Latest / The Marketing Brief / Sue and Brian, Veterans of the Advertising World, Connect on Authenticity & Trust Networks (S2 E3)
Transcript
- Brian Aucoin: Hello and welcome back to the marketing brief podcast. I am your host Brian Aquan and this is the podcast where we briefly touch on topics across the marketing landscape. As always, we're joined by an industry expert and today we're very excited to invite in Sue Rizzello all the way from London. Sue, welcome to the podcast. Sue Rizzello: Thank you, Brian. I'm glad to be here today. Brian Aucoin: We're excited to have you. We know you're in B2B marketing. Would you like to introduce yourself and kind of what you work on? I know you've got your own agency that you're celebrating 20 years on. That's very exciting. Sue Rizzello: It's very exciting to survive this long in marketing, which can be quite a tough industry. But yes, I've been in marketing for 35 years, actually, with a heritage in technology marketing. And of course, the irony of that today is that I've seen marketing go from all offline to digital first and now into a huge AI changing mode. And if anybody ever looks at me and says, can you ever? really be up to date with technology and digital marketing at this stage. think, well, we kind of invented it. We invented the internet and digital marketing. So, 20 years in as an independent agency has been, you know, it's quite a stage to have got to. And today we're really proud to have clients in the UK, also in the US. We're doing marketing work in Italy. So it's great, we're hanging in there and we're managing to navigate the advent of the AI marketing era. Brian Aucoin: Yeah, as we all are. Well, maybe that's a good place to start because I love talking to people who are veterans of this industry. I'm a veteran of the marketing and digital media industry. We've certainly seen a lot of changes as you referenced, you know, all of a sudden the Internet was here and everything became digital. Then we went through another wave with the adoption of mobile and it was like, oh my God, this is a year of mobile. And I think we had 10 years of the year of mobile as mobile kind of arrived in different ways. And then I look at like what programmatic buying did to the media industry, which really changed it and really kind of narrowed choices. And now we're in this space of AI, which feels similar in some ways, but I think is happening at such a rate that it's blowing some people's minds. And then, you know, there's a growing backlash against big AI, right? Like the concept of AI, even if the tools are things that we can use and can make our lives easier. Is there... something you're seeing that's different this time or what have you maybe taken from the past and kind of applying it to what's going on right now? Sue Rizzello: One of the biggest tipping points that I think I went through in my technology marketing journey was at the point where we launched Bluetooth, which freed the world up from wires. And the very idea, and I drove the global launch of that technology from a PR perspective. And we had to go right back to explaining and trying to envision a world for people. where they couldn't imagine for themselves. So even the technology media at the time couldn't quite get what we were talking about, about the wire-free world. It was very, very alien. Of course they understood it technically, we had to, I encouraged some of the vendors to create concept products that would help us even at the PR launch to explain and bring it alive in a way that was exciting. So technology was happening to the world at that point. Change was happening to the world, but they couldn't quite see the enormity of what it would do. know, 30 odd years later, you see that you know, the world is wire-free by default, it couldn't be anything but surely. So now AI is a little similar to that in that it's not that, you know, it's changing marketing but it's actually changing the world around us and at such an enormously fast pace. The Trekkie in me, because believe me I am one, Brian Aucoin: Yeah. Sue Rizzello: is just loving the fact I can talk to a computer. I I talk to chat GPT a lot because it just tickles me. I love it. But we do ourselves a disservice if we forget that it's also changing things beneath the surface. It's Brian Aucoin: Mm-hmm. Sue Rizzello: changing how politics is working. It's changing how economies are working. It's changing how the world's financial systems are working. mean, it's it's it's the enormity is is literally unimaginable, even for those very close to it at the moment and the ones who are imagining it some of them are a bit scared so you know the rest Brian Aucoin: Yeah. Yeah. Sue Rizzello: of us are just looking at it on a day-to-day basis and going this is making my life easier hooray you know Brian Aucoin: Yeah. And we went like, I remember a time when we had the internet of things. Remember that when it's like, well now digital goes into finance and it goes into this and there's no more travel agents. You know, it's like things got digitalized and that's certainly happening, you know, again. But again, I think it's the rate that things are happening that is really kind of building this push back. But I think, you know, when I talk about AI, I try to set like these guidelines of Okay, anything that can be automated will probably be automated, right? That's just the way we've always gone. And, you know, if there's things that humans are willing to give up like driving, I think we're okay with not driving certain places, we're going to give that up. But if you stretch that analogy to like F1 racing, we love that. Right? That is a popular sport that's gaining in popularity. And I don't want to see robots drive cars, right? I want to see humans drive cars. There's risk involved. There's the human element of it, right? It's that sport of it. So that brings me to my other guardrail, which is humans and consumers will ultimately make the choice on how much human they want in their experience, right? There might be things that we still want in exchange of human back to back Sue Rizzello: Thank Brian Aucoin: and someone with a heart and emotion on the other side making that. that choice. So I try to set up those guardrails of like everything that can be automated will be automated. But ultimately, are making the decision consumers are making the decision on how much of that will be automated. Sue Rizzello: But isn't that something that gets right to the heart of this though? Because people, and the same is true in business to business as it is in consumer, you know, sort of retail. Humans, you're right, people are making human decisions every day and the likelihood of us handing off all those decisions are very, very slim. The chances of people making no decisions is zero. They will always be making human decisions, although we may pass routine things off to AI. But in that case, buyers will need to know that they can trust that people are real, that products are real, and already we're in a world where we're not 100 % certain about that. In business to business, my area, it means that they have to know that they can trust you as well, not just that you're real, that you understand their world, that you've helped other people in similar situations or in similar companies. And that's very hard to simulate. You either do or you do not fully understand them. Brian Aucoin: Yeah. And you made that point before we started recording about authenticity, which is one of my buzzwords, one of my trends for this year. As we live in an increasingly inauthentic world, is what shines through. And I know you made the case that case studies are how you do that in the B2B world, right? The testimonials, this has helped my business and it could help your business, which I equated to peer to peer social influence. product reviews, like things that come, you know, if it is from a human, from one person to the next person saying, this works for me, that's what's really breaking through for people and consumers and enterprise as well. Sue Rizzello: Absolutely, I I talk a lot about the social proof pyramid. know if you imagine a pyramid and at the bottom you can... You know, every part of the pyramid has a role in authenticity. You can get lots of social likes and engagements and those are great at the bottom of the pyramid. They're like the foundation of your social proof. You go up another level though and you're talking about things like ratings and reviews. Do you get five stars? Do you get three stars? It makes a huge difference. But you fewer reviews than you do pure social likes. You know, I rate these people. Further up the pyramid, and fewer still, is where you get into the real authentic reflection, which is customer testimonials. there's no, they're somebody, you're starting to build a bit of a story. Somebody has volunteered that these guys were really good and why they were really good. as long as you put a name to them of course because there is a real risk with testimonial quotes when they're made up that you can see it a mile off and people often don't trust them so much. So that's the caveat there. But at the top of the pyramid and fewer of them are the true case studies where a customer has appreciated what you do, valued what you do for them so much that they're willing to actually stand up and say in their own voice what their experience was of working with you. We only use case studies, it's the main piece of marketing for my own agency is the stories from first-person interviews with my clients that actually say why they enjoyed working with us, why it was valuable to them. And there's real value in real stories. So real stories from real customers with real experiences. And those are not perfectly polished. They have to include the problems as well, the challenges you overcame together. Because if you only ever try to tell a perfect story, well, hey, that suddenly starts to look slightly inauthentic in its own right, okay? So, you know, I was encouraging companies to choose the best stories to tell, not necessarily just the biggest brand stories they can tell. Brian Aucoin: Yeah, I really like the idea of the social proof pyramid. I may borrow that from you. I really like that. But, I love Sue Rizzello: I'll send you the graphics. Brian Aucoin: it. Thank you. You me some work. Yeah, I really love that because, you know, obviously at the bottom is that social engagements, which we now are seeing is being faked, right? Like people are buying those, people are clipping, people are kind of creating that illusion that everybody's talking about this thing or everyone's responding to this thing. But still the thing you can't fake as much are the testimonials and the interviews. Sue Rizzello: Absolutely. Brian Aucoin: And when it comes to actually a person standing up and speaking on behalf of your brand, that is absolutely tops. Sue Rizzello: It is and I think that there are actually two areas where I think a lot of companies are sitting on value they have. They sometimes don't know that they have. One of those is those... is those customer relationships. Unlocking the real power of those three case studies is one side of the coin. The other, though, is locked up in their experiences and in their brains and in their understanding and in their opinions. So the other side of proof marketing is about thought leadership. type activities thought so thought leadership marketing and funnily enough this is another area where AI really struggles because good AI is not about churning out lots of content blog style clickbait style content as a lot of people sometimes think it is and it's not about striding a stage either it's about putting your insights and opinions to work for you in a way that is valuable to your audience, in a way which gives them something. It has to be giving, it's not a self-serving thing, but at the same time it does your business huge good because people out there... want to talk to the smart companies, they want to talk to the problem solvers, they want to talk to the guys who've got new ideas and, not to say guys, know, men and women. So thought leadership is another way actually of, I think, battling the AI mass of content out there because noise is going to be the other problem. We already have information overload. every single company out there is battling an incredibly competitive environment and an increasingly noisy environment. So how you stand out from the crowd should become absolutely front and centre of your strategy, certainly in your marketing strategy, but it speaks to all areas of your business. Brian Aucoin: Absolutely. Yeah, I really enjoyed I really enjoyed talking about that. I when you came on you're like I'll talk about marketing anytime I was like, yeah me too. So I'm really enjoying this conversation Something I always ask my guests were down in season two of the marketing brief podcast So we have a new question and our question is what is your superpower? Do know what your superpower is Sue? Sue Rizzello: I think my superpower is extracting excitement from people's brains about what they know. So I often sit on calls with people and they start talking and they're really enthusiastic by the end of the call because they have opinions they didn't know they had and somehow I can bring those out. think that's probably one of them. Brian Aucoin: Absolutely, I'm feeling a little of that. Well, your agency is Remedy, is that correct? Sue Rizzello: Yes, remedy marketing. Brian Aucoin: Awesome, and how do people get in touch with you? What's the best way for them to get in touch with you? Sue Rizzello: Well, they can either go to our website, obviously, which is remedymarketing.co.uk. So that's our, you know, it's not usually .com in the UK. Or the best way to find me is on LinkedIn, because I'm the only one of me. I'm lucky enough to have one of those names and you can DM me or book an appointment straight off the profile. Brian Aucoin: You're a one of one, Sue Rizzello: I am. Brian Aucoin: Well, I've really enjoyed this conversation. Thank you for being a guest on the Marketing Grave podcast. Sue Rizzello: Thank you for having me. It was a fun conversation. Brian Aucoin: That's great. We love that. Well, this has been a brief conversation with Sue Rizzello. I am your host, Brian Acquan, and stay curious, everyone.