(04:08) Comparing AI’s Impact to the Internet’s Evolution 25 years ago

(04:30) Importance of Experimentation and Testing with AI 

(05:59) Addressing AI-Related Challenges (Privacy, Regulation) 

(07:50) How ChatGPT democratized AI

(10:04) Micro Segmentation and Hyper Personalization in Marketing

(13:59) Practical AI Applications in B2B Marketing

(16:52) Strategies for Upskilling Teams with AI

[00:00:04.270] – Kriste Goad

Hey, welcome to How It’s Done, a podcast for Curious Marketers. I’m Kriste Goad. I’ll be your host, and I’m really glad you’re here. Hello, Curious Marketers. As part of our ongoing series on the transformative power of Artificial Intelligence, this episode is all about how to upskill your team. How do you make sure you and your team first know how to use AI, when to use AI, how to integrate it into work and workflows, and the tools and strategies you need to stay ahead. My guest today is Mitch Duckler, founder and managing partner of FullSurge. FullSurge is a brand and marketing strategy consultancy based in Chicago. Mitch has more than three decades of experience working with Fortune 1,000 companies in the US and beyond. He also is a frequent speaker and has spoken at dozens of high-profile events across five continents, including a TEDx Talk. And there’s more. Mitch is the author of the best-selling book, The Indispensable Brand. And in large part, why he’s here today, he has a new book out called The Future-Ready Brand: How the World’s Most Influential CMOs are navigating societal forces and emerging technologies. Mitch, welcome, and thank you for joining me on the How It’s Done podcast.

[00:01:40.140] – Mitch Duckler

Thank you, Kriste. Great to be with you.

[00:01:42.090] – Kriste Goad

Well, it’s great to have you. Let’s just dive right in and kick things off with you. Sure. Telling our listeners a little bit about yourself and how AI is changing the marketing industry. I’d love to know more about this new book of yours.

[00:01:57.200] – Mitch Duckler

I wrote the book. It’s been out actually several weeks now, so it’s hot off the press. But basically, what I wanted to do is talk to some of the best and brightest minds in marketing about how the marketing landscape is changing and evolving given the confluence of societal and technological trends. On the technological side, I had a number of conversations around artificial intelligence, machine learning, predictive analytics, analytics, and then also realities, so virtual reality, augmented reality, and then Web3 blockchain, NFT tokenomics, et cetera. I talked to over 40 chief marketing officers, mostly Fortune 500 companies, about how they’re using these technologies today and how they’re impacting their current roles and how they see their roles evolving given the fairly rapid adoption of AI.

[00:03:04.240] – Kriste Goad

And these are CMOs from across industries, is that correct?

[00:03:09.640] – Mitch Duckler

Yes, all over the board, you name it. Some in professional services such as IBM and Accenture, and health care, Abbott, financial services, auto industry, Lexus, and Toyota, so BMW. I purposely wanted to have a cross-section around the different industries because I think they are all being impacted very differently by these technologies.

[00:03:40.870] – Kriste Goad

Did you have any huge aha moments as you were researching and writing this book?

[00:03:47.090] – Mitch Duckler

Oh, gosh, yeah. There were a few. A lot of the CMOs actually refer to this, and that is that they feel that right now we are at a point in time that is equally disruptive and transformative as the Internet was some 25 years ago.

[00:04:08.360] – Kriste Goad

Yes. I’d think that to be the case as well.

[00:04:12.620] – Mitch Duckler

Yeah, which is pretty remarkable when you think about it, right? Yeah.

[00:04:16.260] – Kriste Goad

The fact that we’re going to live through something as transformative as what we now know the Internet was. I mean, potentially we’re going to live through even maybe another one of these cycles if we are fortunate to live that long.

[00:04:30.710] – Mitch Duckler

Exactly. Yeah, and it’s exciting. I think another thing that came across in a lot of these interviews is that this is also a window in time where it’s really necessary, possibly It’s possible and necessary to dive in and get involved and experiment, test, and learn with some of these different technologies. Nobody I’ve talked to, rather, is taking a wait and see attitude, even though there are issues. We know a lot of the issues, especially with AI and the concerns around data privacy and a lot of the regulatory issues. When we talk about metaverse, gosh, where’s metaverse metaverse you’ve been headed, and is there going to be a single platform or multiple metaverses? And blockchain has a whole host of issues and unknown questions as well. So it’s tempting to say, You know what? Let’s just take a wait and see attitude, but they’re proceeding, but they’re proceeding cautiously and experimenting on smaller scales, pilots. They feel like at the end of the year or two, and then if they haven’t done what they’re doing right now, They’ll be behind the eight ball. They’ll be behind the learning curve. They’re doing it themselves and they’re encouraging others to get out there and experiment and get your hands dirty with some of these new technologies and find out what they’re all about.

[00:05:59.300] – Kriste Goad

In my experience, it’s the only way to do it. I think it’s interesting also because there’s all kinds of new tools that are leveraging AI, and so you can do your work differently, better, more efficiently. They don’t have to be these huge investments. They don’t have to be huge platforms. I just think of, for example, some of the pretty rapid evolution of some of these even meeting, recording, and transcription services and platforms, which can really scale back the time that your teams are spending on summary notes from a client call, for example, or anything like that. There’s ways that are big, obviously, that this transformation is going to happen, but there’s also those small ways that maybe don’t get talked about as much.

[00:07:06.450] – Mitch Duckler

Yeah, absolutely. I think you hit on an important point in that they all are very accessible. Even if you take a look at some of the Gen AI, like the ChatGPT, it’s free or $20 a month, I guess, if you want the custom. But that’s all very affordable. I think it is just like the Internet did right a quarter century ago. It is democratizing the marketing landscape. One of the other things I thought was interesting is when I talked to B2B marketers in particular, they were quick to point out that they feel that AI in particular has the ability to really elevate the very nature and stature and profile of the marketing function in the C-suite and across the organization prioritization to a much more strategic level. I think I work across different industries, but it’s very common in more consumer-oriented or like CPG for those companies to be marketing-driven and for marketing to definitely have a seat at the strategy table. But a lot of times in B2B, that’s not the case. They’re relegated to more of a staff function, if you will, and more tacticians than strategists. They’re saying that this has the ability to change that.

[00:08:32.470] – Mitch Duckler

And encouragingly, you don’t need to become a data scientist in order to do that. You just need to befriend your CIO or your IT folks, to find out what’s out there, what solutions and even data sets that you have access to. And all of a sudden, you are much more, especially when coupled with machine learning and predictive analytics, you’re much more in a driver role for a business than perhaps you’ve ever been.

[00:08:59.080] – Kriste Goad

Can you say more about that? I don’t know if where my head goes when you say those words is actually where you’re talking about. But what initially comes to my mind is I’ve certainly been inside companies as well as have clients who we’re trying to market to and we’re trying to differentiate the company and the brand. We’re like, What data can you give us? What can you tell us? We’ve got all this data, let’s just call it, we’ve got all this data around smoking cessation. What can you tell us? Then historically, the answer has been, Oh, we can’t really get that information out across. It’s too hard to get that information out. There’s all kinds of reasons why we can’t give you that information. We’re like, Okay, that’s going to make it a little more difficult, but okay, we’ll work around it. Are you talking about that data or that strategy, or what are you talking about specifically?

[00:10:04.490] – Mitch Duckler

Well, I think if you think about what marketing is really charged with, it’s understanding the marketplace, understanding the competitive set, understanding customer needs and wants and purchasing drivers and so forth. I think what AI has the ability to do is to understand those things at a much finer, more granular level than ever before. There’s a couple of concepts that I talk about in the book, too. Micro segmentation and hyper personalization. What do I mean by those? Micro segmentation is, as the name would suggest, you can segment the market at a much more granular, much finer, more granular level than ever before with AI. It’s not just, hey, what is your five or six segment schema? Based on high level attitudes or behaviors. I talk to a lot of CMOs that they’re saying, you know what? We’re developing thousands of micro segments because of what AI is able to do, to understand the combinations of different variables and what they mean for, for example, what to offer or the message to deliver consumers. So micro segmentation, again, it’s not just… Segmentation went a long way years ago, towards not doing the same thing for everyone. Let’s talk about five or six or seven different segments, and then we have different offers or experiences or communication for each.

[00:11:42.080] – Mitch Duckler

What this is doing is saying, Well, forget about five or six or seven. Let’s talk about thousands. And then the hyper personalization is, Okay, once you have these micro granular segments, what’s the optimal offer or the message that will resonate with them? And This was never possible at scale. It’s essentially the one-to-one version of marketing that Peppers & Rogers talked about decades ago, which really wasn’t possible, again, because even though in theory, marketers could do it, it just wasn’t possible to scale. You didn’t have the computing capability that you do today with AI.

[00:12:22.250] – Kriste Goad

What tools would marketers look to use to do what you’re talking about doing?

[00:12:28.970] – Mitch Duckler

Well, I mean, there’s all kinds. I mean, basically, they’re, again, tools that just get at… They’re able to combine data and information from so many different sources. They’re looking at that they’re combining contextual, like where you are and what time of day with what you’ve done previously, so your behavioral data. Then it’s playing all kinds of predictive analytics. So what if? What if we were to offer this particular message or offer at this particular time in this location? What’s the likelihood that this consumer will bite on this offer? I think up till now, it’s been much more intuitive. Now, while there’s still, there’s no guarantees. It’s just a lot more data-driven. Some of these capabilities are much more data-driven than ever before.

[00:13:28.820] – Kriste Goad

I am curious, being someone who is in the specialist space of healthcare B2B, how is AI changing marketing for healthcare marketers? Did you get at that or do you have some insights? I know you’ve worked with healthcare companies. You certainly interviewed some CMOs from healthcare companies as part of your overall research. I’m just curious if you have any insights on that.

[00:13:59.860] – Mitch Duckler

I did talk to a few. I think one of the themes that emerged is, and I talk about it in the book, I have an entire chapter on health and wellness, which is broader than specifically health care. But there, a number of the CMOs talked about how the big tech companies are really changing the very nature of health care.  We talked about Amazon, Microsoft, and Google. They’re essentially allowing, again, just a level of much more in-depth understanding and much more hyper, again, hyper personalization of solutions that just was never achievable before. Even if you talk to a lot of the CMOs that are in traditional healthcare, we’re even beginning to talk about the Facebooks, the Googles, the Microsofts, the Amazons, the world being their primary competitors, which is not necessarily the case 10 years ago or even five years ago.

[00:15:13.560] – Kriste Goad

Talk about disruptive and transformative.

[00:15:15.210] – Mitch Duckler

Right, exactly. If you were to ask a pharma company or a medical device company, who is your primary competitor, you wouldn’t expect them to say Google.

[00:15:26.740] – Kriste Goad

But they are.

[00:15:29.870] – Mitch Duckler

But yeah, increasingly.

[00:15:31.540] – Kriste Goad

They’re in a little bit of order.

[00:15:33.410] – Mitch Duckler

A lot of it is because of the data, just the incredible wealth of data and information that these companies have on individuals. It’s just Apple. What can Apple do with wearable technology today? You can start to understand why a medical device company might consider Apple as one of their primary competitors. When you take a look at what the Apple Watch can do and the amount of data and information and computing power that’s on it.

[00:16:05.940] – Kriste Goad

No doubt about that. I’m curious about what you learned from the CMOs you talked to, and then just in your day-to-day work, I’m sure you continue to get more and more insight on a daily basis. But what are companies doing to help their employees do what you’re talking about doing? Test and learn. How are they getting comfortable with that? What kinds of things are they putting in place to help upskill their own employees and take this time that we have, these next one to two years to do exactly what you were talking about, which is get ahead of it rather than fall behind.

[00:16:52.370] – Mitch Duckler

Exactly. They had some good advice, and they talked about what they’re doing individually. One of the things they talked about is the importance of starting with this basic foundational knowledge that pretty much everyone should have. Regardless of your role or your level within the company, it’s important for everybody just to have some base level knowledge of concepts within artificial intelligence, such as machine learning, predictive analytics, deep learning, neural networks. Just know what they are at the highest level, even at a far higher level than how it impacts their day-to-day jobs. A lot of that is very… You can get that through secondary resources or online courses or things like that. It’s just very easily accessed. But make sure people at least understand. I’m sorry?

[00:17:50.700] – Kriste Goad

Well, I was just going to say you’re talking about just understanding the difference in the terminology even.

[00:17:55.290] – Mitch Duckler

Yeah, and what they are, and what the high level capabilities are, never mind how they’re applied necessarily to what you do. But then there is this next level of tailoring training to your specific role. So as you can imagine, marketers have different needs and there’s different applications of AI that will be relevant to them versus somebody who’s in operations or finance or human resources. So once you have that base level, everybody should understand terms that are probably applicable to everybody, regardless of your function. Then you start to learn, Okay, well, how can this make my job as a marketer? How can I be more productive? How can I be more efficient? How can I do my job better? Then it’s a question of just understanding what roles people are in within your department, and then what you can do, what training you can get them to excel. Then they all talked about, too, which is the point that I think you started with, the importance of practical hands-on experience. All this stuff is going to feel very conceptual and very theoretical or even academic to people until you actually start to use it. There’s just no substitute for experience.

[00:19:17.810] – Mitch Duckler

Eventually, you do need to let people tinker with it. Also, they talk about the importance of collaboration. Look for AI opportunities on teams that are inherently cross-functional, which I thought was interesting, too, because then you begin to learn how other functions across the organization are using it and just learning from them as well. So you need to understand at a very high level how it can be used in your specific function, but it’s also good to know how it’s being applied across the enterprise.

[00:46:03.470] – Kriste Goad

Well, I have really enjoyed our time together. Mitch, thank you so much. I’ve learned so much. I hope our listeners did, too. As always, we will be sure to include links and background in our show notes. We’ll be sure to include a link to your previous book as well as your new book, The Future Ready Brand. Yes. Available wherever you get your books, could I assume?

• Recommended Reading
  • The Future Ready Brand: How the World’s Most Influential CMO’S are navigating societal forces and emerging technologies
  • The Indispensable Brand

• Find FullSurge on:
  • Fullsurge.com
  • LinkedIn

• Find Mitch Duckler on:
  • LinkedIn

• Find Kriste on:
  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter
• Email Kriste: kg@growwithfuoco.com