It’s (More Than) Academic, with guest Professor Jim Lecinski

If your work involves connecting with consumers, you’ve probably been influenced by Jim Lecinski without even knowing it. As one of Google’s early top executives, he was at ground zero for the digital revolution that rewrote marketing's rulebook, and coined the idea of a “Zero Moment of Truth” (ZMOT) which is now taught in marketing curriculae everywhere. Jim wrote a definitive book on AI in marketing - three years ago. So it’s fitting that Jim has segued from a huge corporate career to an academic one, as one of the most popular professors at Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management. On this episode, everyone gets to learn from Professor Jim. From how ZMOT was born, to the best advice Eric Schmidt gave him, join Marisa and Steven as they continue to have the conversations that are critical to wrestling with the challenges and opportunities of business today. As Jim says, “it’s still not too late to be early.”

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hi, and thanks for joining us on Brand New from
the iHeart Podcast Network and Brand New Labs.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
I'm Marissa Thalberg.

Speaker 3 (00:12):
And I'm Stephen wolf Betta and Marissa. We got a
lot to get to today because we have a very
special guest who we've known for a while. But before
we talk about our guests, Marisa like, have you seen
all the activity that has been going on where you
see brands trying to open up the aperture of what

(00:33):
they can do? And I'm specifically looking at you Airbnb.
Did you see that redesign that was such.

Speaker 1 (00:39):
An interesting announcement And when you said redesign, I was
thinking when I first heard about it was like, Ohn,
are they doing their logo again? Because that was really controversial.
Do you remember that when they did that? Our friend
Jonathan Miltenhall, that's right, but yeah, I don't know. I mean,
it's really interesting to try to be say we're going
to be more than home rentals, We're going to be

(01:00):
an app for lots of things.

Speaker 3 (01:02):
Well, they want to be the app for everything now,
now homes to haircuts.

Speaker 2 (01:05):
It's ambitious.

Speaker 3 (01:06):
They've now redesigned, and I think this is a really
interesting space because everyone is looking for growth, right, every
brand needs to grow. But when you kind of say,
we're going to open up the aperture and we have
our core business, but can we really expand it into
these other areas. I think it's a really smart strategy,
but it's obviously littered with brands that have made tons

(01:27):
of mistakes and they try to go into stuff and
it just didn't work for sure, Like not everyone could
be like an uber or try to be in everything
app So I don't know, You've been at brands, You've
been at big companies that have tried to do this thing. Yeah,
is this good bad? How do you see it?

Speaker 1 (01:39):
I mean, as always, the answer is going to be
it depends, right. I think what's tricky is if you
wind up taking your eye off the ball of what
is your core reason for being, it can really not
be successful. But if you're true to your north star
and true to your core, then I think finding additional
ways to diversify can be super super powerful. But it

(02:02):
has to be really part of a broader strategy that
makes sense. I know that sounds obvious, but it's not,
because otherwise people wouldn't keep screwing this up in the.

Speaker 2 (02:11):
Ways that they do.

Speaker 3 (02:12):
Yeah, well, people get lost in the forest and that
kind of stuff. But look, we got a busy week.
I think the day this drops, we will be in
La together. So I'm really excited to see you.

Speaker 1 (02:23):
I get to go to my first Alpha conference and
I can't wait.

Speaker 3 (02:28):
This is our Alpha board forum that we're doing. These
are kind of our regional experiences where again we bring
the tech ecosystem to kind of connect with the boardroom.
And so we'll be doing that on Wednesday at the
Lighthouse in Venice, which is the new Creator campus that
Whaler has launched. I mean, and by the way, Whaler
had huge news. You know, I'm a proud board director

(02:48):
of Whaler, but we announced that we had a bunch
of investment into the company, led by including Mark Benioff.
Big news.

Speaker 1 (02:56):
Yeah, I did see that. Congratulations, that is big news.
And congrats to Neil. When the entire team.

Speaker 3 (03:02):
Yeah, when Neil and James and just like the whole
team at Whaler have built is just nothing sort of extraordinary.
And again, like where do you find growth and where
do you see the trajectory? I think the Creator economy
is truly one of the things that is going to
be just fueled by AI and everything that we're seeing
all the disruption, I think it really puts a question
mark on just like again legacy media, how you're going

(03:23):
to really try to see where entertainment goes. You're seeing
all the innovation really coming from creators and so I
think they're going to have even more tools, and so
it's just a very dynamic time. Interesting to see what
happens with the entertainment industry written large in LA because
that old studio system, I think it's going to be
extremely challenged. But that might be a session for another pod.

Speaker 1 (03:46):
Listen disruptions the word, I know, I'm sure you do.
Some people who've been super successful and talented in Hollywood
and the entertainment industry, they're struggling to figure out now
where they fit into the ecosystem.

Speaker 2 (03:59):
And you know, it's a perfect time.

Speaker 1 (04:01):
I feel like the last couple of episodes and now
this one included and we're bringing some really kind of
academic type voices into the conversation. And I think why
that matters is because the velocity of change that if
you're not trying to really learn and then incorporate, you're
going to be left so far behind and it's intimidating.

(04:24):
I find it intimidating while you're still trying to do
what you do but also learn and add and so
I'm very excited to have the amazing Jim Lishinski joining
us today.

Speaker 3 (04:33):
Intimidating, but at the same time, it's just exciting and
I get jazz by this. I love being back in
founder mode building. But for me, the word is exponential
and that's actually going to be my talk when I
open up the Alpha Board Forum on Wednesday, which you know,
I'm excited for you to see, but just understanding the
exponential nature of the moment that we're in. So that
has to be a whole separate pod. But let's get

(04:55):
right into it. We are thrilled to welcome a genuine
marketing maverick who's been head of the curve at every
turn for years. Professor Jim Lishinsky is the rare breed
who's mastered both the corporate and academic worlds. He's the
Clinical Associate Professor of Marketing at northwesterns Kellock School of Management,
and he's not just teaching, he really is reshaping how

(05:17):
the next generation of leaders think about marketing. His courses
on marketing Strategy and omni channel marketing are consistently oversubscribed,
and it's no surprise he was named Kellok's Professor of
the Year in twenty twenty two. Before stepping into academia,
Jim spent twelve transformative years at this little startup called Google,
where he was vice president of Customer Solutions for the Americas,

(05:38):
and he was really at ground zero for the digital
revolution that really rewrote marketing. Many of you may know
Jim or have been influenced by him without even realizing it,
because he wrote in twenty eleven a book called Winning
the Zero Moment of Truth or ziemot as we know it,
and it fundamentally changed how brands truly approach the customer journey.

(05:59):
And with over three undo thousand readers worldwide, and he's
been featured in The New York Times and Forbes and
ad Age, it's really just you mus become a movement,
always looking forward. Jim's latest project is The AI Marketing Canvas,
which was published by Stanford University Press. He has an awesome,
you know, five stage roadmap on implementing AI in marketing
and it's actually been one of the top business books

(06:20):
and AI books in both twenty two and twenty three,
and the new version is coming out later this year,
I believe, Professor. So I'm proud to also say that
Jim is a fellow at the Alpha Institute where we
get to work together. So Jim, welcome to brand new.

Speaker 4 (06:33):
Great to be with you. Nice to see you.

Speaker 5 (06:35):
Steven Hi, Marissa, longtime listener, first time caller, thrilled.

Speaker 4 (06:38):
To be with you.

Speaker 1 (06:38):
To one we love that well, longtime fan too. And
it's just you know, sometimes, Stephen, when we do this,
when we bring people on, it's just like amazing to
reflect on the length and chapters of our careers because Jim,
you definitely were an influence on me in my early
days kind of being an OG digital mark marketer, and

(07:00):
you were a leader at Google, and I mean, I
remember because I want to get to where it's all going,
and you are at the forefront now with AI mean
the fact that you were in a book about it
three years ago. We'll have to talk about that, but
can we start with Zero Moment of Truth and what
that was and what it is now, just for people
who may not know, because it was a riff on

(07:21):
the famous First Moment of Truth and when you brought
that into the world and into the industry. It was
a game changer. So I'd love for you to kind
of start with what was that then and what is
it now?

Speaker 5 (07:36):
Yeah, and I recall you and I in the Cosmetics
Stays at an off site on twenty six three talking about.

Speaker 4 (07:41):
This with your team. Uh huh, yeah, way back in
the day.

Speaker 5 (07:45):
It's hard to imagine now where digital is center of
the plate more than half of most marketers budgets, center
of attention, center of focus, and.

Speaker 4 (07:53):
Driving business results.

Speaker 5 (07:55):
But you know, it was not that long ago, a
decade ago, when e commerce was a fraction of what
it is now. Latest numbers in the US show Department
of Commerce seventeen eighteen percent of all purchases in the
US are made online as e commerce purchases, But at
one point that was zero one percent. And as a result,
you know, marketers spend their money where they think they

(08:16):
can drive results. It was like Dominimus one percent of
marketing budgets. And so yes, as Stephen mentioned, I started
late two thousand and five, early two thousand and six
with a you know, I mean, I know, you say
it in jest, a little startup called Google at the time.
But you know, it's clearly wasn't what it was then
what it is today. I was at a non employee
eighteen hundred or something like this. You know, at that

(08:39):
point Google was a great company had recently iPod was
focused only on search. There was no YouTube, there was
no display network all the rest of that stuff then,
And a challenge was to have conversations with marketers like
yourselves to say, you know, how can we help you
drive profitable incremental growth right which should always be the goal,
build brand equity long term, get results right now and later.

(09:02):
And so things were going pretty well, but most of
the early clients, as you might suspect, were e commerce
pure plays, ti Iraq, dot com and South Bend Indiana
was like an early and you know, continues to be
a great partner of Google's. But of course Unilever wasn't,
General Motors wasn't Procter, and Gamble wasn't right like, all
of the leading marketers were not doing that because they

(09:24):
weren't selling online at that point. You couldn't get your
minute made orange juice door dash to your house in
half an hour.

Speaker 4 (09:30):
All through your mobile phone.

Speaker 5 (09:32):
This was sort of the business challenge that we faced
and at that moment I actually bumped into Eric Schmidt,
who was a chairman at the time CEO on the
main campus in Mountain View, and I asked him, I said,
doctor Schmidt, what advice do you have that would help you? Know?
As a Neogler myself new to Google, you know what
if I have to help me be successful, help our
clients and customers be successful, the team and the company

(09:54):
be successful.

Speaker 4 (09:55):
Super smart guy.

Speaker 5 (09:56):
He stopped and he looked at me, and he said, teach,
don't pitch, market or sell, and results will follow for you,
for your team, for your customers, and for Google. And
that sort of Reframerisa, how I sort of thought about
myself like I thought of myself as all those other things,
a technologist, an advertiser, a marketer, right, but never a teacher.
And so we started to think about then, like how

(10:18):
could we teach marketers to understand what this sort of
digital frontier is all about? And so the best way
to teach people something is to frame it in a
language or a model or a framework that they're already
familiar with. And as you point it out, Marisa, you
know the folks at p and g ag Laffley had
written a book about the sort of first moment of truth,
which is when you show up at the store, right,

(10:40):
and like, does all your marketing then pay off and
people take your product off the shelf and put it
in the cart or not. Second moment of truth was
when they would take it home and use it. And
then there was actually an antecedent to the first moment
of truth, which is that moment of discovery, the stimulus,
which can either be external or internal.

Speaker 4 (10:58):
Right, it could be you.

Speaker 5 (10:59):
See an ad which then makes you go to the store,
or it could be I got a flat tire and
now I need tires, right, So it could be either
way internal or external. But increasingly at that time, and
we'll talk about more now, there was stuff that was
happening in between those two. First of all, there always
was I might go ask my friend Steven, what's a
great brand of tires, right as a car guy. But

(11:21):
now this was sort of increasingly happening online where I
could now google best tires for my SUV. Right now
we'd get back some paid in or some organic results.
And so that moment that happened after the need arose
the stimulus, but before the first moment of truth at
the point of sale. First moment of truth minus one.
We coined the zero moment of truth, did a lot

(11:43):
of research around the world to prove that that existed.
Then marketers like yourself started to say, hey, maybe this
is how we can continue being great at what we
always knew how to do. And then add this new thing, right,
the zero moment and digital of course, and Google of
course you know was a key part of that. And
so fast forward to this day, now that all happens
on mobile, that now all happens on TikTok or read

(12:05):
it is an increasingly important moment of truth. And Stephen,
as you and I have discussed, now we go into
perplexity or chet GPT and ask what's the best brand
of car tires? Right, So the means to discovery of
zimat change and evolve, but that moment arguably rises in importance.

Speaker 3 (12:22):
So Jim the whole way you framed it, and I
love the whole idea of teaching. And by the way,
I did not know that that inspiration came from doctor Schmidt.
That's a good story, that's a nice nugget, yes, but
it's funny. I've always inherently thought that way. And I
really feel that Google was one of the first true
technology companies that invested in education because when I was

(12:43):
at Publicy's, I remember you had all of your academies
and you had certification and training. But I feel like
it's this whole kind of we're back to square one
in a lot of ways. I'm just curious. One is
ziemot still relevant, because you know, you kind of alluded

(13:05):
to it, but is it still relevant now as we
enter you know, the AI era? And then two, where
do you think folks are looking for education? Because it's
we're in the wild West phase and it's all over
the map and it's changing every day, So how can
you actually learn given this moment in time that we're in.

Speaker 5 (13:24):
So, first of all, I do think it's absolutely relevant
on two levels still today ZEMOT. One is you know,
we're pleased and gratify that it's actually in most undergrad
marketing university textbooks now, so right, like that's part of
educating the future marketers is understanding that concept.

Speaker 3 (13:40):
Are you getting the royalty on that one, Jim, We
got to work on that.

Speaker 5 (13:45):
Yeah, so you know, folks are learning that concept. And
then you know your question about as we shift to AI,
as that zero moment of truth, some of these answer engines.

Speaker 4 (13:55):
So to speak.

Speaker 5 (13:56):
Yeah, I mean right, this is sort of what's going
on in the world is where are people now now,
you know, originating that search for answers in the zero
moment of truth?

Speaker 4 (14:05):
Right?

Speaker 5 (14:05):
For even for AI, people would tell me, well, I
just opened the Amazon app, right, because if it's a
commercial query, I'm looking to buy something, and I already
am a prime member.

Speaker 4 (14:14):
I'm not going to start at Google.

Speaker 5 (14:15):
I'll just start in the Amazon app and then I've
got my you know, one click ad to carde shows up.
It's been a while that it's evolving as to what's
the vessel, if you will, where this action, the zero
moment activity happens. And look, you know, we see lots
of data out from lots of sources. The folks at
Orbit Media just this week, you know, released another survey
I'm sure you saw, where are people getting these kinds

(14:38):
of answers?

Speaker 4 (14:38):
And increasingly it's.

Speaker 5 (14:40):
Shifting to you know, the open ais and the perplexities
and the geminis of the world. And Google recognizes this
and that's why you know, there was first AI overviews
and now the AI mode full tab right at the
top of the SERF page.

Speaker 4 (14:54):
So you know, we're going to.

Speaker 5 (14:56):
See some evolution as to how this happens where people
get those zero moment answers. But arguably, especially as economy
gets tight, people watch their wallet, their pocketbook. They want
to get the best product.

Speaker 4 (15:09):
You know.

Speaker 5 (15:09):
You see this in high and medium and low research
or high involvement products. Whether I'm looking for I don't know,
you know, retirement funds or insurance, or whether I just
want the best olive oil six dollars or sixty or
six hundred or six thousand dollars, I can get these
answers at my fingertips increasingly, So definitely a critical moment

(15:29):
for marketers to continue to think about how to win.

Speaker 1 (15:32):
You know, I love having these conversations with people like you,
but as a practitioner because I'm in it. I'm in
it every day, having real meetings and having real discussions.
This week I met with TikTok and we were actually
talking about TikTok Search. I'm like, oh, right, And then
we're also reading the headlines about how Google's like, well,
we'd rather eat our own lunch than have someone else

(15:53):
eat our lunch. So we're going to figure out how
to put a on the search results. But what does
that mean for marketers who've gotten especially real We'll say especially,
but not especially retailers. You know where you're in that
daily fight for sales and you've gotten really accustomed to
where those I mean, there are multiple zero moments of
truth right from very very human playing in digital so

(16:16):
that would be social media to you know the digital
shortcuts that are now it was Google and you rightly
said Amazon, right, and now maybe chat, GPT or perplexity.
How do you coach people, since you're a teacher too,
to think about that in the real world today in
terms of where to put your dollars and your investments down.

(16:37):
I mean, I know there's no simple answer to that,
but I'm so curious. How do you translate it to
practitioners like me?

Speaker 4 (16:43):
Yeah?

Speaker 5 (16:43):
How we teach this here at Kellogg and also when
I work with cmos like yourself. Yeah, we sort of say, look,
it can get overwhelming and super complex really quickly, so
let's sort of reduce or essentralize the job to creating
demand and capturing demand, right right, Love you say, like,
at some point I got to make sure that my

(17:04):
category and my brand there's enough demand for today and tomorrow,
and then when people are in market, we want to
make sure that they choose us. And now we can
get into the whole sort of false dichotomy debate between
upper funnel and lower funnel and brand and performance, and
of course.

Speaker 3 (17:20):
The answer for thirty years, Jim, we're still talking about
that bullshit.

Speaker 1 (17:23):
I have actually banned it in my company because what
control you can control?

Speaker 2 (17:28):
I said, it's going to be the equivalent of the
swear jar.

Speaker 5 (17:31):
You got to put a.

Speaker 2 (17:31):
Dollar in the jar.

Speaker 1 (17:32):
If you call it performance, yeah, that's awesome.

Speaker 5 (17:36):
By calling it performance or growth marketing, that somehow means
that the upper funnel.

Speaker 2 (17:40):
So the other side's not right exactly exactly.

Speaker 5 (17:42):
We'll quote our friend Mark Britson. Of course it's yes,
and it's both as right, like, yeah, we need to
capture today's demand and you need to create tomorrow's demand.
And you know, lots of different ways that we could
figure out what that amount is some of the famous
work by Binean Fields, you know, sixty forty.

Speaker 4 (17:57):
But of course it varies based on what kind.

Speaker 5 (17:59):
Of company you are, what category you're in, et cetera.
But you know, we typically find that most marketers are
underinvesting in creating tomorrow's demand and overinvesting in capturing today's
demand in market shoppers.

Speaker 4 (18:12):
So sort of the first way.

Speaker 5 (18:13):
That we would think about that, and then you know,
within the capture demand bucket, now we start to say, well,
what are the multiple zero moments of truth?

Speaker 4 (18:23):
And lots of ways you could do that.

Speaker 5 (18:24):
You can go to tools like answer the Public where
you just put your category in and it will fire up.
You know, that wheel of fifty questions for you as
to what actually are people asking on Reddit on Facebook?

Speaker 3 (18:36):
Right?

Speaker 5 (18:36):
It's scraping social media. And now you say to yourself,
do we have the ability to answer all of those
top questions in rank order? Right, like what's the biggest
question people are asking? And you step down and oh,
by the way, this bridges us from SEO to GEO right,
generative engine. We want to make sure that when these

(18:57):
engines are looking for answers of those top zero moments,
that you have those answers on your site, on your
pages in a way that these bots can digest and
return you as opposed to someone else's answer.

Speaker 3 (19:10):
I love that you are positioning it this way, you
have a way of framing things, Jim, and I feel
that for brands, you know, just understanding the business context.
We know that the ads are going to come in
all of these llms, right, they just are. And certainly
you could argue with the recent hiring of the now

(19:30):
seen to be former CEO of Instacart at open Aime
that was really an interesting move that was telling because
obviously was at Metaphor a long time and you know,
Fiji understands the whole ad ecosystem. So the ads are
going to come, but they're not there today, right, and
so how do you really help, you know, kind of
businesses navigate? Again, we're in this very liminal space right

(19:52):
where it's not fully formed. It's so early, but it's
moving so quickly and exponentially that if you don't get
your footing right now, are you going to be left behind?
Or do you feel like there's going to be the
opportunity to catch up Because there's so much hype around disaster.
Oh my god, you're going to be you know, a
dinosaur versus you know, kind of where we are today.

Speaker 5 (20:14):
Yeah, look, I first would and I do reassure marketers
that it's still not too late to be early, right,
So don't freak out and don't panic if you you know,
read case studies and you know amazing the uses of
AI and you're not there yet, Like that's okay, but
by the way, the train is creeping out of the station, right,
Like you don't have years to figure this out. I
mean I was with a Fortune one thousand brand just

(20:37):
this past week and they said, we're starting to think
about digital transformation.

Speaker 4 (20:40):
I said, oh right, you soon will be too late,
but today it is not too late to think about this.
And you know, every time there's a major.

Speaker 5 (20:49):
Inflection like this, and you know, I get it that
the hype cycle is up to eleven as the spinal
tap folks.

Speaker 4 (20:54):
Used to say, but you know this one's real, right, Like,
just like digital we.

Speaker 3 (20:59):
Have your former boss, doctor Erkschmid saying that it is
under hyped.

Speaker 4 (21:03):
I saw that right in his TED talk. Definitely I
must watch for your listener's viewers.

Speaker 5 (21:09):
Yes, because we often tend to overestimate the negative immediately
and underestimate the positive long term with these inflections. But
whenever this sort of stuff happens, it reshapes and reshifts
the winners and losers, the rank orders, the market shares,
and you know you used to go back and look
at who were the Fortune five hundred companies in nineteen
ninety nineteen ninety five versus today. Digital reshifted the order

(21:32):
right in many different categories and this will do the same.
So how do I advise people to think about this
at the senior marketing and at the board level, where
I know you spend a lot of time Steven E
Merissa as well, is instead of just chasing tools and
shiny objects and say like, hey, if you tried pencil,
if you tried notion, if you tried Jasper, why I've
heard about writer.

Speaker 4 (21:51):
Maybe we should get them in like all fine companies. Right.

Speaker 5 (21:54):
But if it's the usual shiny object syndrome, right, you
can't just go chase tools and technolog You will not
solve all your problems here. So you have to start
with what's the business problem or opportunity that you're trying
to solve.

Speaker 4 (22:08):
Right?

Speaker 5 (22:08):
So remember what these tools do is they predict and
they generate at the most right left brain right brain AI.
So now you say to yourself, what is it for
my business in my firm, for my team and my users,
my customers or consumers. What is it that if I
could predict it or generate it with much higher fidelity

(22:30):
and accuracy, would unlock significant incremental business value.

Speaker 4 (22:34):
That's the first question you have to ask.

Speaker 5 (22:36):
B to B Companies will often say I've got this
really great white glove sales team. They're terrific. When they
get in a meeting, they close. But the problem is
they end up in all these meetings with unqualified customers,
despite our inside sales team trying.

Speaker 4 (22:49):
To prequalify everything.

Speaker 5 (22:51):
If they could get in better prospect likely meetings that
are good match for us, that's millions or billions of dollars, right,
that's a prediction.

Speaker 4 (22:58):
Who should we go meet with?

Speaker 5 (23:00):
Generation we generate all these assets for ad campaigns, we
hope and think, and maybe we've done some pretesting that
they will lead to sales, But if I could better
generate those assets, right, so you see where this goes.
So that's the first question. And we think then about
am I looking to just save time and be more
efficient and more productive with these tools or am I

(23:23):
looking to unlock transformational growth? And then the other axis
is am I looking to apply either productivity savings or
growth internally to my teams, just stuff we do as
a marketing team, and or externally to customers. And there's
two by two four blocker solutions BACE.

Speaker 3 (23:40):
We have one of those framework for Alpha Council members.
It's you know, kind of a two by two where
you have internal external on the x axis and then
risking opportunity on the y axis. And as you well
know most boards, then I would imagine most c suites
or more you know kind of departments like you know,
marketing or product they really spend a lot of their
time in intern and focusing on risk. The downside, they're

(24:02):
not thinking about how they're going to be disrupted in
the marketplace externally, and most likely it's not going to
come from your direct competitor. It's going to come from
the two persons startup with one hundred agents in the valley.

Speaker 4 (24:12):
Yeah, that's right exactly.

Speaker 5 (24:13):
And this is why most marketing departments, most marketing leaders
that I talk to now are focused in that first
quadrant of productivity efficiency, doing more with less, using AI
tools on the same stuff we already do, summarizing meetings,
writing drafts of creative briefs, this kind of stuff. Well,
first of all because it's lower risk than external right

(24:34):
showing stuff to customers where it could hallucinate, or copyright
issues potentially, et cetera. But it's interesting that marketers are
focused on that productivity bucket. But yet when you look
at what CEOs and CFOs most want, the number one
priority is revenue growth. Gartner does their annual survey on
this and far and away like as doctor Schmid we

(24:55):
quote him again, used to tell us at Google, revenue
growth cure all known business problems, right, and these tools
can drive revenue growth. But yet all the marketers are
focused on efficiency and cost savings to just do the
same thing quick or cheaper, easier.

Speaker 1 (25:10):
But don't you think that is a symptom versus the
actual disease itself. Of where that's coming from, I don't
think that's the inherent nature of cmos. Cmos actually are
usually the growth minded people, but right, we have to be.
But I think it kind of goes back to your
point about where do we overinvest versus under invest? It's

(25:33):
a similar mindset of well, but I need you to
cut costs. Now, I'm in a company living that most
of my peers are so just trying to get that
refocus on. It's always that hard inflection point. We have
to spend or experiment to spend money to make money,
spend money to invent, reinvent, and it's tricky sometimes picking the.

Speaker 2 (25:55):
Right ones to your point of the tools, Like I.

Speaker 1 (25:58):
Think you're one hundred percent right, you have to start
with what problems or opportunities are you solving for? And
while you were just talking before about your four box,
I'm like, yeah, you know what, since you're in business school,
this will resonate. I mean the good old swat analysis, strengths, weaknesses,
opportunity starts.

Speaker 2 (26:15):
Yeah, that still holds up. There's a really good way
of getting everyone to think about what are we really
doing here? What are we really facing.

Speaker 4 (26:23):
One hundred percent?

Speaker 5 (26:24):
And so you know this is where you know marketers
like yourself often use a seventy twenty ten model, right, Like,
seventy percent is like what I got to do today
to keep the lights on what my board's immediately asking.
But then I have to have twenty for some adjacent
betts and then ten for maybe some of these other quadrants,
right so that I have some future growth moving forward.
And been watching we all been watching what Brian Nichol's

(26:45):
been doing at Starbucks. And to your point, Marisa about
spend money, old boss, you know, well, but spend money
to make money. You saw the last earnings call, he said,
you know, results aren't still where we want them to be,
but they're suppressed because we're investing a little more in
order to place those bets return to growth in the future.

Speaker 3 (27:04):
So hard to do that as a public company, as
we all know, Jim, and you know, I'm really concerned
just about labor and obviously as we start to move
into you know, kind of human AI hybrid workforces, one
of the things that you and I have been talking
about is just understanding the elasticity of labor. And you're

(27:24):
at the business school. You know, you're at Kellogg, you know,
arguably the best business school sorting when it comes to
understanding marketing and brand. But give us a little bit
of kind of where is the puck going because the
framework that we've been doing at Alpha is coming up
with the elasticity of labor scale where you have certain
kind of functions, whether it's sales, marketing, product engineering, finance, legal,

(27:49):
hr you name it, all the major functions, and we're
breaking down all those functions into tasks, and then we're
trying to understand which tasks are going to be elastic, ie,
they could be really replaced by AI because it will
be done much more efficiently or an elastic and no

(28:09):
matter how much compute and data and algorithms you throw
at it, you're still going to need that role, maybe
for regulatory purposes or you know, just understanding that you
still need a human to kind of do that specific task.
How are you kind of framing with the future of
even business school as you have these students coming in

(28:31):
and kind of when they come out, is there even
going to be a role for them.

Speaker 4 (28:34):
Yeah, I mean this is the big macro question.

Speaker 5 (28:36):
I am of the mindset that we're in for a
white collar professional labor disruption in the next decade on
the order of magnitude. Is what we've just experienced in
are experiencing over the past two decades with manufacturing jobs,
blue collar where automation robotics try to come in and
technology disrupted how factories run. I think now you're going

(29:00):
to have this technology, not robots, but AI agents and
automation disrupting how offices run.

Speaker 4 (29:08):
Right.

Speaker 5 (29:08):
So I mean this is like a massive disruption that
we're all going to face and deal with. And you know,
I mean, I think the hard truth here is, yeah,
there's going to be a lot of jobs that will
not survive that transition and that disruption. What are those jobs, Well,
generally the jobs that are doing predictable, routine, repetitive white

(29:28):
collar tasks, right like, take this invoice, review the invoice,
determine if it's valid, Approve the invoice, move.

Speaker 4 (29:37):
It to the next step.

Speaker 5 (29:38):
Well, AI very good at these kinds of things. It
remembers everything and it doesn't get tired. Now, okay, sure
we've got some accuracy hallucination issues, but you know the
famous phrase, today's AI is the worst AI you'll ever use,
And so like, it will get better and better at
those things. That's why, after all it's called machine learning.

Speaker 4 (29:57):
It will learn how to do those things. So yeah,
I mean, I think, as we tell our.

Speaker 5 (30:02):
Students, if your idea for a career, even a first job,
is something that can be automated, that's probably a yellow
light at the moment. On the other hand, if you're
developing your own skill set, entering a team, entering a company,
where at least for now, your value is asking the

(30:22):
right questions, understanding the business and the consumers, and trying
to put pieces together, connecting dots, right. I mean, those
kinds of skills I think will continue to be valuable.
And you know, I somewhat smile when I say this,
because remember this was the book that Daniel Pink wrote
two decades ago with this exact advice. Now that was
pre AI, but I think, right it still holds. So yeah,

(30:46):
I mean, this is a challenging thing. But in the meantime,
what we do with our students is try and just
teach them how to use these tools, right, so that
when they come to work for your companies, they come
in with the regular muscle and now the AI plus
muscle exosuit plus themselves.

Speaker 1 (31:02):
That's really interesting. You know, we had Rashad Tobacco Alla
fellow Brain, Fellow Chicago person or in our last episode,
and not surprisingly we talked about this a bit too,
and just in a way that I do find heartening
that certain very human attributes like creativity, connecting dots and

(31:22):
those whole lists are.

Speaker 2 (31:24):
Really going to matter.

Speaker 1 (31:25):
But as someone really sitting with the emerging generation entering careers,
putting actually a considerable amount of money down to pay
for a business school education, hoping there's going to be
an ROI in that. Let's face it, how do you
translate that? Is there a more practical translation I should
say of that in terms of where you steer them,
where should they go? How do you even think about

(31:46):
career progression and opportunities and how to put your wind
in the sales practically speaking in the workforce.

Speaker 5 (31:53):
Yeah, so we would break that down, I guess into
sort of IQ and EQ and then under the IQ.
So this is the functional or the technical knowledge. Ye,
the technical knowledge now has two parts. It has durable
concepts and it has sort of perishable or emerging concepts.
So you know, Maurcilla, you and I have a marketing
conversation many years ago and many years into the future.

(32:15):
We will be talking about segmentation, targeting, positioning, consumer insights,
qualitative quantitative research, whether it was nineteen seventy five or
twenty seventy five. So our students need to know under
the sort of the IQ side, they need to know
that durable knowledge. And I might say, I'm glad to
see you nodding. You know, there are some folks who
kind of, hey, that doesn't matter. Anymore, it's all about

(32:38):
growth hacking.

Speaker 1 (32:39):
No, no, yes, I should say, meaning I agree with you,
and don't let that get lost in translation on audio. Yes,
I agree that there is I love calling a durable knowledge.
I hadn't really thought about that for me. It's been
like that everything like what's the same, what's different, that's
the same, right, right.

Speaker 5 (32:57):
So sometimes we say evergreen or durable knowledge at the
same time, right, Like you know we were talking earlier
in this conversation, these things pop up, right, you need
to know all that stuff, and then digital and then
we had to learn social and then we had to
learn mobile, and then we had to learn video, and
now we have this threat in front of us as well.

Speaker 2 (33:14):
Yes, yes, fair, But.

Speaker 3 (33:16):
This time it's different, right, because I keep trying to
you know again, every time I'm in the boardroom, every
time I'm in the c suite. You know, we even
had this conversation you know, with your team Marissa, that
this is not like the Internet. It's you know, which
was a network of networks. This is intelligence. I love
the way you start because again I think one of
the there are many things that make you an incredible professor,

(33:38):
but one of them I think is that you have
been an operator. I can't take another consultant. I can't
take another charlatan that is out at these conferences talking
about this and they've never ever worked in tech.

Speaker 2 (33:50):
He's gonna name names next up.

Speaker 3 (33:52):
I mean that that's coming. No, Steven, but no, but
let me touch you starting. So, I think the whole
point of understand that you've actually been in an operating role,
that you've worked in tech, and you've actually seen this.
I don't think people appreciate that this is intelligence that
is going to be free. And so when you remove

(34:14):
all of your moats that have been historically in business
and now everyone has effectively super intelligence in your pocket,
how do you compete? And I really do believe it's
going to come down to the people that understand. And
you know, we have this whole kind of debate going
on with one of our other fellows, doctor Peter Day,

(34:35):
which you know, and we talk about what is the
only mote left. It's really going to be two things.
It's going to be your brand and it's going to
be your ux ui. How the consumer is actually going
to experience your brand, your product, your service without any friction.
And I'm just so curious if we could reframe this,
especially for your students, for anyone you know, kind of

(34:57):
in the industry that are listening. Brand is going to
are so much more and so there's going to be
such disruption, but there's going to be an incredible opportunity
as well. I'll just be curious how you would frame that.

Speaker 4 (35:08):
Yeah, did you want to jump in resor.

Speaker 1 (35:13):
We do have a tendency to talk over each other,
but I think it's part of our charment.

Speaker 2 (35:17):
I think it all was a build.

Speaker 1 (35:18):
I just love that you were going to durable and
maybe just quickly finish that thought of then what's the
opposite of durable? And I think that leads to where
Stephen was going in terms of understanding what becomes more
important than ever.

Speaker 5 (35:33):
Yeah, sort of the ying and yang is durable and temporal, Right,
it's sort of of the moment, what's happening now, and
some of those things will continue in the future, some
of those things might fade away. So yeah, you know,
we try to teach our students the durable and the temporal.
AI is in the middle of that. You know, we've
just spun up and announced foundations of AI courses that
you know, our students will be taking here in the

(35:54):
in the next academic year, in addition to all the
AI courses we already have already that are sort of
deep expertise covers. But that's the IQ side, and then
of course the EQ side is leadership, empathy, team leading, management.
All of those things are not going to go away,
right because at least in our near future, AI is
not going to lead your team all hands on Thursday, right,

(36:15):
So you still.

Speaker 4 (36:15):
Need to know how to do that.

Speaker 5 (36:17):
So that's kind of like the pedagogical framework that we
try to use to make sure that we cover IQ
EQ and under IQ the durable and the temporal.

Speaker 2 (36:26):
I feel like I'm moderating now, So back to Stevens.
Then what's left is the.

Speaker 1 (36:31):
Moat and what does that mean in terms of applying
both durable and temporal knowledge to it?

Speaker 5 (36:37):
Right?

Speaker 1 (36:38):
It is a good conclusion, right in terms of well
brand's going to matter. I think that's heartening for those
of us who've felt like that's always been true. And
then I actually think the idea of the taking the
friction out is the other interesting point too.

Speaker 5 (36:54):
That's the word I was going to go to Marisa, right,
So for a long time friction and opacity were your mote.
This is the only brand you can get in your neighborhood.
And because you can't get any other brands, I win.
Or you need me as a travel agent because it's
really hard and there's a lot of friction to go
book a safari yourself. Okay, Well, if friction is your

(37:15):
moat that has dropped over the past two decades, then
you say, well, maybe firepower is my mote. I've got
like smarter people, I hire better, I pay more. Right,
I'm in a city that's easier to recruit superstars.

Speaker 4 (37:27):
Those kinds of things.

Speaker 5 (37:28):
Well, that fades away as now we can have hybrid
work and we can tap into human experts from all
around the world. And then Steven, now we have one
hundred and eight what is the number, one hundred and
eighty thirty eight IQ right, almost approaching one forty genius
level AI assistance for nineteen dollars a month or the
agents that we build. So you see these motes that

(37:50):
have historically well.

Speaker 3 (37:51):
I again, that's today. Think about that in twelve months time.

Speaker 5 (37:54):
Yeah, and by the way, you know, if we talk
about brands over a seventy five year commerce, the historical
modes were scale scale scale, right, like scale and manufacturing,
scale and distribution, and then scale in media or advertising.
So if you think about brands Levi's, Coke, Liberty, Mutual,
like these great brands that start forward, that started in

(38:16):
the nineteenth century, right, I make more so my union
economics mean that I can sell them for cheaper than you.
I put them on you know, the ACV. I put
it on more shelves and in more places than you.
And the delta because I can make it more cheaply,
I can now reinvest more money in advertising share of
voice than you. So like that was the mode for

(38:39):
fifty or seventy five years. Plus friction maybe plus intelligence. Well,
those things are.

Speaker 2 (38:44):
All yeah, all right, I'm gonna wrap us to it
on that happy note. It's like I'm like, oh gosh, okay.

Speaker 3 (38:56):
Yes, but now, but this is where we got work
to do. This is the upper tunity, right, It's going
to be ridiculous disruption. We're in the wild West phase
and it's so exciting. This is the time to build.
That's why I'm just like loving being in founder mode, Jim, right,
because you have all these tools, all this opportunity, and
everyone is a dinosaur. They don't realize what is coming.

(39:19):
But if you actually can be a self starter, learn
these tools, you know, take classes you know by you
and just like read and just start using this stuff.
Don't talk about it, actually use it. I feel like
this is where incredible opportunity is going to be.

Speaker 4 (39:34):
I would say, that's right.

Speaker 5 (39:35):
And you know, in fact, I taught an executive education
class to a room full of CEOs yesterday and we said,
if you wanted to learn how to be a good surfer,
you wouldn't attend a conference about surfing and watch a
PowerPoint presentation, right. I mean, you know, you have to
have your safety briefing and your training, but at a
certain point you got to get on the board and
get in the water.

Speaker 4 (39:53):
Right, So you know, are you using these tools? And
literally I went around the room and I said, show
me what's on your phone? Op phone?

Speaker 5 (40:00):
I want to see what's there. Do you have the
open AI app? Do you have Gemini right? Are you
able to access it with voice? Do you have live
mode where you can take the camera on your phone
and say explain what I'm looking at here?

Speaker 4 (40:12):
You got to get on the surfboard, get on the surfboard.

Speaker 3 (40:14):
That's the quote.

Speaker 2 (40:15):
That's the tweet, that is the perfect quote to end on.

Speaker 1 (40:26):
We would like to move now to playing a little
fast round.

Speaker 2 (40:30):
Of cooler cringe with you. Are you ready?

Speaker 4 (40:32):
Yep?

Speaker 1 (40:32):
Speed route, Okay, speed round. You can give us your
quick cool cringe. Oftentimes people do cheat and say a
little bit of both. But that's interesting, all right, Steven,
you want to fire the first one?

Speaker 3 (40:44):
All right, I'm gonna make this an easy lay up
for you, Jim cool cringe last touch.

Speaker 6 (40:49):
Attribution Cool in the sense that it's better than no attribution,
but cringe in the sense that it's not the right
way to be determining your effectiveness of your market.

Speaker 2 (41:01):
If you left me on cool, I would have not
known what to do.

Speaker 5 (41:06):
Zero, right, But.

Speaker 1 (41:10):
Maybe maybe I don't know. Sometimes measuring the wrong things
can be as hard.

Speaker 4 (41:15):
Well, that's the street light effect, right, Like we only
measure what we can see under the light. Right.

Speaker 2 (41:21):
I love that I haven't heard that metaphor.

Speaker 1 (41:23):
All right, So, since we've toggled back and forth appropriately
given your own world in life, between a little bit
of academia and a little bit of the corporate operating world,
let's go to an academia, cooler cringe using AI for homework?
How are you handling that first of all as a professor?
And then cooler cringe or what?

Speaker 5 (41:43):
Yeah, I don't know that's cool and cringe. I'm sorry
to combine those, but look, we're all figuring this out,
from grade school teachers to PhD advisors and everybody in between.
My feeling personally and our school embraces this at Kellogg
is that these tools are here, our students were its
pre professional program. They're gonna go use these in the workforce.

(42:05):
So banning them, dissuading use of them is not a
good way to proceed. Yet at the same time, we
need to develop the critical thinking and intellectual skills to
arm people to come work for you that know what
they're doing and not just no prompt engineering right, they
know actually what to ask.

Speaker 4 (42:22):
So look, I mean these tools are great. We use
them in assignments.

Speaker 5 (42:26):
Now we say, hey, here's a prompt, here's a case study,
ask the AI what it would think is the right solution,
and then let's have a discussion here live in class about.

Speaker 4 (42:37):
Whether you agree with that, whether you don't agree with that.

Speaker 5 (42:39):
Right, So that's a sort of a good use where
it provides a so called air quotes expert opinion, and
now that's the springboard for our in class discussion agree
or not? Right. I think it also has wonderful equity
ability here. We have lots of students who, you know,
English is not their first language, who have been you know,
subconsciously disadvantaged because we ask them to write a paper

(43:00):
and sort of the grammar level equality of the paper
right just is not the same as a longtime English speaker.

Speaker 4 (43:06):
This levels that playing.

Speaker 3 (43:07):
Field and we love it all right, core cringe, breaking
up big Tech?

Speaker 2 (43:13):
What do you mean, Stephen though, I'm just kidding.

Speaker 4 (43:18):
Yeah, look, I.

Speaker 3 (43:20):
Think that I don't know what companies does that include.

Speaker 5 (43:25):
Yeah, look, I mean there's a lot of this all
around the world, not just in the US, but you
there's a lot of scrutiny as to, you know, how
big tech is operating, what's it doing, What are the
societal benefits, what are the individual benefits, what are the
corporate benefits along the way, And I do think that
there's definitely some room for kind of tightening the guard
rails on what big tech has been doing and what

(43:49):
sort of free reign they've had to operate here.

Speaker 4 (43:51):
So that would be cool.

Speaker 5 (43:53):
Tightening the guardrails, complete breakoff and stifling innovation, over regulation
and over legen, especially at this moment and time in tech,
I think over regulation and subduing innovation would be cringe.

Speaker 1 (44:07):
Fair enough, Okay, last one kind of have to go there.
And I'm really curious to hear how you answer it.
Cooler cringe? Going to business school?

Speaker 4 (44:17):
No cool? You love business school.

Speaker 5 (44:21):
And I will say for three reasons, Marissa, for your
listeners who may be thinking about, you know, going back
to school. Look, it's a big step in your life.
If it's your full time program. You know, you step
away for a year or two from your job. You
often move away from your friends, your family, your social network.

Speaker 4 (44:36):
But there's three benefits that come.

Speaker 5 (44:37):
Out of this, right, So the first benefit is the
functional the technical knowledge on all these topics future finance,
future marketing, tech, etc. The functional knowledge. The second is
just the community that you build, right Like, you know,
we talked to lots of people who were in your
section at business school ten twenty thirty years ago for
some of us, and you still keep in touch with

(44:59):
these people. So olds community and network. And then the
third thing is access to that next step in your
sort of job in your career, whether it's on campus,
recruiting companies like yours come and you look to meet
potential employees. But that access to the next step in
your career, I think is the third piece. And so

(45:19):
you know, some students come and they need one more
than the other, or they only want two out of
the three. If they're a sponsored student and going back
to Deloitte or whatever or bang, that's fine. But if
students are, if individuals are at a moment where they value, need,
or want functional knowledge, community and career opportunities, business school
is a great place to investigate and.

Speaker 4 (45:39):
Come join us.

Speaker 1 (45:40):
Well, if a student we're lucky enough to have you
as a professor, I think it would certainly reinforce what
they'd want to go. So, Jim, thank you so much
for all the pearls of wisdom as Stevens and not
just students as well.

Speaker 3 (45:53):
I mean, I just feel like everyone needs to hear Jim,
because again, having that operating experience, seen this moment in time,
I think it's critical.

Speaker 4 (46:01):
Well too kind And you.

Speaker 1 (46:03):
Know what, we'll quote your former boss, Eric Schmid, a
lot teach don't sell but you know on my riff
on that, and I think it's what you you and
body is. You have to learn to teach, You have
to teach and then teach to learn that. It's it's
actually such a virtuous cycle. So thank you for sharing
with us. We're so thrilled to have had you on today.

Speaker 5 (46:21):
Thanks so much, jim My Pleasure, Thanks Verssa, Thanks Stephen.

Speaker 3 (46:27):
Now it's time for What's on your Mind and we
have this episode's question from Laura, and so Laura asks,
if you were designing the perfect marketing organization from scratch today,
what would be the most unconventional aspect of your org? Well,
that's that's hard.

Speaker 1 (46:45):
Where are these really hard questions coming from? My goodness,
I think I need a second cup of coffee for
this one.

Speaker 3 (46:51):
That's a good one.

Speaker 2 (46:52):
Most unconventional.

Speaker 1 (46:53):
Well, first of all, I feel like as an executive
vice president, as a chief of customer marketing, I am
doing that. I'm always doing that. We just merged two companies,
six brands and businesses, so I had to design the
right marketing organization for the company. And I like the
word most unconventional aspect of your structure.

Speaker 3 (47:16):
I'm going to channel Laura's energy, you have a clean
sheet of paper, like, what would you do?

Speaker 1 (47:21):
Well, maybe it sort of fits the conversation we just
had with Jim, But I'd really love to think about
people who are like bringing the outside in and how
those people coordinate, like the people who are out there
helping make sure they're curating and fingers on the pulse

(47:41):
of everything new and difference that's happening, feeding it in.
But with the proximity to the business. That's the problem
is if you're not in the business, you don't really
really understand how to filter it.

Speaker 2 (47:54):
Actually, as I'm describing it.

Speaker 1 (47:55):
It reminds me of what my original job at the
Estay Letter Company was at a time of found marketing change.
So maybe I'm envisioning a little of that, but then
also just having like the brilliant strategy people, the integrators
of all this new stuff, and then the people who
can be unbelievably agile at measuring and optimizing, and then

(48:16):
of course the creators. So it's a lot of different parts,
some of which I think I absolutely have, But that
idea of having a function that really is about outside in,
inside out, and figuring out how to actually orchestrate it
without creating chaos and without blowing up the budget.

Speaker 5 (48:33):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (48:34):
I think that's my answer.

Speaker 3 (48:36):
Your turn, Well, I will take unconventional.

Speaker 2 (48:41):
Give me a good answer on this.

Speaker 3 (48:42):
I'm going to try to take that blank sheet of
paper and design it for what is coming. I would
eliminate the word in marketing, and I would actually have
this be a unified customer experience organization. And it's part
of just this philosophy that I have that in the AII, right,
you're going to have all these kind of functions really

(49:04):
get fused into one. Yeah, And so I've been talking
about this for a while. The pre sales which is marketing,
the point of sale which is sales, and then the
post sale, which is customer service or customer experience or
customer support. Those three functions are going to get fused
into one because when you have this hybrid labor force

(49:24):
of humans and AI agents working together, and maybe the
humans are kind of managing some agents, or maybe the
agents are managing some humans, it's going to get really funky.
And so I think understanding that you are going to
have an agent that will be your brand ambassador, and
they're going to be out there talking. You know, maybe
with a consumer's agent, and do we need a head

(49:46):
of agents?

Speaker 2 (49:47):
Is that going to be like a human head of agents?

Speaker 3 (49:51):
I do think there's going to be a bunch of
new functions.

Speaker 2 (49:54):
How do you do their performance reviews?

Speaker 3 (49:56):
These are like the interesting new questions that we have
to ask. I mean, again, remember back in the day
there was a web master, Like what the hell was
that job? But I think you're going to need to
have someone that is your kind of brand agent architect,
Like someone has to come up with the voice and
personality of your brand agent that is going to be

(50:19):
your ambassador. And so I just think that when you
really view that sales is going to be marketing and
marketing is going to be sales, it just really upends
the whole way that this is going to go to market.
Back to the whole conversation with Jim Brand becomes more
important than ever and understanding that brand voice and I
think you just have a whole new set of tools

(50:40):
to be super creative and how to bring that to life.

Speaker 1 (50:42):
Well we definitely agree on that. I'm going to ruminate
on this question a little bit more. I might want
to answer it again, but that's it for today.

Speaker 2 (50:52):
Thanks to Jim.

Speaker 1 (50:53):
So good to spend another great time with you on
our pod, and thank you for joining us and spending
time with us. If you like what you're hearing, please
don't hesitate to subscribe, And as always, if you want
us to answer one of your questions, tell us what's
on your mind, just email us at ideas at brandashnew
dot com and.

Speaker 3 (51:15):
Join us next time. I'm brand New