Latest / The Prompt / Ep. 549 | Chris Savage on Building Authentic B2B Brands in the Age of AI

Transcript

Ep. 549 | Chris Savage on Building Authentic B2B Brands in the Age of AI · The Prompt

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This is on base your one stop shop for solving your most
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pressing B2B 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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Everyone, welcome back to the Home Based Podcast.
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I'm your host, Chris Moody, And today I'm very excited to be
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joined by Chris Savage to talk about building strong brands
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with AI integrations. Chris, thanks for joining us
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today and welcome to the show. Thank you for having me.
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Good to see you and always nice to be with another Chris.
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That's right, yeah. Most people call me Moody too,
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so I don't know if you get Savage a lot I.
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Do I do mostly get savage? Yeah, I don't.
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I mean, most folks I work with, they just call me Moody, which
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is funny. The Chris gets deleted.
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So it's good to know that that happens to you as well.
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And yeah, great to see you again.
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So we were hanging out, man, I guess a year and a half, two
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years ago or something. But the first question we always
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start with is if you can tell everyone a little bit about your
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journey, what led you to what you're doing today?
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Yeah, so I, I started Wistia a year out of college and I went
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to school for film and was really excited about doing film.
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And it worked on a future length documentary, got it to theaters
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and stuff right as it was getting to theater.
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The first time I'd ever screened actually in front of 600 people.
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I remember going up on stage after with the film maker and
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we're like ready to answer questions and stuff.
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And I had this bad feeling in in the pit of my gut.
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It was like there's something off and it wasn't the movie, it
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was that I had just spent the day on YouTube and YouTube had
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launched like 3 months earlier. I saw it really early and I saw
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like tons of videos all playing back perfectly or pretty well.
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Almost none of them were film makers.
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They were all, they're all UGC and pirated content, all this
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stuff. And I had spent the last three
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years making videos trying to put them online, trying to get
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me able to see them. It was like impossible.
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And so this felt like this like crazy breakthrough moment.
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And as I I couldn't get this thought out of my mind that this
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was it. Would it be better to be on
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YouTube than it would be to like have your movie screen in a
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theater? And so my best friend at the
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time, who became my Co founder, he and I just started looking
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into this and realized that there was a big, huge
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technological shift happening. And YouTube was just the first
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example of something. And it was like, you know,
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bandwidth was getting better so people could play back better
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videos. They were using open source
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tools to do the encoding so that they could play back in Flash.
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Everyone could play it back. You didn't have to make a Flash
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Player. They had made their own player.
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And we started looking at this and just thought like, this is
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going to be like online video is going to be a huge thing.
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And it seems like the very beginning we should start
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something around us. And that's what caused us to
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start. And then it just took a lot
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longer than I thought it would. You know, I thought I was going
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to be rich in six months. And that turns out that's not
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how start-ups work. It takes a long time.
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Oh does it brings like so many good memories thinking about
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that the early days. It wasn't that long ago, but it
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was the wild, Wild West. I mean I'm in North Carolina.
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I remember Rhett and Wink when they got started Now it's good
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mythical mornings at your point. It wasn't get rich quick
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immediately. It was a long play and then it
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turned into one of the top YouTube creators and even Judson
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Wabley. He's in my fantasy Football
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League good friend, but he had the number one video on YouTube
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before monetization. So the evolution of dance, but
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that was before Bieber and Avril Lavigne took over.
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So it's it's always fun to to play those back.
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I'm curious what led to some of the focus around the importance
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of brand strategy and technology.
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Like AII mean you hit on the technological thread of how
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everything was changing then, but let's push some of your
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focus there. Yeah, I mean, I, I think a few
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years ago we started to see this just a brand was starting to
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become more important for B to B and not just the biggest B to B
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companies. We saw that ourselves because we
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experienced it. We made over time, you know,
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this how this how these things go.
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Like we did one thing where we changed our website.
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We used to have a team page that said management and had four
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people on it. And that's when there was four
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people in the company and the team page did basically nothing
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except stroke on egos and try to pretend like we were a bigger
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business. We changed it when we were like
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6 people, 7 people because we felt bad because the team had
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grown and we thought these other people should feel the same.
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And when we did it, we made it a version that was like, instead
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of it just having this like wall of text of like accomplishments,
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it was just us standing in front of a whiteboard.
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And if you type dance on the page, it would switch between
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different versions of photos we took so it'd make it look like
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we were dancing. And this thing went viral and it
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got so much traffic. But the surprising thing was
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that that traffic actually converted and that was like the
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first moment that I saw like people are coming in because
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they think this team page is fun and then they're figuring out
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what our product is and then they're signing up.
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And then over time that kept happening more and more.
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And I basically just watched the power brand lift the business,
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right? Like we made silly videos behind
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the scenes videos added way more personality and, and the more we
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did it, the and even the farther a field from the product it
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seemed, the better it worked. And so it's just like funny
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thing in a world of B to B where most people wouldn't invest in
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this, this type of thing we're doing, it's really working.
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And I recognize we had very creative people doing it and
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also like we're willing to invest in this.
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And so the other thing that I saw happening is which is the
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cost of doing great brand has dropped and the importance of it
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has actually risen. Like there's, there's more
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products in every category. It's harder to stand out.
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If you can be the brand leader, it's going to have a really big
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impact. And so it was one of those
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things that started as an evolution.
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Then I realized like, oh, there are these big trends.
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Actually, we're just earlier on seeing them and AI just furthers
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the need for this, right? Like if anyone can code anything
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by putting a prompt in, then you're going to have more
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competition If AI search eats all of their organic traffic,
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which we expect to happen over time.
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Makes sense. Like if they can give you
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answers right in the moment versus you having a search for
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answers, that's usually going to be better.
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But how are you going to get people to know who you are?
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How are you going to get how are you going to stand out?
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How? And I think like brand is like
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the very obvious thing that is going to still exist.
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It's going to be quality of product and it's going to be
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strength of brand and and word of mouth, which is generated
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from those two things. So yeah, I just think it's it's
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actually becoming more and more important.
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And that is surprising. But also like it is, if you go
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back far enough, it's like a trend that we can just see it's
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continuing. Yeah, it's such a good point.
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I mean, there's, there are 1,000,000 different places I
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want to take the conversation. The 1st I'm curious about in
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going from the four people in front of the whiteboard to the
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size of your team today and as CEO, how are you helping to make
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sure you have that creativity to grow the brand across the whole
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team? Part of it is like what type of
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risks you give permission to people to take.
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So making sure that you are celebrating the risk taking,
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which also means often celebrating the failures.
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I look at it often as most of these failures fail because they
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don't actually connect. So nobody sees them, which
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basically means they're not, they're not, it didn't embarrass
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you. Like it's not a failure.
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Like it's just it's like lost in the ether versus like actually
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hurting your brand. I've learned over the years that
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having the right constraints encourages more creativity.
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So if people know they own a really specific area of the
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company, they own a specific metric, there's a certain
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timeline you want them to work on that actually allows for more
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creativity in that world than if you don't have the structure.
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We used to have no structure. And I thought chaos was the
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secret to creativity. And I realized that actually
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structure and repetition is how you can be really creative.
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There's this great quote that's a Steve Jobs quote, which is
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like, I'm just going to see if I can get it right.
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It's like creativity is the is simply just the new connections
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between, between existing things, I think, or something
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like that. And Ben Chestnut, who is the CEO
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of MailChimp, had talked to me about this And, and the part
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that he focused on said the most important part of this is not
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the connectivity, it's the things part.
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So what you want is actually a lot of things.
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And if you have a lot of things, it's much easier for out new
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ways to connect them. And that really stuck with me,
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which, and it goes back to pace, which is you want a very fast
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pace. You want to ship a lot of
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things. And if you ship a lot of things,
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eventually you'll find ways of connecting them that maybe
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nobody did before. And ultimately you can end up
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with like much more creative solutions.
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But it's it's a numbers of temps is is often what helps drive the
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creativity. Yeah, that's great.
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I mean, NBA playoffs are going on now.
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It makes you think about forgetting the missed shots,
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right? Like the shooters mentality.
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You know, your point about shipping things quickly, that's
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easier than ever now with AI. You hit on that earlier too.
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How do you make sure brand stays as a strong differentiator in
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the age of people who don't know how to code creating new things
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and more competition coming up that way?
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Yeah. I mean brand is really just, I
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like to think of brand as the part in someone's brain that is
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associated with what you do. And what we're trying to do is
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strengthen a, a memory that somebody has and an association.
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And so in a world with unlimited competition, that also means
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it's harder and harder to stand out.
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Right. But if I can get you to remember
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wistia and I can get you to associate wistia with video, get
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you to associate wistia with taking creative risks, get you
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to associate wistia with fun. I mean, our tagline is less
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work, more plays. So if I can get you to think
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that, then I will probably in the long term, it will, it will
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nudge enough people in the direction of, oh, yeah, what we
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have a video problem. Like I guess maybe we should
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check Wistia. And so it's kind of like if you
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look at Consumer Packaged Goods, I think like this is a good
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example of we can just see the power of brand, which is like
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there's infinite competition for basically everything, like what
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deodorant you should have and what that actually means as an
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example. And what that actually means is
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that if you can have a brand like Old Spice that actually
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stood out, was different, it just can take over the category
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that that opportunity doesn't exist when you don't have as
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much competition because people are just stuck with whatever
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they have. So it only starts happening
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brand only brand. Brand only starts mattering a
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lot more when there is much more competition.
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And being really good at it is is about like having values,
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about having a message, about having like iconography,
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visuals, things that really stimulate memory.
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And just what you want is association so that someone
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thinks business, video, anything with you.
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If I can do that over the long term, I'll be in good shape.
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Yeah, I, I love that. I was, if we don't use that
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whole video clip on anything, I was smiling the whole time you
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were saying it. What would you say to the
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marketing leaders out there that are dealing with their leaders
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or their board really wanting to measure everything and have
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perfect attribution and fight for ROI knowing that there may
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not be the instant pay off of brand?
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I mean, it's this has always been the case.
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You go back to before YouTube, we've always had this argument,
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but I'm just curious how you think about it now.
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So there's the old solution and then the new one.
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The old solution is brand service.
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And also like tell us where you heard about us, which was
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basically all anyone had pre Internet.
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So like up until I'll say 2010, if you were doing any big
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company trying to understand if things are working, you would
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just look at like what do we do in the quarter?
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Do we spend more on brand? And then did sales go up?
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Or like no, they did. And then you would say like how
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did you hear about us? Then people would say I got a
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thing in the mail or I went to an event or whatever that that
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was the association. Then we entered a world of
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really perfect data because everything's online,
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everything's trackable, and now we're going out of that world
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already, right? Like Google search in 2010, it
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would give me the every single exact keyword that someone
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searched for. I don't get that anymore.
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They take, they already pre AI, they were taking this away every
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year. GDPR making it harder to cookie
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is another thing that's making the perfect data go away.
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And you talk to a lot of folks. Organic traffic is going down
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for a lot of people today. And I expect it to go down
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faster as more of the answers are AI answers.
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So your perfect data is going away whether or not you like it.
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And you have to figure out how to how to live in this new
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world. And we have the answer.
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It's what we used to do like it's the same thing.
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And So what old, what is was old is new.
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And I think it's just how quickly can people get on board
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with this and understand it. And I think the fact that we are
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having traffic going down, the fact that you can see it on some
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of the biggest sites in the world, HubSpot, good example,
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right, the inbound market play of you've seen these, these
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examples of their organic traffic dropping precipitously
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because they had a huge number of articles that solved lots of
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different questions for people that now are all being solved in
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AI. So someone doesn't have to ever
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hit the HubSpot website. And if that's happening to them,
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it could happen to anybody. And so it means you have to
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embrace these other qualitative metrics and do it more
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aggressively. But there, there is a science to
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them. And if you pay really close
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attention, you can get unbelievable insights and you
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can grow very quickly. And there are some companies
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that did this in the 20 tens when they had per access to
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perfect data because this was actually a better way for them
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to grow. Companies like Squarespace.
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I mean, I'll never forget seeing Squarespace ads on the side of a
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bus. I happen to talk to someone like
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that who does, who did acquisition at Squarespace at
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the time. And I was telling him, I'm like,
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Hey, you can't know if these ads are working on the side of the
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bus. And he's like, yes, I can.
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And I said, no, you don't. And he said, yes, I do.
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He said, I know that when we spend a dollar on that ad, we
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get a dollar back in like 21 days.
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And I couldn't believe it. And the, and the whole answer
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was that in their side, where did you hear about a survey?
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There's like an open box that people could type anything and a
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lot of people would type like New York bus or bus or whatever.
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They would go through and look at it and they would see there's
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enough people coming in from this that it's very clear that
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this is having a, this brand ad is having a very positive
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impact. And actually we should invest
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more on that. So I think it's just it's, it's
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new for a lot of us, but also it's back to what we used to do.
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I love that I do feel like an old man yelling at the clowns a
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lot of days because it's not the sexiest thing to say.
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What's what's old is is new again.
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But it's true and even you talking about that, it was 2010
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when I was at bandwidth and we had an infinite supply of phone
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numbers and we mapped phone numbers 1 to 1 to campaigns and
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then we could push A4 digit code on the phone and caller ID.
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So a seller would see 012341234, that's the, the Billboard with
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that specific phone number. And we could do that.
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To your point, all of these things are possible to do.
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I'm curious, everything on LinkedIn, right?
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Humans versus AIA is taking our jobs or just saw the, the
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conversation, you know, the fight between open AI and Elon
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Musk, everything that's going on in the, the world today.
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I'd love to get your take on the role of authenticity, which is
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usually driven by people and how that is an important piece of
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the brand building with all the new technology and AI that's
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happening every single day. I.
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Think it's ever been more important?
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I think it's only going to become more important.
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I think it's, you know, as we have an abundance of content
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that we can't tell if it's real, Anything that you can tell is
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real, you will value more highly, right?
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Like we value things that when people put work into them, if
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you know, you're getting an AI avatar video from somebody, you
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know they didn't actually work on it doesn't mean you shouldn't
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do it, doesn't mean it won't work.
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But the people will know a human didn't spend as much work on
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this thing and therefore it's not as valuable.
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So authenticity is really about showing people like, hey, I'm a
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real human being and you can trust me.
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And we as a human species, I think like to sort the world
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into the people who we know who are experts at different things.
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Like I have my friends who are doctors and when I, there are
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things that I have questions about that happen to do with
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health, I will often ask them. I have my friends who are early
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adopters on watches. And if I want to go talk to
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somebody about a watch, I know who I'm going to ask.
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And I'm going to trust their recommendation more than almost
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anything, any other source of information I can find.
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And I, it's this on every subject.
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So that's, I think how we've already survived is like, we
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already do this. Everyone has their technical
16:11
friend who it is technical help or the person who's into wine or
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whatever The thing is. And so I think what's been
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happening in the last five years, maybe a little bit
16:21
longer, is that we're, we are building these connections of
16:24
people online. That's what influencers are,
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right? It's like the influencer is now
16:27
our friend who gives us advice on different topics and maybe we
16:31
trust them on the fitness side and we think they're an idiot on
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the business side or whatever. I think that this is going to
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continue, but a layer that's going to be put on top of it is
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if I'm not really sure this is a real person, I'm probably going
16:44
to discount the advice. And so the recommendations from
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somebody who is not real. You might still trust them, but
16:50
probably not as much as the person that you really believe
16:54
is a real human being. And so that authenticity is
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going to show up in a bunch of ways.
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It's going to show up in the types of conversations you have.
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Like if someone listens or watches this podcast, we're not
17:05
speaking perfectly. Sometimes I'm making mistakes.
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I'm saying, I'm saying like, like I don't think I'd put that
17:10
in my avatar if I had a choice, but it is who I am.
17:13
I might not answer the question perfectly.
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I might go to securities route, I might come back.
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But you can tell this is a real human being who's giving me an
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answer. I think we'll see this why live
17:23
events are going to be more important.
17:24
We're going to a live event, asking someone a question being,
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oh, this, I now have a connection to this person that's
17:30
like remote. I think in person is going to be
17:32
more important where when you connect with someone in person,
17:35
you feel like you can really trust them.
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This has been true with, you know, large sales for a very
17:40
long time. I think it's going to be true on
17:42
the brand side as well. And so all of this is to say
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authenticity is going to be more important, but also it's going
17:47
to be easier to make polished stuff.
17:49
So I think you're going to need to do both things.
17:51
I think you're going to need to, as a company, have a brand
17:54
that's elevated, polished, like hits the values that you want it
17:57
to hit in many cases. And you're also going to have to
18:00
have people who represent your brand who can be really
18:03
authentic. Sometimes that shows up in the
18:05
main company messaging. Sometimes it shows up as like a
18:08
a separate thread entirely. But those two things together
18:11
seem to me like the thing that most people are going to have,
18:13
most companies are going to need to do in a world where brand is
18:16
more important and also authenticity is more important.
18:19
Yeah, I love everything that you said.
18:21
I was playing around with Hey, Gen.
18:23
Gen. And I do have an AI avatar of
18:26
myself. I made one video and I was on
18:28
vacation for internal use. And it's it's so good.
18:32
It's creepy. I mean, it captured a lot of my
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quirky mannerisms. I did record the audio and
18:38
upload so it was kind of replicating.
18:40
Gestures and it's not even, I'm not saying that that is not
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going to be really valuable. I actually think avatars are
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going to be really valuable. I think it's going to be like
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we're thinking about the the first touch messaging for
18:52
somebody out in the world. If you are doing a training, I
18:55
think there's going to you need to watch the thing AI avatars
18:58
all day. You can tweak it.
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You can tweak the training in real time.
19:02
If you're getting do want to have a chat support experience
19:05
and you can talk to human being, that seems amazing.
19:07
If you're trying to elevate a production of something and
19:09
using those in the right places, that's amazing.
19:11
If you're doing translations, that's something we do at Wistia
19:14
AI dubbing and translations. That's like unbelievable to see
19:18
yourself self speaking another language with your mouth moving
19:20
and all this other kind of stuff.
19:21
I think there's going to be tons of places where it's super,
19:24
super useful. I just think that brand building
19:26
specifically is going to be a place where it's riskier to do
19:30
and get right is what I would say.
19:32
Yeah, I, I think that's extremely valid.
19:34
I and I'm one of two chief evangelist now at demand base
19:38
and it's kind of that exact bet just to say we have to have some
19:42
people that are just going out there getting to know people,
19:45
creating what they need to create.
19:47
We have our metrics, we have our OK Rs, but there is some
19:50
commitment to saying just fail fast, do lots of stuff.
19:54
And I, I did a post yesterday. I mean, our, our metrics are
19:57
literally the hockey stick of new followers per day.
20:01
And you can't pinpoint one specific thing.
20:04
It's the podcast, it's the videos, it's the social team,
20:06
the content team, the product team, the innovation,
20:09
everything. But yeah, totally with you
20:11
there. I'm curious, what are your
20:13
favorite companies if you think about those who have
20:15
successfully integrated AI into their products and stayed
20:19
completely true to their brand values?
20:22
I mean, superhuman is the first thing that comes to mind.
20:24
So superhuman is like luxury e-mail, if you want to call it
20:28
that. It's like, you know, it's you're
20:31
paying for an e-mail client that has historically always been
20:34
about helping you manage your e-mail more quickly.
20:37
That's been, you know, historically when you use the
20:39
product, you get onboarding, someone teaches you the
20:42
keystrokes, they teach you the method.
20:43
And I've used it for probably 10 years and I love it.
20:47
Recently they've added a lot of AI functionality in and you have
20:52
things and it's just enhancing this.
20:53
So you have AI auto replies. So I emailed someone the other
20:57
day. They haven't gotten back to me.
20:58
I opened my inbox and there's like my pre written response to
21:02
the person I emailed doing a follow up saying like, hey, like
21:05
you know, can you get back to me on this?
21:07
Effectively that's a kind of unbelievable because I might not
21:10
have thought to do it or I might have in the back of my mind it
21:12
might be A to do list somewhere else.
21:14
That's just happening. They have incredible AI sorting
21:17
and filtering. So you can say take every pitch
21:21
that I get. You could be very specific or it
21:23
can be general. You can take pitches, news,
21:25
marketing emails and put them into inboxes and then skip my
21:29
inbox, which is what I do now. So I have almost no e-mail.
21:32
Like my e-mail, when I check my e-mail is all real people asking
21:35
real things. And if I want to go see those
21:38
emails, there's a place for me to do it.
21:39
Their search has gotten really good.
21:41
So there's. Yeah, It's just it's letting me
21:44
interact with something much faster, much better, pure
21:47
extension of what they were doing before, but they're now
21:50
accomplishing a bunch of things that were impossible before.
21:53
Awesome. So you think that one's totally
21:55
worth it? Yes.
21:56
All right. Cool.
21:57
So when my headphones just did something really crazy there so
22:01
far, audio messed up. I will clip that out.
22:03
But we're human. This is not the AI avatar of
22:05
Chris, so we're not going to edit that out.
22:07
We're going to leave it in there.
22:09
What are some common mistakes that companies make when they're
22:13
aligning their AI initiatives with their brand strategy?
22:17
I think we're still pretty early on this, but and I so I expect
22:20
there to be more mistakes, but I think the mistakes right now are
22:23
seem to be separating all AI things from your current
22:29
offering. And so looking at it as like an
22:31
add on versus like how will I change what this core thing is?
22:35
Customers are, we know like with much more competition, we're
22:38
going to see many more products that just are AI first.
22:41
If you can't get your product to be AI first, it's never going to
22:43
be AI first. It's just an add on.
22:44
You're going to have to make it like built in, in a core way.
22:48
So I think, I think that's one thing that I would be aware of.
22:51
The other thing is that we see a huge amount of over promising
22:55
with AI and then under delivering.
22:58
I'm seeing people, a lot more people marketing prototypes,
23:01
which seems pretty silly to me. Yeah, I have the prototypes too.
23:04
Like I've made them internally. I've done the hackathons, but
23:06
I'm not marketing them because they're not going to deliver.
23:09
And so ultimately that's going to hurt the brand because now if
23:12
you over promise and under deliver, that's what people will
23:15
remember. And so I think that one of the
23:17
hardest things at this moment is actually being patient for when
23:22
the AI features make their way into the products or being super
23:26
clear when they do make it in. That's like, hey, this is in
23:29
beta, this is changing rapidly. This is going to fail X
23:34
percentage of the time. You have to put those
23:36
expectations in because it is a real challenge, right?
23:40
Like we want this stuff to be in there.
23:41
We can see what's possible. But if it fails 5% of the time,
23:45
that's way too much. So you have to remove failure
23:47
for it to be used, especially at work.
23:49
But then if you don't put it in, you're not learning.
23:52
When the AI does deliver, you're also screwed.
23:54
So this is I think the challenge here for most of us in terms of
23:58
how AI is incorporated into their into their brand as
24:02
represented by their products. On the true like messaging, go
24:07
to market side, I think we're seeing incredible things already
24:11
where you can sort and better understand your customers with
24:14
AI. It's like having an intern going
24:16
through the list of insights and signals that you can get to help
24:20
you figure out who actually cares and who doesn't, who you
24:22
should talk to and who you should not.
24:24
I think that stuff is starting to deliver right now and part of
24:26
the reason is like it's a back end thing.
24:28
It's not something that has to be customer facing yet.
24:31
So if you get it wrong, nobody's having a bad experience.
24:34
And then I think with AI messaging, this is something
24:36
that we've seen a lot of people use successfully to do make a
24:39
huge amount of AI messaging. And we've also seen it
24:43
dramatically curtailed already, right?
24:44
Like LinkedIn has done a lot, for example, to limit the amount
24:49
of content that they believe to be AI written and they have to
24:51
do this or else LinkedIn would only be AI content.
24:55
So it's like you kind of think about it from their perspective.
24:59
If all the content is just that much worse and it's full of it,
25:02
people are going to stop going. So for people to keep going has
25:05
to be interesting. They have to get insights they
25:06
wouldn't get otherwise. The only way to do that is to
25:09
have content that has like unique research, unique
25:11
perspectives and experiences. Those things need to come from a
25:14
human being, need to trust a human.
25:16
Therefore, the content cannot be all AI written, but it can be AI
25:20
aided. The research, the cut downs,
25:23
like there's, there's tons of things around this where we're
25:27
seeing AI use incredibly well. But I think the kind of saying
25:30
my entire go to market is going to be an AI go to market
25:33
probably is going to get you into trouble in the near term.
25:37
Again, great response there. I know a lot of people get board
25:40
pressure to have that AI road map and everything and show and,
25:45
you know, be leading with AI. So it does lead to plenty of
25:49
times where things are shipped before they're ready or shared
25:52
before they're ready. I know personally here what
25:55
we've seen work really well at demand base.
25:57
We built a design partner program, so folks signed up and
26:00
we have some of our best and brightest customers that are
26:04
getting things as quickly as possible and then providing
26:06
feedback. So they're, they're part of that
26:09
feedback loop, which is true startup style, honestly.
26:12
So it's, it's not waiting until it's perfect, but then that's
26:15
helping to ship things quicker and it's getting some really
26:18
good feedback. So yeah, it's always a tricky
26:21
balance. You can.
26:22
Figure it out. Yeah, absolutely.
26:23
What about leadership and team collaboration?
26:26
So you talked about the Steve Jobs quote, those connection
26:29
points and all the things. If we're trying to successfully
26:33
merge AI with brand initiatives, what's the role of leadership
26:36
and that collaboration in that process?
26:39
I think that AI compresses levels and gives leadership the
26:45
opportunity to basically not just be the general but be on
26:49
the frontline to use like a not because I have any understanding
26:52
of military, but I'll just use an example.
26:54
Is that like we spent a lot of time where leadership is pretty
26:57
removed from what's happening on the ground and it we definitely
27:01
don't talk about hiring C level folks, for example, who are in
27:05
the thick of it every day, helping people write emails and
27:07
do their pitches and like all that kind of stuff.
27:09
Well, with AI that can actually happen.
27:11
And the reason it can happen is that anyone can be a producer of
27:15
anything. It's like everyone becomes T
27:17
shaped, right? Like you're the expert at what
27:18
you're at, but then on you basically get AI to interns or
27:23
entry level folks that are helping you on all the other
27:25
subjects. And so there is this opportunity
27:28
for leaders to get into the thick of it in a way that I
27:31
think that there hasn't been in the past.
27:33
An example for me is I used to code in high school.
27:36
I coded a little bit in college, but I have never coded it with
27:40
you in the last year. I have vibe coded lots of
27:43
prototypes and different things as ways to try to express an
27:47
idea more quickly. And so a lot of our meetings
27:50
like in a tech company is about basically, I think like
27:54
prioritizing our scarcest resources, which are often
27:57
engineering or could be writing or could be something else.
27:59
And that's ultimately what we're all doing is trying to
28:01
prioritize the scarce resource. But the way you prioritize that
28:04
you've all these discussions about priorities and what thing
28:07
you think is getting more important than something else.
28:09
So there's abstract conversations around, is this
28:11
more important than that? Is this a bigger trend than
28:13
that? And when sometimes like the
28:16
thing that actually you want to talk about is what would this
28:19
mean in the product? And today anyone can make a
28:22
prototype and you could say, hey, I think we should go in
28:25
this new direction with our product or we should try to
28:27
solve this broader platform thing.
28:29
And this is what it would look like and you can play with it.
28:31
And this is what this is how I think it would feel.
28:33
That is completely different conversation that what than what
28:36
was possible before. Like again, in the past, to do
28:40
that you would need to get designers helping you prototype
28:42
things, engineers helping your prototype things.
28:44
But to do that, you'd have to convince them that it was
28:46
important enough to be worth doing that when sometimes
28:48
there's these fragile ideas that actually the solution might be
28:51
incredibly compelling, but it's hard to describe the importance
28:55
of the problem relative to other problems.
28:56
And so I look at this as like a massive compression where all
29:00
leaders need to be much more involved in what's happening
29:02
day-to-day and can have a much more impact.
29:05
And I think on the other side, like I think the anybody who is
29:09
on the front line, if they have great ideas, if they have things
29:12
that they think we should be doing as a company, there's like
29:15
nothing stopping them from sharing the reverse in a way
29:19
that was not possible before. So I think it's of critical
29:22
importance that leaders are in the thick of this, but I think
29:25
it's of critical importance that everybody is right.
29:27
Like when something this new and this disruptive is coming, the
29:30
best way to know how you will be disrupted is to use it
29:33
aggressively and to be willing to come at it from first
29:37
principles. And the only way you can do that
29:38
is by getting in there and getting your hands dirty.
29:40
That's awesome. I think you just answered this
29:42
question. Well, you probably did, but I
29:44
want to ask it just in case it takes you somewhere different.
29:47
Before we shift into our lightning round, what one piece
29:51
of advice would you leave for leaders that want to build a
29:54
brand that resonates in an AI driven world?
29:56
So if you have them all locked in a room, you can get them to
29:59
do one thing. What's the one thing?
30:02
I would say you should really nail what conversation do you
30:07
have the right to be in and if you can get that right, then you
30:13
can hone and focus your resources on on that
30:15
conversation and what it will take to stand out in that way.
30:20
Awesome, cool. Well, you made it.
30:22
We're to the lightning round. So this is the part where if we
30:24
were doing a ton of editing, we put in crazy sound effects and
30:28
fireworks and all the stuff. So quick answers here.
30:31
We're going to close things out today.
30:33
What is the single biggest challenge in B2B sales?
30:36
Getting into the right conversations.
30:38
Awesome. Favorite tools or technology?
30:40
What do you love to use the most?
30:42
I mean, I would say superhuman. I'm in wistia everyday.
30:45
I mean we are doing a ton in wistia.
30:47
I'm using our webinar product all the time.
30:48
We have record group recording, coming, editing, social
30:52
creation. I've never used wistia more so I
30:54
know it's silly to say my own stuff, but I'm going to.
30:57
No, it's not silly at all. I mean, yeah, I'm curious to see
31:00
what you do with this file too. So we're going to give you, I'm
31:02
going to give you everything here.
31:05
Good reads. So favorite book, blog,
31:07
newsletter, podcast, anything. I think my favorite, one of my
31:11
favorite business books is Masters of Doom, the story of
31:15
the two guys who built Doom and Quake and stuff and and how it
31:19
was really the story of like a power of what is the having the
31:21
right small group of people together can accomplish and also
31:24
what happens when they're not together.
31:26
I think podcast wise, I listen to a lot of comedy podcasts, but
31:30
I will go on the business side like Stratechory I think is like
31:33
a must listen. So I love Stratechory.
31:36
Ben Thompson is super helpful at thinking through like a lot of
31:39
the implications of big things that are happening.
31:41
I'm a big fan of the acquired acquired FM podcast.
31:44
So if you don't know that it's like a a podcast where these two
31:48
guys go very, very deep on one company.
31:51
Often episodes are like 5 hours long and but it's very
31:56
interesting. Like the Rolex episode is really
31:58
good. The Starbucks episode is really
31:59
good. Microsoft episode I think is 9
32:01
hours. It doesn't seem possible that it
32:04
could be worth it. I would say it is.
32:05
So that's awesome. Those are going to check that
32:07
one out. Yeah, that's really cool.
32:09
But that seems like enough. Yeah, and Doom brought back
32:11
great memories. I mean, the first time using the
32:13
BFG, just how that changed how you think about gaming the
32:17
completely overpowered weapon. What about people?
32:20
Who inspires you the most? I'm inspired by people who are
32:24
willing to do things different differently, like take a
32:26
different approach. And I don't know, it's funny, my
32:30
first thought when you said that was like Christopher Nolan, the
32:33
filmmaker. I've just, he's not only an
32:35
amazing filmmaker, but the his, the way he tells stories and
32:39
uses time is like pushing you to try and it's like to try to
32:45
empathize the character by being told the story in a way that is
32:49
often somewhat confusing. And so it's like a challenge to
32:51
puzzle it together as the characters puzzling it together.
32:54
You know, I think Brian Chesky to Airbnb is super impressive at
32:58
how much he's like transformed that business over and over.
33:01
When I think about like Rand Fishkin, who is the founder of
33:03
Maz and now founder of Spark Tur, he's running like 3
33:06
different companies. But I think I love about Rand is
33:09
like he's so unafraid to be him. And he's also like, if you
33:13
consume his content, he is he puts out really high value
33:17
content like an insane rate. Like this guy is the stuff that
33:21
I was talking about in terms of marketing and brand.
33:23
Like he's going another level deeper on the particularly on
33:26
the marketing side, what's happening with SEO that I think
33:29
like he's a very good person to pay attention to in in this
33:32
moment. Awesome.
33:33
And Christopher Nolan actually took my brain in a slightly
33:37
different place because I saved so many stories about him to
33:40
share with my 13 year old who's engineering minded.
33:43
He loves to tinker. And it's the commitment to brand
33:46
values essentially, right? If if he has a certain scene
33:51
that he wants shot a certain way, he will go out and plant
33:56
hundreds of acres of corn to shoot that scene and then sell
34:00
the corn to pay for the land he bought to put the corn out.
34:03
Just the commitment to bringing things to life versus using CGI
34:08
or some of that. So that there were the AI and
34:10
brand value parallels where my brain went because that some of
34:15
those Twitter threads or X, whatever we're supposed to call
34:17
it. Now I bookmark those just to
34:19
show the kids and say, hey, you remember this scene and The Dark
34:23
Knight? Yeah, it's so wild.
34:25
And yeah, I think it's like a lot of those movies I've watched
34:28
many times. Like Interstellar is one of my
34:30
favorite movies. I've watched it many, many times
34:33
and it's so clever and but there's still things you pick
34:35
up. Like there's so many details in
34:37
there that you can pick up like on the 4th viewing.
34:40
There's not a lot of stuff that feels like that.
34:43
Totally. Well, that's, that's what we can
34:44
aspire to do as as marketing leaders and brand leaders.
34:48
So there you go. Most important question of all,
34:50
Chris, how can everyone get in touch with you after this
34:53
episode? Find me on LinkedIn, Chris,
34:55
Chris Savage on LinkedIn, post on there all the time.
34:57
Feel free to say hi, ask question, whatever.
34:59
I host a podcast called Talking Too Loud podcast for Savage.
35:03
So you can find me there. Yeah, you can always.
35:04
I'm sure you can find my e-mail. You can e-mail me if you have
35:06
something you want to talk to me about there too.
35:08
Outstanding. Well, you crushed it.
35:10
Thanks so much for your time today.
35:12
Hey Moody, thanks for having me. Thanks for joining us for On
35:16
Base. If you enjoyed this episode,
35:18
please be sure to share, rate, review and subscribe on Spotify,
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35:30
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