources and say, you know, I'm getting asked to, you
27:55
know, publish league tables again and to do things.
27:57
It's kind of crazy really. But we've got to pivot and be in
28:01
that 80%. And then you'll be watching that
28:04
as a tool and tools. We'll be watching that.
28:05
And then make sure that when they're ready in that last bit
28:09
of the sale, sometimes that we are the ones that are there and
28:13
then that we have the biggest impact and say the most relevant
28:17
thing. And we've got one chance to say
28:20
it. We haven't got 7 touches.
28:21
We've got one chance. So it's a rebirth of, of
28:24
brilliant creativity comes back into its own again.
28:27
That's very cool. It's not about how many versions
28:30
can I do, It's about what one single thing can I say at this
28:34
point to be the chosen solution. And that's, that's exciting
28:39
again. Absolutely.
28:40
I think the rise of intent and things like that, a big part of
28:43
that was COVID. As horrible as COVID was
28:47
identified, there's no trade shows, there's no field events,
28:49
there's no face to face meetings.
28:51
How the heck do we get opportunities?
28:54
Oh, we'll cross our fingers and hope that someone comes to our
28:56
website. Where then?
28:57
Yeah. So how do you find them?
28:58
And then intent obviously had a massive resurgence.
29:01
And I think that's that's driven a lot.
29:02
So, yeah, it's exciting to see where things go.
29:05
And somebody that's often brushed under the carpet and
29:07
it's slightly changing the topic a little bit.
29:10
Data alignment. It's seen as a stumbling block
29:12
to many people. So how do you think marketing
29:15
leaders should better connect people, processes, metrics to
29:19
turn some of that raw data into actionable insights?
29:22
This is the big opportunity now, isn't it?
29:25
And I think we are being brought in more and more to kind of
29:27
create that data landscape and to build out the KPIs because I
29:32
think ultimately you probably have to rewrite your metrics as
29:36
well, right? So this is probably a time that
29:39
you want to say we're not going to measure things in the same
29:42
way. We can't measure things in the
29:44
same way. We've got to have our metric,
29:46
you know, intent changes how you how you deliver metrics.
29:49
So I think all of that is truly the foundation for what we're
29:54
going to achieve and and none of it is answered yet.
29:56
I think we're in the early adopter stage there where we are
29:59
actually working with clients to find a way to connect all those
30:03
data sources because AI is only as good as the as the
30:06
consistency and the quality of the data it can access.
30:10
If it's not accessing great data, it's none of those things.
30:13
So, so you need to get the data sources right.
30:16
You've also got all the legislation to watch at the same
30:19
time in Europe. That's slightly less funny than
30:22
everywhere else in the world, but in Europe it's, it's kind of
30:25
legislation becomes a big thing here as well.
30:28
And so you've got, you've got to make sure that that works.
30:31
I get that you've got to make sure that your data is sorted.
30:34
But then I think those clients are adopting early, we're
30:37
working with them on these kind of strategies, which is what is
30:40
the strategy to connect that data and to identify new data
30:45
sources that we need on top of that.
30:46
So, so that is one thing, but then the second thing becomes
30:50
what are the metrics we're going to measure on the business?
30:52
And I think they are completely changing.
30:55
You know, I can remember years and years ago, I won a big
30:57
contract with a massive technology company and it was on
30:59
a risk and reward basis, which was terrifying.
31:01
I actually lost weight for the first time 2 years running
31:04
because it was so scary. But ultimately it measured us on
31:07
MQL and then MQL to SQL. It was very traditional and then
31:11
it stopped at SQL if it went to the channel because we couldn't
31:15
measure it and all that. So it was very complicated and
31:18
very stressful. Those things are not going to be
31:21
the measures of a successful business tomorrow.
31:23
They are going to be total customer value, total life site,
31:27
like life cycle value. They're going to be, I was
31:29
reading some research yesterday that talked about how AI is
31:32
directly impacting the time to conversion.
31:35
So literally organisations that were taking six months to
31:39
convert are seeing that come drop and drop now.
31:41
I think that's because people are coming in later in the buyer
31:44
cycle, but if the organization is only got instead of having a
31:48
six month sale cycle, it's got a 2 month sale cycle.
31:51
You want to change all of your metrics, right?
31:54
Everything is up for grabs. That's where you'll start to see
31:57
now is where is the new measurement coming from and and
32:00
you know, buyer groups help with that and all of that.
32:03
So you might measure it distinctly in marketing around,
32:06
you know using the power of the buyer group to drive additional
32:10
kind of impact on revenue. I do think now is the time that
32:14
marketing can be held accountable for revenue because
32:17
I think revenue growth, they will be the only bellwethers of
32:21
metrics in the future. I think there are other things
32:24
that are nice to haves and, and they might get put there in
32:26
measurement, but I'm fairly sure a lot of the metrics will spin
32:29
around what is the ultimate revenue impact on this and what
32:34
is the customer value to us? Because we have to learn to
32:39
embrace that new buyer behaviour and then keep those people,
32:41
right? Because that's the next thing
32:43
is, is that that buyer life cycle.
32:44
So I think all of those are, are being adopted.
32:48
I think people understand they are critical to the success of,
32:51
of an AI embedded or an AI enabled in organization.
32:55
And I think we'll see those starting to shape up now.
32:58
But data will be as it always was, right?
33:00
I think it was when I when I started in direct marketing.
33:03
It was my problem 25 years ago. It is still the problem today
33:10
and the scale and size of it is immense.
33:12
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, and we speak to lots of
33:14
people who just want to buy data.
33:16
We don't just want to buy a load of data.
33:18
You want to buy the data that's relevant to you and the insight
33:21
you're saying and things are. So I think, I think there's lots
33:23
of lots of interesting discussions around that, that
33:26
that is still coming. And metrics, you touched on
33:28
metrics. It's amazing how many B to B
33:30
companies we talk to everyday who are still relying on, I call
33:34
them, false positives like a click through rate, anonymous,
33:37
click through rate, anonymous website traffic.
33:40
At the end of the day, if I'm sending out an advertising
33:43
campaign and I can only sell to banks and financial institutions
33:47
and I get French Connection clicking on my ad, yes, it's a
33:50
click on my ad, but it's not someone that we can ever buy to.
33:53
So is that a positive? I don't think so.
33:55
Then they go to your website. Great.
33:57
Our website traffic's gone up, but it's not someone you can
33:59
sell to and and worst case, it goes into the pipeline.
34:03
Sales go around chasing it with very little to closing it
34:06
because it doesn't fit. So what are those false
34:08
positives? But then of course, the last
34:10
piece in that puzzle is if you've got a really good or
34:12
potentially really bad salesperson that closes French
34:15
Connection, great, but they're passing the post sales team a
34:19
disaster because it doesn't fit. They'll never get to value and
34:22
they'll churn, so that actually loses money to the business.
34:25
So I think as I say, and you probably see it as well, but it
34:28
amazes me that so many B to BS are still using these outdated,
34:33
you know, anonymous click through rate type metrics.
34:36
I did have a strategy that that is ultimately with all the
34:38
intent knowledge we now have thanks to solutions like yours.
34:41
Ultimately, we really know what products should be sold.
34:44
If we're a portfolio solution from that intent, we know that
34:48
if we're pointing it to sales and, and sales should be selling
34:52
them, you know, product A, that that's the right solution for
34:55
them. It's the one that suits their
34:56
business. The profile is right.
34:59
We, if they sell them product B because that is the product they
35:03
know and love and, and, and which happens a lot, then then
35:07
ultimately there is no Commission.
35:09
So I had this idea that we should actually going back to
35:11
your, what are your measurements?
35:13
Maybe in in the future we can create measurements that are
35:16
about did you sell the right thing to the right person and
35:20
then did we make sure that they could use that solution to its
35:24
optimum so that we retain them. So it gives you this exciting
35:28
future where potentially it is all about the customer.
35:31
Every metric we have is about the customer, and that would be
35:35
the right way up for the world really.
35:37
Yeah. Again, I have lots of
35:39
discussions around don't think about how much this costs, think
35:42
about how much value it delivers to your business.
35:44
So in a similar way, you know, how much value do you did you
35:47
deliver to that customer when you sold them that particular
35:50
product or whatever? Yeah, it's interesting.
35:52
Lots, lots of change come in. Another thing we speak to lots
35:56
of business leaders and and a lot of them get frustrated that
35:59
they might have bought a piece of technology that pretty much
36:02
straight jackets them and haven't got the ability to
36:05
evolve. Their journeys are changing, but
36:08
they can't change with it and things like that.
36:10
So as as customer journeys become more fragmented as we're
36:13
saying them and we're, I was probably seeing them influenced
36:16
more and more by these generative IIS.
36:19
How do you see marketing teams adapting to ensure that they can
36:23
maintain the relevant visibility and engagement?
36:27
The sudden realisation that that generative that Jio is here and
36:32
Jio has instantly changed bio behaviours is is causing teams
36:37
to pivot quite quickly. It's one of the most rapid
36:40
changes in behaviour I think I've seen in a long time.
36:43
And so you see organisations, I think there might be Gartner
36:46
workout yesterday that said that 60% of searches are now
36:50
satisfied by the Gen. AI, right?
36:52
That is immense. That is crazy and it's almost
36:55
underselling it to say it's the new search because I don't think
36:58
it is the replacement for SEOI think SEO is just going away.
37:02
I think SEO is going and Gio is coming.
37:06
Gio is not a kind. It's so much more than search,
37:09
right? And it's only in its first
37:12
iterations really. So you kind of wonder where
37:14
generate, you know, Gen. 3 and 4 might be because actually as it
37:19
is now to have already converted 60% of people to not actually
37:26
engaging with the search is insane, right.
37:28
That and that's just madness over time.
37:31
And then there was some Forrester Research out last week
37:33
I think or the week before that talked about 89% of B2B buyers
37:38
had used generative AI in their procurement process.
37:42
And again, you kind of go, wow, I don't remember it being a big
37:46
thing last year. I don't remember many people
37:49
saying, if you want, you know, I'm going to say to my kids,
37:51
please learn how to do that because I think that's probably
37:54
a very good place to be. That's going to change both
37:58
agencies and clients, right? We are both sides of the fence
38:00
going to need to pivot around those kinds of changes because
38:04
that create, that's the fragmentation.
38:07
You combine AI with the customer LED behaviours we have now you
38:13
have complete fragmentation, right?
38:15
Because we don't know where they're going or what they're
38:17
doing. We kind of hope we can guess
38:20
where they'll go next. And that's where your buyer
38:22
groups become really important because we can go, well, look,
38:25
it looks like that you've got a much, much more likely if you're
38:28
embedding buyer groups and intent to be able to manage in
38:33
that fragmented world. But ultimately, for most
38:36
organisations, this is a scary moment when suddenly they have
38:38
no idea where the customer is going and how they're going to
38:43
behave. And that's, that's where it
38:45
takes to kind of flattens this funnel and makes it into this
38:47
kind of customer LED madness journey, which is which they are
38:51
dictating. And they are, we will see
38:54
patterns and you will see patterns which will enable us to
38:57
kind of match over them. But it does mean that now, you
39:00
know, I, I've got some things that I'm doing, you know, for
39:03
market Bridge as an organization.
39:05
And I was kind of saying to the team as we're planning them,
39:07
there's some events and things like that.
39:08
And I'm going, can you make sure all the content is Gen.
39:11
AI friendly and you kind of go, when did I add that?
39:14
That's in my briefing process now.
39:16
And you kind of go, wow. So we all have to pivot, right?
39:19
The clients are going to have to pivot to understand that
39:22
actually to influence their buyers, they have to to think
39:27
about the new way in which a customer LED journey plays out
39:30
and how they get become relevant in there.
39:34
As agencies, we need to make sure we're helping clients to
39:38
build those Gen. AI strategies and then that we
39:40
are able to come behind tools like yours and really excel at
39:46
creativity. So, so actually this new level
39:50
of creativity, which which is I guess one shot creativity,
39:54
you've got to accept you were not potentially going to have
39:58
lots of times that you can be there.
40:00
So this is where everybody's we talked to earlier on didn'tly
40:04
about it feels a little bit like it's restless.
40:06
Our industry, there's this restlessness that is because
40:09
every client is now behaving differently.
40:11
So client behaviour has changed, our roles have changed, the
40:15
technology capability has changed.
40:19
And you kind of go that is going to take a complete shift in
40:24
potentially over the next few years in organizational
40:27
structure, definitely in in metrics and direction.
40:31
And ultimately there is going to need to be some real focus on
40:37
the technology that helps you embrace that, which is I guess
40:39
you're glad you work where you work too, because actually you
40:42
kind of go, some of us were lucky enough to be in a place
40:45
that probably embraces this wave of, of chaos that's coming that
40:52
actually beyond that is a kind of more normal situation.
40:55
But I think at the moment it feels slightly chaotic.
40:58
But I think, you know, I talked to some clients, sometimes I
41:01
they are already creating plans for a genetic deployment within
41:05
their organizations. And you kind of go, there's
41:08
these real frontiers. I think Microsoft used the words
41:11
AI frontiers. They're at the front, they're
41:13
leading and they're big organizations.
41:15
We have to make sure every organization can deal with this
41:18
level of change and embrace it. And I so I think everything will
41:21
change. We'll rewrite the funnel, we'll
41:24
rewrite our job descriptions, all of those things that will be
41:27
fun, but we're going to feel like we have less control for a
41:30
minute because of the buy a LED journey and AI.
41:32
But actually we just need to take control of where we are.
41:36
I think it's really simple. We just need to understand and
41:39
simplify the situation and then take steps forward because I
41:43
think it feels hard sometimes to go where do I focus those
41:47
energies, what do I do 1st? And I and I think as
41:50
organizations, we are there to help our clients do that as they
41:53
step forward to be by their side, to be honest.
41:55
Yeah, and I think you hit on some of the immediacy of
41:58
everything, social media, games, the whole world, right?
42:02
I don't want 5 touches to make a decision.
42:04
I want boom, done out of the way.
42:07
And and you're right, we have to go with that, otherwise we're
42:10
getting left. Behind yeah, we're kind of good.
42:12
Hey, we wanted to share our opinion.
42:13
We wanted, we wanted you to take our little like online ready
42:16
record. None of that right Yeah.
42:19
And you kind of go, oh, that's fun, really.
42:22
Yeah, it's exciting. You know, we're in a space
42:24
that's constantly changing. I think it'd be very boring if
42:26
you did the same thing all day, every day for for as long as
42:29
we've been working. So I think it's good that that
42:31
we have that constant change. But you brought up a good point
42:34
actually. So you know, this is this is
42:36
here and now and it's only going to be around more and get more
42:39
embedded in things. So from your experience to what
42:42
do you think the critical challenges businesses will face
42:46
when they're trying to operation, operationalize AI and
42:49
maybe integrate it in with their other strategies?
42:52
The fundamental 1 here for me is that they've got to take their
42:56
people on this journey, right? One of the biggest things about
42:59
the EU legislation, and I hate legislation.
43:02
I don't like reading it. I make it sound like I like
43:04
reading legislation. I don't is that you have to AI
43:08
enable your entire organization. So they are quite clear about
43:12
the fact that you have a responsibility as an
43:14
organization to empower and retrain all your staff in what
43:18
this means and and for different roles and different
43:21
responsibilities. That's going to mean different
43:23
things. And a generation will leave
43:26
school in five years time that we don't need to educate on AI
43:30
because it's going to tell us a thing or two.
43:33
But ultimately the moment it is our biggest responsibility is to
43:37
make sure we restructure and retrain and that we do that
43:40
quickly so that people don't feel afraid in this new world
43:45
and don't feel held back. And so I think, you know, this
43:48
is an exciting time in terms of training and development because
43:51
you, you've got to build that into your organization.
43:54
You know, I was thinking we're just about to move into a new
43:56
office in London. I was thinking, I think on
43:58
Fridays I might have AI lunches or something.
44:00
Do you know, and just sit and talk about it because you can't
44:02
lecture on it either. So I think we're going to have
44:04
to think about how we bring a level of comfort to our
44:08
organisations, whether they're hundreds of people or 10s of
44:11
thousands of people. How do we make them comfortable
44:15
with AI so that they, A, are willing to embrace it and work
44:20
with it and B, are able to understand it enough to be the
44:24
control of it? Because we talked earlier about
44:27
the only control metric on AI is us, right?
44:30
So we need to make sure we're, we've got that under control
44:34
and, and that we know how to do it.
44:35
They've got to know how they would manage an AI, a gentic
44:41
tool. What is their involvement in
44:43
that? And so I think reskilling the
44:46
organization, even I will get up to a leadership level.
44:50
The leaders have to become comfortable too, right?
44:52
And and by nature, they're not the younger people in the
44:56
organization. So it's a bigger change.
44:58
So enabling leaders to be excited by AI and to want to
45:03
embrace AI, to want to see a transformation this big in their
45:07
business, right. I would go, wow.
45:09
If I'm and I'm not, if I was running PepsiCo, I'd be going,
45:12
this is so cool. I've got to reinvent all of
45:15
PepsiCo. Yeah.
45:16
And that would be exciting, but that isn't, you know, some
45:19
people are going to find that daunting and, and then market
45:22
share will change and all of those things and, and they'll
45:24
have to come in as the laggards rather than the, rather than the
45:27
frontiers. So I think just that enablement
45:31
and that's, you don't see a lot of talk around that, in all
45:34
honesty. You see more talk around the
45:36
technology, around the threats, all of those things.
45:40
And, and you don't hear enough about how am I going to enable
45:43
my teams to feel comfortable in an AI world and then to help us
45:48
to be an organization that can be at the front of that and
45:52
comfortably at the front of that.
45:54
There was a guy on the news this morning and on the BBC and he
45:56
was, he was, he was upset because he'd, he'd been talking
46:01
to some. He's been using AI to try and
46:04
find a new job. I don't know if you saw it, if
46:06
you're trying to find a new job and he's been using the AI and
46:08
he's really, he's really got, I see.
46:10
It's like it's the same age as my son.
46:11
He's in his late teens and he was, he kept giving it more and
46:15
more information and training and training it and eventually
46:17
it decided it kept coming back, wanting to know more and taking
46:21
him on a journey. He decided his life should be
46:23
made into a film and a documentary and that he should
46:26
be a millionaire. And he was.
46:28
He was just so upset because he'd followed this whole track
46:32
and then realized that actually it wasn't making any sense
46:35
anymore. At what point did it lose the
46:37
plot? And and he said, I'm not blaming
46:39
the AI because it did it occasionally came in and said,
46:43
you sure, but but it was really playing into his insecurities
46:46
and he felt like he'd been cheated by AI.
46:48
And I could kind of see his point because unless somebody
46:51
tells you, you need guardrails here, you need some parameters
46:56
that say that far but no further.
46:58
Or how do I, you know, we've got to train everybody to prompt,
47:03
right? And all everybody is going to
47:05
need to be able to prompt how do we make sure that everybody is
47:08
is equipped at the right level in these organizations, in all
47:12
of our organizations to be comfortable in this new world.
47:16
So I would say that's the thing I think get the go to market
47:20
right, even if that means a restructure, rethink your
47:23
marketing, rewire it for revenue so that it maps straight over.
47:28
Get your get your tax, your text out right, especially with
47:32
intent tools that can manage what how people are changing
47:34
their buyer behaviours because that's really important.
47:37
And then upskill your whole team.
47:39
That's your responsibility. The EU says legally it's your
47:42
responsibility. I think, I think it's morally
47:44
your responsibility. And then remember things like
47:48
fairness, because there is nothing Ed and I about AI, and
47:52
it learns most of what it learns in a world that's not
47:55
particularly unbiased or unfair. So we need to be the custodians
48:00
of what's good, and that's important too.
48:05
And so our control and our involvement, we're going to have
48:08
to train our whole workforce to know how to handle AI, then how
48:12
to step in and how to help AI to be the good answer.
48:17
It can be, the right answer. It can be.
48:19
Yeah. And I'm sure there's lots of
48:21
witness now that are either already starting there.
48:24
So want to take tiny steps to get going or go all in.
48:28
And he talked about business and applying guardrails to some of
48:31
this stuff. You know, you, you need to
48:33
maintain the trust and accountability when you're
48:36
putting this stuff in place. Any recommendations around that?
48:39
Trust. It's going to be about putting
48:41
the guardrails in. It's going to be about being
48:44
really, really clear about how you're going to hold people
48:47
accountable and, and holding the AI accountable at the same time.
48:51
These are the things that are coming out of of kind of these
48:54
new go to market strategies are where's the accountability?
48:57
And I think we've just become more accountable in this whole
49:00
process. I think that's, you know, you've
49:03
got to look at the trust and you've got to look at the
49:05
authenticity and you've got to bake that in, in your
49:08
guardrails. So you've got to say around,
49:10
around each of these use cases and within, you know, wherever
49:13
we're deploying it in the organization, we have understood
49:17
what guardrails we need. We have understood how we create
49:20
trust, how we create authenticity and also fairness.
49:25
I think fairness is a word I hear more now, which is, which
49:28
is a really nice word because I think it kind of says if we
49:32
don't manage now how this is deployed, think of that poor guy
49:35
on the news this morning. If we don't manage it, we create
49:39
disappointment and distrust. So it sits with us as as the
49:43
people embedding AI and strategizing around how AI
49:47
impacts marketing and sales. It pivots around us, making sure
49:51
we've put all of the protection in that we can, that we have
49:54
truly understood the relationship between AI and
49:57
human and then AI and A and then human AI, agentic AI and then
50:03
human and multiple teams of agents.
50:06
So all of that is going to kind of mean we have to build in
50:11
processes that ensure we've create.
50:14
We've allowed trust to exist in that environment.
50:17
Trust is always easily lost and hard to win.
50:20
Absolutely, and this is all brilliant insight for anyone
50:22
listening. I just wonder if you've got an
50:26
example of a company that successfully embraced some of
50:29
this change imperative and what sort of results they've
50:32
achieved. Yeah, we're working with a
50:34
couple now. I mean it is really early to as
50:36
you, as you know with the deployment of agentic, it's
50:38
still in, it's really early days.
50:40
And I, I wouldn't want to, to name any of them specifically,
50:43
but we certainly have a number of fairly significant clients
50:46
that are looking to remodel 2 things.
50:49
They're either remodelling, we've got a couple that are
50:52
remodeling their go to market worldwide.
50:54
And that means restructuring how sales are marketing.
50:57
Now that's a consulting that's, that's a little over, over my
50:59
pay grade, but they are, we have, you know, mocky bitch
51:02
people in there actually planning how those organizations
51:04
will structure and how AI will allow that structure to exist.
51:09
So it's complete restructures based on AI.
51:11
And I think there's two or three, they are all the bigger
51:15
organizations because I think they have the people to do it.
51:18
I think this is where where I, you know, they have the people
51:21
to be thinking about AI. So we have some of those and I
51:24
have other clients that are actually, I've got a couple that
51:27
are looking at how to roll a gentic AI out in their
51:30
organization. And I think that's, that's a
51:32
really cool exercise. I really love it.
51:35
And so, so there are some and of course we work together in
51:37
partnership, you and I, and we've got those clients that are
51:40
really beginning to benefit from the buyer group and the buyer
51:44
group approach and the Gentic AI solutions.
51:47
So I think it's early. I think you probably said the
51:49
same. We've got a couple of really
51:51
nice cases where they're really starting to see some change from
51:55
how they engage buyers and you know, they're rewriting the
51:59
funnel. It's immense.
52:00
Yeah, lots of change going on and I'm conscious we're coming
52:03
up on time and we've we've only scratched the surface.
52:06
So there is 100% an opportunity to have a follow up session on
52:10
this but. I'd love that.
52:11
Couple of bits for the for the audience really, because you
52:13
sound like someone who consumes lots of content.
52:16
Are there any blogs, newsletters, podcast, or
52:20
anything that you'd recommend the listeners look out for?
52:22
Oh, it's interesting. I really like listening to
52:25
Stephen Bartlett. I do because I find I find him
52:28
really, really interesting. But I either managed to scare
52:31
myself to death. So I was listening to 1 by The
52:34
Godfather of AI, which is really terrifying.
52:36
And I actually, I actually didn't finish that one because I
52:39
found it just a little bit, I was quite scared by the end of
52:43
it. But I was watching, I was
52:45
listening to one of his yesterday, which was, which was
52:47
about how they think AI is now going to cause Alzheimer's.
52:50
And I was like, oh, no proper neuroscientist saying we're
52:55
stopping using parts of our brain, which ultimately is going
52:59
to lead to if you don't use it, lose it and all.
53:01
And so I love Stephen Bollocks. I like the range of topics he
53:05
covers. I mean, I, there's plenty, I
53:07
watch kind of women of my age and all that sort of stuff, Mel
53:10
Robbins and all that sort of thing.
53:11
But I would say in terms of staying ahead on kind of big
53:15
topics and not just tech topics, I like Stephen Bartlett.
53:17
I think he's cool and he's probably one of my favourites.
53:20
I would honestly say what's the biggest impact on my life?
53:23
Ted Lasso and Apple TV. So being a little bit more
53:27
human, I think I live my life according to the world's ethics
53:32
from Ted Lasso. If anybody watches that so I'd
53:34
listen to Stephen Vartner, I'd watch Ted Lasso.
53:37
Also good recommendations, yeah. And I love Ted Lasso and myself
53:40
as well, so. Waiting for the next season.
53:42
Yeah, I can't wait for that. So you've been an awesome guest,
53:45
So this is a cheeky ass now. Do you have any other
53:49
inspirational people you think that we should try and bring on
53:52
to future episodes? I tell you what, there are a
53:54
couple of people like you and I, we could talk about this
53:57
forever, right? I just, there is a particular
53:59
client I think I could talk about transformation with.
54:03
And I do think this is transformation.
54:05
That's Kate Mackie and she's one of, she's one of our clients for
54:07
me. Why?
54:08
She's just written a book on B2B marketing and it's being
54:11
incorporated into an MBA. I think she's extraordinary and
54:15
I think she'd make an awesome guess because I just think I
54:17
could sit and talk about life because this isn't not just
54:21
about AI, it's about business, it's about life, It's about the
54:24
organisations we care about. I would have said her.
54:27
And the other one that I could also chat forever with is Joel
54:29
Harrison, because Joel is just God where there's the godfather
54:33
of AI, he's probably the godfather of B2B.
54:36
And yeah, no, I put Joe, I give you Joel and Kate Mackey.
54:39
They'd make awesome guests. I don't know if they've been on
54:41
but I think I haven't seen. Anything I know Joe well, we'll
54:44
have to try and get him on. And I I I.
54:46
I think so. I'll make an effort to get Kate
54:48
to come online as well. They could recommend.
54:50
She'd be incredible, and Joel I'd listen to all day long, so
54:53
I'd definitely give you those too.
54:54
Thank you. I appreciate that.
54:55
And I reckon you've opened up lots of questions from people
54:59
listening. Are you happy for people to get
55:01
in touch with you after this podcast?
55:03
And what's the best way? Massively, I think the truth for
55:06
our industry is the more we connect and the more we do this
55:08
together, the more we talk and share, the better this will be.
55:12
Reach me on LinkedIn. Fiona Shepherd You can find me
55:15
through Fiona Shepherd at Market Bridge.
55:17
I'd love to talk to anybody and I, you know, experiences.
55:20
I'd love to hear people's experiences, share their
55:22
experiences and be part of this next wave.
55:25
It's exciting. Yeah, absolutely it is.
55:28
And Fiona, you've been an absolutely great yesterday.
55:30
Really interesting session. As I say, there's plenty more to
55:33
come on this I'm sure. So we'll we'll get with that.
55:36
But for now, thank you for your time.
55:37
I hope you have enjoyed this session.
55:40
Don't forget there's nearly 600 other episodes in the series, so
55:43
make sure you check them out. And for now, thanks Fiona.
55:46
Thanks everyone for listening. And until the next time,
55:49
Cheerio. Thank you.
55:50
Bye. Bye.
55:52
Thanks for joining us for On Base.
55:54
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