April 29, 2025 • 17 mins
In this special episode of Sales Pipeline Radio from the Forrester B2B Summit 2025 marketplace floor, Matt spoke with Karen Tran, Principal Analyst, CMO Advisor, Brand Strategy, Forrester.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Matt Heinz (00:16):
All right.
Welcome back.
We are live here at Forrester, B2B Summit,live on the show the marketplace floor.
I'm already losing my trainof thought here, Karen.
This will be maybe the loosestsession we've done, 'cause
I'm getting a little cheeky.
Perfect.
But just really appreciate justForrester making this possible.
We've got, I think we're up toabout 20 of these recordings.
But between analysts like yourself,between some ROI award winners, a lot of
(00:39):
go-to-market leaders walking the hallswho have opinions about what's working,
what's not working, best practices,cautionary tales, dumpster fires.
But what better place Karen, thanto get together as a group of B2B,
go to market leaders and just reallyhave those honest conversations.
Right.
And just talk about what's workingand not, and admit that like,
this isn't always a success story.
This isn't always a linear path, butwe're all kind of learning together.
Karen Tran (01:03):
Absolutely.
No I mean it's been anincredible experience for me.
I know I am an analyst and it's ourevent, but, you know, hearing from
the practitioners, their experience,what's resonating with them, what
they are challenged by day to day intheir business, and how they can come
together here to share those experiences.
So it's been very energizing.
Matt Heinz (01:25):
Well, I would imagine as an analyst, I mean, it's one thing to be
able to get insights when you do a surveyand you sort of even talk to someone on
the phone or Zoom, but it's more of asort of sensory experience when you can
see someone like you can see them sigh.
You can see them tense up when theytalk about something that is hard.
And that's part of this, right?
Like, and until robots sell therobots, we're still humans with lizard
brains trying to make this stuff work.
(01:45):
And I think the more we can accept ourfallibility, right and more accept
those true elements of being humanto do this as buyers and sellers.
I think we'll be better off.
Karen Tran (01:57):
I totally agree.
I just completed facilitating around table on social media and it
was really wonderful to see people.
Be vulnerable with oneanother in that sharing.
And you're right, it'sa nuanced experience.
Human to human.
Yeah.
You know, sharing what's successful,sharing what's challenging, and then
coming together to have new ideas and whatwe can do better to be more successful.
Matt Heinz (02:22):
Well, kudos to Forrester for, I think really amping up the interactive
nature of this conference, right?
I mean, there's so many timesyou come to an event like this
and you're spoken to, right?
Like great insights, good content, butit's someone that presents someone in
a PowerPoint deck, and that's kind ofit between the round table discussions,
the birds of feather at meals.
The analyst led discussions, whichare like bringing the expertise
(02:42):
but making it interactive.
I think people get a lot more out ofthat and you end up with marketers
here that may be sort of morenaturally introverted that are not
gonna walk up to a stranger and saylike, what are your Pipeline problems?
But a facilitated conversation, peopleup and then you can continue that
discussion even after that session's over.
Karen Tran (02:59):
No, it's been really gratifying to see the connections
that have been made here.
Yeah.
I just, like I said, left this round tableand there was two people and they had
this loose connection earlier in theircareers and then reunited by chance at
this round table and through sharing.
And then they're like we're gonnacontinue with this connection and
help each other professionally.
(03:20):
So loving that.
Matt Heinz (03:23):
I love it.
I love it.
Well, I appreciate thediversity of topics.
We've been able to hear fromForrester analysts over the last
couple days, and a couple folksthat have been able to join us here.
Today I wanna talk a littlebit about deep fakes.
Mm-hmm.
So right before here, we recordedsomething on AI agents, which
probably scares some marketers.
Now we're gonna go to deep fakeswhich might scare the rest of them.
And maybe that should or shouldn'tscare people, but I think let's start
(03:43):
from the beginning because when Ithink about deep fakes we got so
much to worry about in marketing.
What do you mean?
What is a deep fake in 2025?
Karen Tran (03:51):
Sure.
Yeah.
A deep fake is an AI generated,you know it's taking somebody's
likeness, their voice likeness.
Their visual likeness and creatinga version of them that isn't real.
Yeah.
So that's generally what a deepfake means.
And DeepFakes aren't new, right?
They've been around for a long time.
Right.
We're used to seeing DeepFakes ofpoliticians, DeepFakes of celebrities
(04:16):
to the point where, you know, sometimeswe know what's real and what's not.
Yeah.
But we're not accustomed toseeing deep fakes in business.
Because why would businessesbe targeted by a deepfake?
Right.
You know, the other point toois that DeepFakes used to be.
Expensive to create.
Mm-hmm.
They used to be difficult to create.
(04:36):
And in the last couple of yearswith the advancements of ai, they
are inexpensive, sometimes free.
Yeah.
To create and easy to create.
And just about anyonecan create a deep fake.
And part of this research came out,it came out of a couple of different
areas that I. I am from Baltimore.
I live in the Baltimore area, andwe had a situation where a principal
(05:00):
was deep faked by a disgruntledemployee, an athletic director.
And I'm not sure what he was disgruntledabout, but he made a deep fake of the
principal saying anti-Semitic things.
And it took some time for them todisprove that it wasn't the principal.
Right.
So we've got disgruntled employeesituation that can cause all kinds of
problems that was in a school district.
(05:22):
But as we looked more deeplyinto the research, we found other
incidences I believe it was inHong Kong, where an employee was
tricked in a video conference.
With people who he thought were his,you know, team members convinced
him to send millions of dollars,I think it was $25 million.
(05:46):
Right?
My goodness.
Why are those funds somewhere?
And really all of those individuals ona live video conference were deep faked.
Wow.
Right.
Matt Heinz (05:56):
That's incredible.
Right?
It's terrifying.
It is.
Karen Tran (05:58):
It really is.
Yeah.
So that is the danger to business.
If there's money to be had,there will be criminals out
there that are trying to get it.
Matt Heinz (06:07):
Now there are vendors on the show floor here who are
actually selling deep fakes, right?
Mm-hmm.
That are sort of shaking the conceptof, for instance, an AI BDR, and
saying, I don't just need someone topretend they're writing something.
I can have you interact on a zoom callwith someone that is not a real person.
It looks and acts like a, BDR.
So, there are cases whereit can be used for good.
(06:28):
What are some ways to be ableto differentiate the two?
Karen Tran (06:31):
Right.
And that's something we talkabout in our research, right.
We are calling it a positive deepfake.
Mm-hmm.
And again, positive DeepFakes aren'tnew either, but with the advancements
of ai, everybody's jumping on board.
They're not calling them deep fakes.
Yeah.
Right.
They're calling them something else.
Yeah.
And they can be a verypositive use case for them.
(06:52):
And it really comes into questionof ethics and transparency.
Mm-hmm.
How are you letting people know thatthey're not dealing with a human?
Yeah.
And is there an ethical question there?
Of course there is.
And, where's that point of.
You know, robot and human, if you will.
AI and human.
Yeah.
Where's that line?
(07:14):
And in some conversations that we hadinternally and when I was doing this
research, one of our analysts actuallyhad this experience where he was engaged
with the chat bot and he said to the chatbot, I would like to talk to an agent.
Right.
So this was six months ago or something.
And when he said, agent.
He meant a person.
Oh.
Because that's how weare used to speaking.
(07:35):
Yeah.
Yeah.
And so, his case was escalated andhe's engaging with an agent and at
one point he says, are you a human?
And.
It wouldn't respond.
Matt Heinz (07:45):
It wouldn't respond.
It wouldn't respond.
Karen Tran (07:46):
And that's when he realized, oh, I'm not dealing with a human.
I thought I was dealing with a human.
But it's actually AI and itwon't tell me that it's ai.
We also have had someclients that you know and.
I work with marketers.
Marketers tend to bepositive people, right?
We're always solution oriented.
We're innovators, we're creative.
(08:07):
And so one of our clients wassaying, we've gotten this AI to be
so good that you can't tell it's ai.
It seems like it's human.
Our test case people thought it was humanand they celebrated that and we said,
well, yeah, that's great, but what doesthat mean if you're tricking people?
Yes.
You know?
Have you thought through the ethics?
Have you thought through the transparency?
(08:29):
Do you have governance in place tomake sure that you're not giving
people a false experience thatcould hurt your brand, right?
Could injure your reputation?
Matt Heinz (08:39):
I worry about what this means for trust.
Karen Tran (08:41):
Absolutely.
Matt Heinz (08:42):
You know, like in the moment I can say, well, you know, I'm
able to chat with someone and I'm ableto have a conversation on a website
that I otherwise wouldn't have had,or I'm able to more efficiently engage
with early stage website visitors orhand raisers where it's more efficient
to have a sales rep engage later.
But if in the moment that helps you, butit feels like a bait and switch even when
you realize, you thought you were talkingto someone that you weren't talking to.
(09:05):
And there's a variety of waysthat can feel, just kind of icky.
Karen Tran (09:10):
Yeah.
And I personally remember those feelingsin the early days of chatbots when I've
interacted with chatbots that put asalesperson's picture and a name there and
misrepresented it, and it was very obviousthat you were just chatting with a bot.
Yeah.
And I was like, why are theymisrepresenting this as if I'm talking to.
Steve, I actually know Steve, right?
(09:31):
Yeah.
He might be a rep thatI've been dealing with.
Yeah.
And now, this is not Steve.
Yeah.
And so yes, it really makes mequestion the company and the brand,
and there's a lack of authenticity.
I think that there will be a turning pointat some point where p eople will expect
that they aren't dealing with the human.
Mm-hmm.
But we aren't there yet.
Matt Heinz (09:51):
No.
Karen Tran (09:51):
So, until we're there, I think it's really important as a
company, to know what your standardsare and to know again, you know.
Are you being transparent?
What are the ethical questionsyou need to be asking yourself?
Matt Heinz (10:04):
Some of these are sort of known unknowns, right?
Like we have a question that we canenumerate, but we don't know the answer.
I worry about the unknown unknowns.
Right?
And so like your session is reallyfocused on like the hidden threats that
CMOs really shouldn't and can't ignore.
What are some other hidden threats thatCMOs just might not even be thinking about
given their current frame of reference?
Karen Tran (10:23):
Right.
Yeah, those are great questions.
It's so funny.
One of the things I say is like.
I'm not a criminal, so I'm not,so I don't think like a criminal.
Yeah.
And it's sometimes hard for me toeven come up with the scenarios Yeah.
That you need to be thinking about.
Yeah.
You know?
So what are some of thethings that we have seen?
(10:43):
In terms of malicious attacks?
Mm-hmm.
Leveraging DeepFakes.
There's the one that I justdescribed and that's happening.
In many cases, it's being thwarted.
How's it being thwarted?
Where somebody's trying to manipulatea person into taking an action
to release funds, for instance.
Yep.
So that's a scenario that can be mitigatedwith deep fake detection technology.
(11:09):
Oftentimes that's owned by theCISO or the technology team.
Where marketers have to beaware is there's also the case.
Externally outside of your organizationwhere executives can be targeted.
Women in particular are targetedin a very pornographic way with
(11:30):
the advent of deep fake technology.
It's really an awful thing.
But there's everything from deepfakes can be created to make
executives be put into compromisingsituations or the appearance of such.
Yep.
Or malicious actors can make deepfakes of executives saying things that
aren't true about the organization inan attempt sometimes to tank the stock
(11:54):
price to make the company look bad.
And so.
Marketers and communicationexecutives have to be prepared to
respond to that extremely quickly.
Because once that truth gets out there,right, and I'm saying that truth.
Yeah,
Matt Heinz (12:10):
yeah,
Karen Tran (12:11):
yeah.
There's that line betweentruth and believability.
Matt Heinz (12:14):
Correct.
Karen Tran (12:14):
That has to be.
Addressed very quickly.
And even more, people think thatthey're not gonna be targeted.
Executives think thatthey won't be targeted.
I'm not famous enough.
Mm. Nobody knows me.
I'm a regular guy.
Even if I'm a woman, even if you're a CEOyou're not Warren Buffet, you're not Bill
Gates, you don't have a celebrity status.
I won't be targeted.
(12:35):
Or you work for amid-size or small company.
Yeah.
And it was something that I saw inthe early days of cybersecurity,
I used to work for a paymentprocessing software company.
And so we talked a lot about complianceand security in the SMB market.
Those businesses were the onesthat were most targeted and they
oftentimes denied the threat.
(12:57):
Everybody is at risk.
But if it's outside of your organization,somebody makes a video and says
something really negative, you have tobe prepared to counter that immediately.
Yeah.
Matt Heinz (13:07):
It sounds like at minimum.
This is a component of a crisiscommunication preparedness plan that
CMOs need to be aware of, need tostart thinking through and have some
of those scenarios in mind so theycan respond quickly and mitigate that.
Karen Tran (13:20):
Yes, a hundred percent.
And when we were doing the researchwe reach out to CMOs and corporate
communication executives to talkabout these topics and interview them.
And so many people said,oh, we can't be interviewed.
This isn't even on our radar.
And then even speaking with some agenciesand communication firms saying none
of our clients are talking about this.
(13:41):
And they really should.
And we interviewed lots of people.
So we definitely did have some executivessay, no, this is on our radar.
This is something we're considering.
This is something that we are looking at.
Matt Heinz (13:54):
Yeah.
Karen Tran (13:54):
There's even the question of if it does happen to you and
you thwart it, you know, how doyou educate your employees mm-hmm.
On this issue.
And how do you help them to mitigatethe risk of a deep fake Yeah.
And I was gonna say it's verysimilar to phishing schemes, right?
Exactly.
Matt Heinz (14:12):
Yeah.
I was literally about to mentionthat like, even in our company we
have a security channel in Slackwhere people will share examples of
things they're getting just to remindpeople to stay vigilant, right.
People get creative, thingscome in different formats.
Literally just this morning got anemail from someone I know that said,
oh, here's an RFP for a project, right?
Mm-hmm.
The link looked a little weird,so we sent it off to our IT group
(14:34):
and said I'm not clicking this.
Can you confirm this is okay?
Yes.
And about an hour later we got anemail from that person saying I've
been hacked, that it's not real.
Don't click on it.
And that's about as close as I've come tobeing like, that sounds like a real thing.
I'm gonna do it.
And so, really glad we didn't.
But just being vigilant andrecognizing examples of what's
happening in and outside your company.
Just to be prepared.
Karen Tran (14:54):
Yes completely.
There's a story where there was anattempt within Ferrari deep faking an
executive trying to get funds moved.
I believe the YouTube CEO was recentlydeep faked and a video was sent to
their key influencers and creatorson their platform asking them to
click a link to take an action.
(15:15):
So it was a deep fake phishing attempt.
So it's really becoming an issue.
I think at the time of the researchI was doing that our report
published, I think it was one in10 executives, said that they had
an attempt of a deep fake on them.
I think that stat keepsincreasing from different sources.
Wow.
I think it's like four in 10.
(15:35):
I've seen 75% of executives say.
And so it's really becominga prevalent problem.
And again, what is the role of marketing?
What is the role of the CMO orthe corporate communications
executive in this.
Yep.
I think it's really necessary tobe partnering with your CISO, your
CTO, your CIO to understand, do wehave deep fake detection technology?
(15:59):
Mm-hmm.
And what are we doing on the tech side,and then what can we do on the marketing
side in terms of monitoring to see what'shappening out there with our reputation.
So having a multi-pronged approach.
Yeah.
To monitoring and threat detection andthreat mitigation is really important.
And then this response strategy, right?
(16:20):
Right.
'cause if you're completelycaught off guard, right.
Your tech team might be like, oh yeah,we're doing all these things but then if
something happens, do you know what to do?
Right.
Do you have the communications in place?
Do you have authenticvideo of your executives?
Mm-hmm.
So that you can compare and say, no, thisis actually an authentic video, and we
(16:40):
have the ability to show you why thisother one is AI generated and why it's
not an authentic video or audio clip.
Matt Heinz (16:48):
Well, thank you for your focus on this because I think
this is something that not a lotof people are thinking about today.
And to even just have some examplesof what's happening, examples of
what you might start to see give somepeople some scenario planning, right?
And to do some crisiscommunication planning and to
help teams be more vigilant.
So thank you so much for being here.
I know you're super busy.
We're getting to the end of a long day.
But thank you so much Karen forbeing here on Sales Pipeline Radio.
Karen Tran (17:08):
Thank you, Matt.
My pleasure.
All right.
Welcome back.
We are live here at Forrester, B2B Summit,live on the show the marketplace floor.
I'm already losing my trainof thought here, Karen.
This will be maybe the loosestsession we've done, 'cause
I'm getting a little cheeky.
Perfect.
But just really appreciate justForrester making this possible.
We've got, I think we're up toabout 20 of these recordings.
But between analysts like yourself,between some ROI award winners, a lot of
(00:39):
go-to-market leaders walking the hallswho have opinions about what's working,
what's not working, best practices,cautionary tales, dumpster fires.
But what better place Karen, thanto get together as a group of B2B,
go to market leaders and just reallyhave those honest conversations.
Right.
And just talk about what's workingand not, and admit that like,
this isn't always a success story.
This isn't always a linear path, butwe're all kind of learning together.
Karen Tran (01:03):
Absolutely.
No I mean it's been anincredible experience for me.
I know I am an analyst and it's ourevent, but, you know, hearing from
the practitioners, their experience,what's resonating with them, what
they are challenged by day to day intheir business, and how they can come
together here to share those experiences.
So it's been very energizing.
Matt Heinz (01:25):
Well, I would imagine as an analyst, I mean, it's one thing to be
able to get insights when you do a surveyand you sort of even talk to someone on
the phone or Zoom, but it's more of asort of sensory experience when you can
see someone like you can see them sigh.
You can see them tense up when theytalk about something that is hard.
And that's part of this, right?
Like, and until robots sell therobots, we're still humans with lizard
brains trying to make this stuff work.
(01:45):
And I think the more we can accept ourfallibility, right and more accept
those true elements of being humanto do this as buyers and sellers.
I think we'll be better off.
Karen Tran (01:57):
I totally agree.
I just completed facilitating around table on social media and it
was really wonderful to see people.
Be vulnerable with oneanother in that sharing.
And you're right, it'sa nuanced experience.
Human to human.
Yeah.
You know, sharing what's successful,sharing what's challenging, and then
coming together to have new ideas and whatwe can do better to be more successful.
Matt Heinz (02:22):
Well, kudos to Forrester for, I think really amping up the interactive
nature of this conference, right?
I mean, there's so many timesyou come to an event like this
and you're spoken to, right?
Like great insights, good content, butit's someone that presents someone in
a PowerPoint deck, and that's kind ofit between the round table discussions,
the birds of feather at meals.
The analyst led discussions, whichare like bringing the expertise
(02:42):
but making it interactive.
I think people get a lot more out ofthat and you end up with marketers
here that may be sort of morenaturally introverted that are not
gonna walk up to a stranger and saylike, what are your Pipeline problems?
But a facilitated conversation, peopleup and then you can continue that
discussion even after that session's over.
Karen Tran (02:59):
No, it's been really gratifying to see the connections
that have been made here.
Yeah.
I just, like I said, left this round tableand there was two people and they had
this loose connection earlier in theircareers and then reunited by chance at
this round table and through sharing.
And then they're like we're gonnacontinue with this connection and
help each other professionally.
(03:20):
So loving that.
Matt Heinz (03:23):
I love it.
I love it.
Well, I appreciate thediversity of topics.
We've been able to hear fromForrester analysts over the last
couple days, and a couple folksthat have been able to join us here.
Today I wanna talk a littlebit about deep fakes.
Mm-hmm.
So right before here, we recordedsomething on AI agents, which
probably scares some marketers.
Now we're gonna go to deep fakeswhich might scare the rest of them.
And maybe that should or shouldn'tscare people, but I think let's start
(03:43):
from the beginning because when Ithink about deep fakes we got so
much to worry about in marketing.
What do you mean?
What is a deep fake in 2025?
Karen Tran (03:51):
Sure.
Yeah.
A deep fake is an AI generated,you know it's taking somebody's
likeness, their voice likeness.
Their visual likeness and creatinga version of them that isn't real.
Yeah.
So that's generally what a deepfake means.
And DeepFakes aren't new, right?
They've been around for a long time.
Right.
We're used to seeing DeepFakes ofpoliticians, DeepFakes of celebrities
(04:16):
to the point where, you know, sometimeswe know what's real and what's not.
Yeah.
But we're not accustomed toseeing deep fakes in business.
Because why would businessesbe targeted by a deepfake?
Right.
You know, the other point toois that DeepFakes used to be.
Expensive to create.
Mm-hmm.
They used to be difficult to create.
(04:36):
And in the last couple of yearswith the advancements of ai, they
are inexpensive, sometimes free.
Yeah.
To create and easy to create.
And just about anyonecan create a deep fake.
And part of this research came out,it came out of a couple of different
areas that I. I am from Baltimore.
I live in the Baltimore area, andwe had a situation where a principal
(05:00):
was deep faked by a disgruntledemployee, an athletic director.
And I'm not sure what he was disgruntledabout, but he made a deep fake of the
principal saying anti-Semitic things.
And it took some time for them todisprove that it wasn't the principal.
Right.
So we've got disgruntled employeesituation that can cause all kinds of
problems that was in a school district.
(05:22):
But as we looked more deeplyinto the research, we found other
incidences I believe it was inHong Kong, where an employee was
tricked in a video conference.
With people who he thought were his,you know, team members convinced
him to send millions of dollars,I think it was $25 million.
(05:46):
Right?
My goodness.
Why are those funds somewhere?
And really all of those individuals ona live video conference were deep faked.
Wow.
Right.
Matt Heinz (05:56):
That's incredible.
Right?
It's terrifying.
It is.
Karen Tran (05:58):
It really is.
Yeah.
So that is the danger to business.
If there's money to be had,there will be criminals out
there that are trying to get it.
Matt Heinz (06:07):
Now there are vendors on the show floor here who are
actually selling deep fakes, right?
Mm-hmm.
That are sort of shaking the conceptof, for instance, an AI BDR, and
saying, I don't just need someone topretend they're writing something.
I can have you interact on a zoom callwith someone that is not a real person.
It looks and acts like a, BDR.
So, there are cases whereit can be used for good.
(06:28):
What are some ways to be ableto differentiate the two?
Karen Tran (06:31):
Right.
And that's something we talkabout in our research, right.
We are calling it a positive deepfake.
Mm-hmm.
And again, positive DeepFakes aren'tnew either, but with the advancements
of ai, everybody's jumping on board.
They're not calling them deep fakes.
Yeah.
Right.
They're calling them something else.
Yeah.
And they can be a verypositive use case for them.
(06:52):
And it really comes into questionof ethics and transparency.
Mm-hmm.
How are you letting people know thatthey're not dealing with a human?
Yeah.
And is there an ethical question there?
Of course there is.
And, where's that point of.
You know, robot and human, if you will.
AI and human.
Yeah.
Where's that line?
(07:14):
And in some conversations that we hadinternally and when I was doing this
research, one of our analysts actuallyhad this experience where he was engaged
with the chat bot and he said to the chatbot, I would like to talk to an agent.
Right.
So this was six months ago or something.
And when he said, agent.
He meant a person.
Oh.
Because that's how weare used to speaking.
(07:35):
Yeah.
Yeah.
And so, his case was escalated andhe's engaging with an agent and at
one point he says, are you a human?
And.
It wouldn't respond.
Matt Heinz (07:45):
It wouldn't respond.
It wouldn't respond.
Karen Tran (07:46):
And that's when he realized, oh, I'm not dealing with a human.
I thought I was dealing with a human.
But it's actually AI and itwon't tell me that it's ai.
We also have had someclients that you know and.
I work with marketers.
Marketers tend to bepositive people, right?
We're always solution oriented.
We're innovators, we're creative.
(08:07):
And so one of our clients wassaying, we've gotten this AI to be
so good that you can't tell it's ai.
It seems like it's human.
Our test case people thought it was humanand they celebrated that and we said,
well, yeah, that's great, but what doesthat mean if you're tricking people?
Yes.
You know?
Have you thought through the ethics?
Have you thought through the transparency?
(08:29):
Do you have governance in place tomake sure that you're not giving
people a false experience thatcould hurt your brand, right?
Could injure your reputation?
Matt Heinz (08:39):
I worry about what this means for trust.
Karen Tran (08:41):
Absolutely.
Matt Heinz (08:42):
You know, like in the moment I can say, well, you know, I'm
able to chat with someone and I'm ableto have a conversation on a website
that I otherwise wouldn't have had,or I'm able to more efficiently engage
with early stage website visitors orhand raisers where it's more efficient
to have a sales rep engage later.
But if in the moment that helps you, butit feels like a bait and switch even when
you realize, you thought you were talkingto someone that you weren't talking to.
(09:05):
And there's a variety of waysthat can feel, just kind of icky.
Karen Tran (09:10):
Yeah.
And I personally remember those feelingsin the early days of chatbots when I've
interacted with chatbots that put asalesperson's picture and a name there and
misrepresented it, and it was very obviousthat you were just chatting with a bot.
Yeah.
And I was like, why are theymisrepresenting this as if I'm talking to.
Steve, I actually know Steve, right?
(09:31):
Yeah.
He might be a rep thatI've been dealing with.
Yeah.
And now, this is not Steve.
Yeah.
And so yes, it really makes mequestion the company and the brand,
and there's a lack of authenticity.
I think that there will be a turning pointat some point where p eople will expect
that they aren't dealing with the human.
Mm-hmm.
But we aren't there yet.
Matt Heinz (09:51):
No.
Karen Tran (09:51):
So, until we're there, I think it's really important as a
company, to know what your standardsare and to know again, you know.
Are you being transparent?
What are the ethical questionsyou need to be asking yourself?
Matt Heinz (10:04):
Some of these are sort of known unknowns, right?
Like we have a question that we canenumerate, but we don't know the answer.
I worry about the unknown unknowns.
Right?
And so like your session is reallyfocused on like the hidden threats that
CMOs really shouldn't and can't ignore.
What are some other hidden threats thatCMOs just might not even be thinking about
given their current frame of reference?
Karen Tran (10:23):
Right.
Yeah, those are great questions.
It's so funny.
One of the things I say is like.
I'm not a criminal, so I'm not,so I don't think like a criminal.
Yeah.
And it's sometimes hard for me toeven come up with the scenarios Yeah.
That you need to be thinking about.
Yeah.
You know?
So what are some of thethings that we have seen?
(10:43):
In terms of malicious attacks?
Mm-hmm.
Leveraging DeepFakes.
There's the one that I justdescribed and that's happening.
In many cases, it's being thwarted.
How's it being thwarted?
Where somebody's trying to manipulatea person into taking an action
to release funds, for instance.
Yep.
So that's a scenario that can be mitigatedwith deep fake detection technology.
(11:09):
Oftentimes that's owned by theCISO or the technology team.
Where marketers have to beaware is there's also the case.
Externally outside of your organizationwhere executives can be targeted.
Women in particular are targetedin a very pornographic way with
(11:30):
the advent of deep fake technology.
It's really an awful thing.
But there's everything from deepfakes can be created to make
executives be put into compromisingsituations or the appearance of such.
Yep.
Or malicious actors can make deepfakes of executives saying things that
aren't true about the organization inan attempt sometimes to tank the stock
(11:54):
price to make the company look bad.
And so.
Marketers and communicationexecutives have to be prepared to
respond to that extremely quickly.
Because once that truth gets out there,right, and I'm saying that truth.
Yeah,
Matt Heinz (12:10):
yeah,
Karen Tran (12:11):
yeah.
There's that line betweentruth and believability.
Matt Heinz (12:14):
Correct.
Karen Tran (12:14):
That has to be.
Addressed very quickly.
And even more, people think thatthey're not gonna be targeted.
Executives think thatthey won't be targeted.
I'm not famous enough.
Mm. Nobody knows me.
I'm a regular guy.
Even if I'm a woman, even if you're a CEOyou're not Warren Buffet, you're not Bill
Gates, you don't have a celebrity status.
I won't be targeted.
(12:35):
Or you work for amid-size or small company.
Yeah.
And it was something that I saw inthe early days of cybersecurity,
I used to work for a paymentprocessing software company.
And so we talked a lot about complianceand security in the SMB market.
Those businesses were the onesthat were most targeted and they
oftentimes denied the threat.
(12:57):
Everybody is at risk.
But if it's outside of your organization,somebody makes a video and says
something really negative, you have tobe prepared to counter that immediately.
Yeah.
Matt Heinz (13:07):
It sounds like at minimum.
This is a component of a crisiscommunication preparedness plan that
CMOs need to be aware of, need tostart thinking through and have some
of those scenarios in mind so theycan respond quickly and mitigate that.
Karen Tran (13:20):
Yes, a hundred percent.
And when we were doing the researchwe reach out to CMOs and corporate
communication executives to talkabout these topics and interview them.
And so many people said,oh, we can't be interviewed.
This isn't even on our radar.
And then even speaking with some agenciesand communication firms saying none
of our clients are talking about this.
(13:41):
And they really should.
And we interviewed lots of people.
So we definitely did have some executivessay, no, this is on our radar.
This is something we're considering.
This is something that we are looking at.
Matt Heinz (13:54):
Yeah.
Karen Tran (13:54):
There's even the question of if it does happen to you and
you thwart it, you know, how doyou educate your employees mm-hmm.
On this issue.
And how do you help them to mitigatethe risk of a deep fake Yeah.
And I was gonna say it's verysimilar to phishing schemes, right?
Exactly.
Matt Heinz (14:12):
Yeah.
I was literally about to mentionthat like, even in our company we
have a security channel in Slackwhere people will share examples of
things they're getting just to remindpeople to stay vigilant, right.
People get creative, thingscome in different formats.
Literally just this morning got anemail from someone I know that said,
oh, here's an RFP for a project, right?
Mm-hmm.
The link looked a little weird,so we sent it off to our IT group
(14:34):
and said I'm not clicking this.
Can you confirm this is okay?
Yes.
And about an hour later we got anemail from that person saying I've
been hacked, that it's not real.
Don't click on it.
And that's about as close as I've come tobeing like, that sounds like a real thing.
I'm gonna do it.
And so, really glad we didn't.
But just being vigilant andrecognizing examples of what's
happening in and outside your company.
Just to be prepared.
Karen Tran (14:54):
Yes completely.
There's a story where there was anattempt within Ferrari deep faking an
executive trying to get funds moved.
I believe the YouTube CEO was recentlydeep faked and a video was sent to
their key influencers and creatorson their platform asking them to
click a link to take an action.
(15:15):
So it was a deep fake phishing attempt.
So it's really becoming an issue.
I think at the time of the researchI was doing that our report
published, I think it was one in10 executives, said that they had
an attempt of a deep fake on them.
I think that stat keepsincreasing from different sources.
Wow.
I think it's like four in 10.
(15:35):
I've seen 75% of executives say.
And so it's really becominga prevalent problem.
And again, what is the role of marketing?
What is the role of the CMO orthe corporate communications
executive in this.
Yep.
I think it's really necessary tobe partnering with your CISO, your
CTO, your CIO to understand, do wehave deep fake detection technology?
(15:59):
Mm-hmm.
And what are we doing on the tech side,and then what can we do on the marketing
side in terms of monitoring to see what'shappening out there with our reputation.
So having a multi-pronged approach.
Yeah.
To monitoring and threat detection andthreat mitigation is really important.
And then this response strategy, right?
(16:20):
Right.
'cause if you're completelycaught off guard, right.
Your tech team might be like, oh yeah,we're doing all these things but then if
something happens, do you know what to do?
Right.
Do you have the communications in place?
Do you have authenticvideo of your executives?
Mm-hmm.
So that you can compare and say, no, thisis actually an authentic video, and we
(16:40):
have the ability to show you why thisother one is AI generated and why it's
not an authentic video or audio clip.
Matt Heinz (16:48):
Well, thank you for your focus on this because I think
this is something that not a lotof people are thinking about today.
And to even just have some examplesof what's happening, examples of
what you might start to see give somepeople some scenario planning, right?
And to do some crisiscommunication planning and to
help teams be more vigilant.
So thank you so much for being here.
I know you're super busy.
We're getting to the end of a long day.
But thank you so much Karen forbeing here on Sales Pipeline Radio.
Karen Tran (17:08):
Thank you, Matt.
My pleasure.
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